Those corner steady foot pads

The one thing that will send me into a flurry of activity either on the car or caravan is our old friend rust! I will even remove the wheels from the ‘van and paint the hubs! I just can’t stand it. And so it was the other day when removing the foot pads from the van. I had bought a full set from one of the shows a couple of years earlier and had been attracted by the quality of them. Instead of the usual plastic pins which I have had break in the past, these had good strong metal pins. However, on inspection, the pins were covered in rust- one wasn’t too bad but the other 3 were unrecognisable from the lovely shiny pins I had fitted 2 years earlier. Of course, the swinging action of the foot on the steady had caused friction and friction had removed the gossamer coating of zinc protection. Was I to just bin them and buy some more- that would have been the easiest thing to do but all that plastic? No, I would try to resurrect them by removing the rust, and respray them. That was fairly easy as I used abrasive pads with my multi tool and the rust soon gave way to shiny new metal. Treated with kurust  and resprayed they looked like new. Oh, hang on, how am I going to prevent me doing the same in 2 years time? I had a plan. I searched out some soft  clear plastic tubing I had- the sort used for racking wine from one demijohn to another or bottles. I measured the distance between the two upstands where the pin goes through on the foot and cut tubing to length- x 4.  With the help of WD40 and boiling water to really soften the tubing, I was able to slide, cajole and force the tubing onto the pins. The next problem was to get the pins through the slots as I had now increased the diameter of the pins! With a cordless drill and a drill bit of about 6/7mm, I very carefully machined away plastic from the top of ONE slot of each foot pad and formed a larger aperture so that the pin, now covered with plastic tubing, would pass through it and still give me the sliding action of the pins up and down the slots in the plastic foot. I now have all four feet, swinging on the steadies as I drive knowing that instead of metal on metal, I have soft plastic on metal- and no rust- and no possibility of it. Another load of plastic prevented from going to the land fill.