Slide Outs Opening and Closing on their own

[Field Trip]

Always at the worst time. We just started working our way to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival from Jacksonville. We’re in Tallahassee for the first night, set-up for a couple of days here, getting ready for dinner and the LR slide announces is closing, and does. Then the Kitchen slide does. They close, wait a few moments and then the announcement that they are opening. No one is touching the buttons.

Called Coach-net. Their tech has no idea.

Called a Newmar dealer in CA (it’s 7 PM EST at the time), he has no idea. Pulled the motor fuses and the opening and closing stopped.

Prior to pulling the fuses we noticed that the LED’s for all of the slide switches are emitting a low flickering light.

Planning on calling Newmar in the morning.


My next fear is that they will not close once I insert the fuse.

Any ideas??

[Norm4015]

Did you have a floursecent light on when the slides were moving on their own? A bad floursecent light can cause that problem. Try to determine which light is causing the probelm and keep it turned off until you can replace it.

["007"]

What Norm has implied can has cause the problem you are having.
A bad ballast will cause the problem.
Here are some other weird things that can happen.
Coach's near airports have had slides operate on their own.
Here is a PDF of Newmars slide operation.
I would put fuse back in when its time to leave than re-pull it out as you travel.

[Field Trip]

No lights were on at the time.

["007"]

Field Trip did you call Newmar this AM do they have a solution?

[Field Trip]

Newmar suggested a possible RF interference. We are on the north side of Tallahassee, and can find nothing to emit sufficient RF to cause this. Airport is on the south side of town. Or they thought that the controllers ($240 each) may have gone bad.

Checked the connections to the controllers and found nothing out of the ordinary.

Made an appt. for 09-27 at Holiday RV outside Houston to se if they can trouble shoot it.

For now absent any suggestions, we’ll pull the fuses, and pray that the slides don’t lock either in or out.

[bigskymt]

I've had an occasion to view the schematics of our 04 KSDP slides and noticed the drivers were controlled by opto isolators. I'd think they would eliminate any RF noise uncommanded drive.
Does(do) your bedroom slide(s) experience the same?
If the control panel is common to both front slides I'd look there first, especially since you have LEDs lighting for no reason.

["007"]

If your near some large power transformers you may get RF interference from them.
If you remove wiring plugs and clean with contact spray may clean up some dirty contact on a ground pin for example.
Make sure all your ground leads have tight connections at the 12v fuse panel.
Let us know how you made out we'll put a flag on this one.

[soricobob]

I don't have an answer, but on two occasions we had our fireplace turn on by itself. After calling, visiting, inspecting, etc. we have learned to turn off its circuit breaker when not in use!

[Field Trip]

Each of the three slides has it's own individual controler. The bedroom slide is not acting on it's own as the kitchen & LR slides are.

[Field Trip]

All,

We left Big Oak RV Park in Tallahassee this afternoon. The slides required the coordination and removal of the fuses to get them to close and remain closed.

Arrived in Pensacola this evening, replaced the fuses, and the slides are working fine.

Maybe we need to have an exorcism done on it when we pass through Roswell, NM later this month.

[eawoodw]

I would like to offer a comment on the slide problem. I have been told that when you have slide problems where they open or close unexpectantly, look for a "ham radio operator" in the park. On two different occasions I have been told that this was the problem. About 2006 or 2007 I understand that Newmar changed the way the voltage is applied to the slide motor (maybe only by directly closing the panel switch) such that this is no longer a problem and the slides can not operate from stray RF signals. Again, I just want to throw this out for your consideration. If it continues to happen or happens when in another park, then it probably is not a ham radio operator.

[TechWriter]

I thought this was a nuts thread until my kitchen slide started to come in on its own.

I had just plugged in a floursecent light bug zapper & then the slideout started coming in.

So what fuses do I pull to keep the slideout going off on its own?

[Doc Mark]

Shades of Rebelsbeach & the Londonaire/Kingaire! Sigh . . . .