Richelieu Murphy Bed

[Joe Samorodin]

I am posting this for a couple of reasons, one is for a heads up on a potential problem with the product and also to see if anyone else has run into this problem. The hardware is from Richelieu and is a murphy bed frame with brackets and gas lifts. The building of the cabinet was straight forward as I have built several of these using Lee Valleys hardware but I thought that because of the frame several steps were eliminated so a time and money saver. For the most part it went well
but during the attaching hardware phase there was a problem of attaching the bracket to the side of the cabinet. Instructions showed attaching bolts (included) to the side of the cabinet, yet nothing for the bolt to attach to. No insert and nothing mentioned on the hardware list. I phoned customer service and after a few days received an answer that stated the bolts were not used. Okay so I am on my own. As the bolts were metric and Richelieu had no suitable metric panel inserts I went to my local lumberyard and bought 13mm inserts for 1 /4 inch bolts and made a jig and inserted these into the panel. Brackets attached I positioned the bed frame in the assembled case and everything worked well for swing and clearance. Here was my big mistake, I did try the unit with the gas cylinders I just verified they would fit as per the instructions for assembly. Dismantled the bed and with the rest of the cabinets installed at the customers.
So after installing the unit at the customers I ran into this problem http://youtu.be/d3sRtPJPmOY

The gas cylinders did not budge and until I had made the video customer service gave me the run around after the video they sent me another two cylinders which from my observations and attempt to get the cylinders to open were also
not working properly.

So has anyone had any experience with this type of bed? Is there something I am missing?

[Sebastien La Madeleine]

Digging up an old thread but hoping to help someone in the future.

I did not watch the video and presume your bed is fixed by now but I did run into the problems of the cylinders not budging.

The trick, while simple took me a while to figure out as well. You need to raise the foot of the frame and push it down until the cylinder "lockers" turn and unlock. I had a problem where one cylinder unlocked and the other didn't. We ended up needing to be two, one on each side of the frame to unlock them both at once.

Hope this helps someone.
Sébastien