Power Gear Slide Pinion

[Skip Y]

Have a 2010 WBGO Journey 40TD with Power Gear (now LCI) slide mechanisms. The curb side slide is 22' long with 2 rack and pinion (not hydraulic)mechanisms, the street side slide is 15' long and also has 2 drive mechanisms. The pinion gear on the curb side rear mechanism has failed multiple times, none of the other gears have failed. The failed gear has the bed above it, but one of the other gears has the fridge above it so I can't easily blame excess weight. Stops have been adjusted, engagement has been adjusted, and pinion has been centered on the rack - all to no avail.

WBGO suggests checking alignment of rack to pinion. Makes sense, but if rack were not square you would think there would be wear across entire face of pinion, yet the wear pattern is right down the center and shows no wander (pinion is 1 1/4 wide, rack is 5/8 wide)

Any ideas as to cause of multiple failures? Anyone else had this issue?

Skip Y
2010 Journey 40 TD
WIT 47083, FMCA F263635

[Americanrascal]

Not sure which Power Gear system you have but it sounds like its a system with rams. Sure hate hearing that your having recurring failures. Winnebago sent me a manual on ours (Digisync system from Power Gear) which I can't put my hands on to send you or post here.

You may want to contact both LCI and Winnebago . Ask Winnebago if they can email you the installation manual bulletin for the slide which contains many tolerance settings, alignments, and procedures for the slides.I was quite surprised that there seemed to be a lot more adjustments to the set up than I realized.

I contacted LCI when one of our pinion gears failed and they advised at that time (ours is a 2016 model) that they had a batch of pinions with bad metal resulting in failures. With continuing failures on your I wonder also if something may be awry with the rack teeth or if something is binding during extension and retraction???