Slide-out goes out while driving, YIKES!!!

While we are still a bit behind in our blogging, I thought I should share a recent incident while driving north from the Rio Grande Valley. We left Casa de Valle RV park in Alamo Texas arriving at Choke Canyon State Park near Three Rivers Texas.

Upon leaving our site at Choke Canyon SP our bedroom slide-out failed to come in. I manually pushed it in and secured it from the inside so it would stay in. Or so I thought…

We intentionally took some back roads on our way to Canyon Lake to ensure my temporary “fix” of our slide-out would hold. When I said I manually pushed the slide-out back in I mean this literally. You could simply push the slide in or out with no resistance whatsoever. My solution was to brace the inside of the slide-out with 2x4’s to secure it in place.

As we ambled along the back roads the slide-out remained in place and all was good, that is, until one of our bay doors sprung open. We pulled over and I relatched the bay door. This door has sprung open before so I guess I need to check how well the latch actually secures it.

We continued on but both of us were thinking what else can go wrong? I mean “things happen in threes” right? We finally merged onto Interstate 37 and nothing else was going wrong, that is, until we got to San Antonio Texas. Our route was taking us north on Interstate 37 through the center of San Antonio and where did the slideout decide to pop out?! Yep, right in the center of downtown San Antonio on a very busy and congested highway. The power of threes continued…

Fortunately we were in the right lane and I immediately pulled off on the bit of road between an exit ramp and the highway with cars buzzing past us us. I checked my “fix” which had shifted allowing the slideout to go out. I went back outside trying to avoid being hit by a car on the highway or exit ramp and pushed the slide back in.

Inside I discovered the slideout trim which was securing the previous fix had detached so I had to come up with another plan. I used those adjustable spring rods we purchased for our shelves to keep things from falling out while traveling to secure the slide from the top. I adjusted four of them to hold the slide inside its frame and hoped for the best.

Merging back on the highway was a major feat in itself. With cars zooming by at 65 mph, maneuvering the RV back on the highway wasn’t easy but after a sizable wait I saw a large enough gap  where I was able to ease us back on the interstate and  back up to speed. Hoping the worst was behind us and feeling confident the rule of threes had been completed we continued northward.

About then the GPS warned us of a wreck on US 281 which is under heavy construction. GPS suggested an alternate route but not knowing if those small roads were suitable for a large RV we resigned ourselves to suffering through the traffic jam. After more than an hour of inching we finally made it to Canyon Lake. Fortunately our second”fix” held up until we arrived. I hope to be able to really fix the slide before moving from here but that will be blogged about at a later date…

Boy we really needed our happy hour after this ordeal!! But such is life driving an RV On the Road of Retirement…

NOTE: We are currently at Canyon Lake in Central Texas…

Slide Motor Replacement…

As I had mentioned some time ago we had an issue with our large wall slide. We first noticed it the day we were about to leave Lockhart State Park when I was retracting the slide in. As the slide was coming in I heard a loud “klunk” and wondered what the heck that was!!! I stopped pulling in the slide and checked outside but couldn’t find anything (My first thought was maybe one of the grandkids had placed a rock or something in one of the tracks).

Once satisfied nothing was amiss I began to retract the slide again and noticed that the slide would come in a bit, make a loud “thunk” noise and come in a bit again. This noise pattern continued till the slide came all the way in. By then I pretty much suspected that I had broken a tooth off of one of the gears in the slide motor but since we had to move on I decided to wait until our next location to investigate since we would be close to some larger towns. After we settled in at Canyon Lake I put the slide out and it again made the same repetitive noises.

I went under the slide to locate the two slide rails and inspected them to see if there was any damage on the rails. Seeing no damage I located the slide motor and after consulting with Tiffin I unhooked the slide motor from the chassis. This required me to cut the wires to the motor, then I removed the bolts from the inserts (left photo above) and slid the bars off the motor. I removed the four bolts holding the motor to the chassis and it off it came.

I opened up the slide motor casing and took apart the slide motor and indeed found what I had suspected. The smallest gear in the motor had a broken tooth on it (Note broken tooth on smaller gear in header photo). Also a washer and a nut had split as well. So I called around San Marcos and New Braunfels Texas to see if anyone had the motor and what it would cost (you can’t simply buy the parts of the motor you need). I also asked Tiffin for the same information.

PPL in San Marcos informed me they could get it for me in 2-3 weeks for over 1100 bucks! Yikes! Camping world beat that price but not by much and could get it in about the same time. Thank goodness for Tiffin as they had it for around $650.00 and they had it in stock! Way to go Red Bay Alabama and Tiffin Motorhomes ....so I ordered the new motor from them and got it in four days!

When I received the new motor I checked with Tiffin again to ask if their were any tricks to installing the new motor. The only thing they told me was that it would be best to pull the slide in about half way before installing the new motor. Also they wanted me to make sure before I installed it that the slide was extracted the exact same distance on both sides so I measured how far the slide was out on each side.

Since the slide out distances were equal I began the process of installing the new motor. I reinserted the square tubes on the new motor once it was bolted in place. Note, you may have to have someone push the button to retract the slide a bit to match of the holes of the new motor to those on the bar inserts (see photo below).  Lastly I had to use wire nuts to splice in the wires of the new motor (above photo). I plan to replace these wire nuts with something more permanent later.

Once installed I tested out the new motor and the slide worked perfectly then and still does now. I waited to pen this blog until I was totally satisfied the repair would hold and it has.  I am glad I took on this repair by myself as I probably saved quite a bit of cash and really this was a quite easy do it yourself repair!