Where can I find a wall mount for towel rail?

[Lee-James]

Hi all, the wall Mount for my towel rail has bent and the rail keeps falling off the wall. I am looking for a new mount for the wall but the new ones are smaller. The Mount would be about 20 years old. It is 50mm in diameter with 10mm between the screw holes. See attached image. 

 

 

 

[BradN]

Hi @Lee-James, and welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's great to have you with us.

That does look like a frustrating problem.

One of our resident D.I.Y. experts, @EricL, will be back on the site later today, and hopefully he can give you some good advice.

In the meantime let me tag knowledgeable community members @TedBear and @JoeAzza to see whether they have any suggestions.

Brad

[Jewelleryrescue]

HI @Lee-James 

The  quickest and easyest is to buy  new whole  towel rail.  But if you ok with working with metal you might be able to make a solution to fix the old mount.

Maybe  rebend that metal tab in the mount so the rail is held in place . (use pliers, multigrips as a guide.)  but it is a  cast metal so it can snap easy on a  rebend and the metal will be soft and will re bend and fall off wall if some one re leans on rail and some one will  eventually. So just be prepared to revisit that repair.

If the rail must  be fixed?

Plan A use flat bit of  thin 1mm max and make it fit to replace the old damaged bent  lip.  Either bend it to z shape  or file a  lip into flat steel.

Plan B can a  right angle  bracket fit into the internals of the towel rail fitting and possibly be glued there?  same  right angle  bracket needs to be mounted on base in either  the red or black  axis this will give stronger mechanical support if some one leans on rail again,

Plan C as a dramatic fix  place wall plate on the wall in position silicone the rail holder on to the wall base plate and let dry several days.   If necessary the silicone will pull apart later where a glue  wont give.

good luck on you project.

Plan A make new tab.Plan B bracket into rail fitting

[EricL]

Hello @Lee-James

It's great that you've received great advice from @Jewelleryrescue. I suggest having a quick look at this discussion - Looking for a wall mounting bracket for a towel rail by @dfoy. In that discussion, I recommended building a bracket out of the Carinya 20 x 200 x 1mm Flat Make-a-Bracket using the 200mm Combination Pliers to bend the ends. I've placed an image below to give you an idea of how the bracket is supposed to look in order to hold the towel rail end.

If you have any other questions we can help with, please let us know.

Eric

[TedBear]

I think that the best satisfaction and easiest option is to replace the towel rail. It can be seen in your photos that the top tab in the mounting plate has actually cracked off. The only repair option I can see is to make a tab as suggested by @Jewelleryrescue , but it seems like a lot of trouble to go to, in order to get a patch-up result, when there are plenty of towel rails available for under $50.

[Jewelleryrescue]

@TedBear 

Be very  very  carefull Ted bear replacing that older towel rail may avalache into a  full blown  bathroom revamp   lol. 

@EricL  idea was a winner too and pretty easy , 

[r23on]

I can not see if this issue has been resolved.

As @Jewelleryrescue has suggested replacing the towel rail with another, unless it’s is an identical rail, I can grantee you the holes will not match the current positions. New hole would need to be drilled, each manufacturer has there own hole patterns and spacing between centres. looking at the mount there is no way you could re-bending the any part of the mount as it is a casting. If it had been a pressed metal there would be a chance to re-bend the mount

Frankly in this case there is only 2 options

1. replace with an identical towel rail and good luck with that.

2. as suggested plan A has good merit 

As for glueing it back in place there are glues that will do the job, but what happens if you want to take it off.

I have just moved to Darwin and going through some reno work the first to go were the towel rails and with out thinking about I grabbed what we wanted, then came the issues. my rail was 900mm new rail 900mm I was a bit brain dead I didn’t measure the distance between hole centres the rail did not fit, it was back to Bunnings. I could not find anything to either fit the hole spacing or an identical rail. it was refill the holes drill new centres and repaint the wall.

Where possible it is advised that look to see if the original rail is still available if not

measure the distance between the holes (the centre between the holes) to see if you can get one with same centres before going to buy some new.

Towel raisl come in 600mm 900mm 1000m but replacing any one of them will not have the same mounting hole spacing unless it is an identical rail.

Looking at all the posts this issue all have the same problem.

@Lee-James how did you resolve this issue? 

[Jewelleryrescue]

HI @Lee-James 

Sorry your still wrestling  with that problem

I am hearing you are wanting to use new 900 rail but the wall screw holes  old and new dont match up?

Well with out seeing inside your new fitting is there room in there on a flat spot you can drill matching  holes to suit your wall.

Take the old fitting and new fitting butt to butt and mark in pencil or texta new drill hole spots if this suits your hard wear.

Failing that there is no option but to make new holes in wall but it will be hidden by new fitting cover?

[Jewelleryrescue]

Hi @Lee-James 

 Well we arnt  there  to see first hand so some ideas may be terrible.

The new idea is to turn the mounting plates upside down(turn the wholerail upside down) and yes this will expose screw and not be exceptable   possibly. But the rail  in theory will lock in at the new top possibly and  a towel wieght would be downwards so may not need the  locking edge lug engaged at the  new bottom. 

Another  possibility is where the  cast iron lug broke off get and curve a piece of fencing wire(a quarter of the way around at top)  to shape around the outer rim creating a new lug gluing it with  high strength araldite.