Slide Out Gap Adjustment + Bolt Slippage Help

[meow]

Hi all,


Long time reader, first time poster. You all are great BTW. We just bought our second motorhome, a 2011 Winnebago Access Premier 31JP. We got a fabulous deal, but it does have one problem we need to address (or pay someone to address).


The sofa/stove slide does not seal at the top when it is retracted. It has about an inch gap. Otherwise the slide works great, and it's been garaged it's whole life. It is an electric power gear rack and pinion slide with two rails/motors. It sits above the floor with the motor beneath the floor. The height adjustment appears to be maxed out. In fact, the bolts that push the slide up appear to have shifted to the very edge of the metal plate they push on. I'll attach pictures if I can.



Any insight on what we could do to adjust these would be much appreciated. I'd also be curious if anyone has seen the bolts in that position. It seems like a bit of a hazard?



I'm an advanced DIYer (our last RV was a fixer upper), but I'm not ashamed to call the pros when necessary. Down side is the only shop in our rural area is pretty backed up and we'd like the RV to be water tight while closed asap.



Thanks for any help!

[meow]

I didn't see a place to edit my message so....


One more thing I meant to mention is that the slide "tips out" quite a bit as it seals when retracting. I've looked up all the images and these things don't seem to have many options for adjustment. I'm really starting to wonder if the bolt slippage is the cause of the gapping.

[jerichorick]

Originally Posted by meow

Hi all,


Long time reader, first time poster. You all are great BTW. We just bought our second motorhome, a 2011 Winnebago Access Premier 31JP. We got a fabulous deal, but it does have one problem we need to address (or pay someone to address).


The sofa/stove slide does not seal at the top when it is retracted. It has about an inch gap. Otherwise the slide works great, and it's been garaged it's whole life. It is an electric power gear rack and pinion slide with two rails/motors. It sits above the floor with the motor beneath the floor. The height adjustment appears to be maxed out. In fact, the bolts that push the slide up appear to have shifted to the very edge of the metal plate they push on. I'll attach pictures if I can.



Any insight on what we could do to adjust these would be much appreciated. I'd also be curious if anyone has seen the bolts in that position. It seems like a bit of a hazard?



I'm an advanced DIYer (our last RV was a fixer upper), but I'm not ashamed to call the pros when necessary. Down side is the only shop in our rural area is pretty backed up and we'd like the RV to be water tight while closed asap.



Thanks for any help!

Do you have Power Gear slides? It almost looks like it.
On my coach the adjustment you are looking for is in the chassis. The rails need to be raised. The outside adjustment is to match the paint lines when the slide is closed. This may be why it's maxed out.
You will need to brace the slide to the ground on the outside edge near the rails. Loosen the top nut on the rod and back it up a ways. Then tighten the lower nut. These must be adjusted equally of you will put a twist in your slide. This will be a trial and error process. Make an adjustment. Run the slide in. Repeat this process until the gap closes. You will have to drop the outside adjustment also to match the paint. This is done with the slide in.
Good luck. I use a bottle jacks and 2x4s to do mine. Solid ground is another good thing to be on.
Rick Y

[meow]

Thank you so very much for the response. I had kind of given up hope on much of any input.

We do have a Power Gear slide, and I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't think it has the rod/nuts you are speaking of. I've seen lots of slide adjustment videos/instructions that involve a threaded rod that is parallel to the rail, but ours does not have that rod or anything like it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I would love to be wrong on this one!!

I looked up our slide docs on Winnebago's owner site and found the schematics. https://catalog3d.winnebagoind.com/l...7424801000.htm The only rod type thing I saw was the rod going through the gear, but I'd love to be missing something.

After looking at this for hours I think I may have found the problem and it's pretty ugly. I did see a couple other people on the internet at large with similar "slipping bolts" so for posterity....

If you look at the first picture it appears the plate on the outboard side of the rail has a slight bend to it at each upper corner where the bolts are. The bends were so symmetrical we thought that they were originally made that way.

According to the schematics (and the more detailed schematics we got from lippert). That plate should be flat all the way across. I think that is causing the whole slide to tip outwards with the bend of the plate. Our best guess is the previous owner overloaded the slide, or gave a few people a "ride" and bent the plate on the end of the rail with the excessive load. He made some comments about the "weight of the stock jack knife sofa" that were a little weird so it's starting to add up.

Anyway, lippert doesn't sell these particular rails anymore (even if their customer service was fabulous). Our local RV shop who we've used for slide work on another rig wasn't sure if they could bend it back, but they referred us to a mobile welder who seems to think he can bend it back, or worse case scenario put a new plate on. He came very highly recommended so we are hoping he'll be able to fix things up, and as an added plus he'll come to us assuming we don't need the RV shop to completely remove the slide (we don't have the equipment for that!).

I'll update the post if/when we get it fixed, unless of course I'm totally off-base and their is any easier adjustment lurking under the RV that I am missing.

Thanks again for the response.

[jerichorick]

Originally Posted by meow

Thank you so very much for the response. I had kind of given up hope on much of any input.

We do have a Power Gear slide, and I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't think it has the rod/nuts you are speaking of. I've seen lots of slide adjustment videos/instructions that involve a threaded rod that is parallel to the rail, but ours does not have that rod or anything like it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I would love to be wrong on this one!!

I looked up our slide docs on Winnebago's owner site and found the schematics. https://catalog3d.winnebagoind.com/l...7424801000.htm The only rod type thing I saw was the rod going through the gear, but I'd love to be missing something.

After looking at this for hours I think I may have found the problem and it's pretty ugly. I did see a couple other people on the internet at large with similar "slipping bolts" so for posterity....

If you look at the first picture it appears the plate on the outboard side of the rail has a slight bend to it at each upper corner where the bolts are. The bends were so symmetrical we thought that they were originally made that way.

According to the schematics (and the more detailed schematics we got from lippert). That plate should be flat all the way across. I think that is causing the whole slide to tip outwards with the bend of the plate. Our best guess is the previous owner overloaded the slide, or gave a few people a "ride" and bent the plate on the end of the rail with the excessive load. He made some comments about the "weight of the stock jack knife sofa" that were a little weird so it's starting to add up.

Anyway, lippert doesn't sell these particular rails anymore (even if their customer service was fabulous). Our local RV shop who we've used for slide work on another rig wasn't sure if they could bend it back, but they referred us to a mobile welder who seems to think he can bend it back, or worse case scenario put a new plate on. He came very highly recommended so we are hoping he'll be able to fix things up, and as an added plus he'll come to us assuming we don't need the RV shop to completely remove the slide (we don't have the equipment for that!).

I'll update the post if/when we get it fixed, unless of course I'm totally off-base and their is any easier adjustment lurking under the RV that I am missing.

Thanks again for the response.

Please look back into the coach and the track mounting to the chassis. I have two types of tracks used in my coach. The front, long and heavy slides hang from yokes with bearing wheel carrying the load. The yoke is suspended on heavy rods and can be raised or lowered with them.
The second type is a flat track running into the coach floor. This can be accessed from the basement in one case, and under the bed in the other. Both are small slides. Adjustments can be made there if I am correct.
The pictures show my slide rail mountings coach side.

I hope you get this resolved with minimum expense. Look forward to seeing what the real RV gremlin is that is hunting you.

[TXiceman]

meow, after about 1 hour, the edit function for your post is turned off. part of the forum set up. If you have a major reason to modify a post, send a note to a moderator with the request to make a modification to the post. If it is critical to the post, he/she will contact you.

Ken

[meow]

Thanks again for the response. I think my slides are different. I have crawled up under our rig to see all the mounting multiple times and the mounting of the track with the gears up above appears to also be where the tracks are mounted. The slide has several 2x4's beneath the slide covered in felt that the slide "slides" on as it moves in and out so it is only mounted on the exterior coach side edge while resting on the floor of the rig. It is a very solid feeling set-up, but looks like it doesn't allow for a lot of adjustments.


The mobile welder is coming tomorrow morning so I am hoping he will have good news about bending the mounting plates back into shape. I'm going to work with what I have to try to jack the slide up as needed, but we may have to work with the welder and the shop to get the job done if the slide has to be removed. I'll update after tomorrow.

[jerichorick]

Originally Posted by meow

Thanks again for the response. I think my slides are different. I have crawled up under our rig to see all the mounting multiple times and the mounting of the track with the gears up above appears to also be where the tracks are mounted. The slide has several 2x4's beneath the slide covered in felt that the slide "slides" on as it moves in and out so it is only mounted on the exterior coach side edge while resting on the floor of the rig. It is a very solid feeling set-up, but looks like it doesn't allow for a lot of adjustments.


The mobile welder is coming tomorrow morning so I am hoping he will have good news about bending the mounting plates back into shape. I'm going to work with what I have to try to jack the slide up as needed, but we may have to work with the welder and the shop to get the job done if the slide has to be removed. I'll update after tomorrow.

Sorry the engineering of your rig is so poorly. Hope the mobile guy can get your rig back in good working order. Looking forward to the fix results.
Rick Y

[meow]

The mobile welder came and bent plates welded to the end of the slide rack back into their original place. It took him around 1.5 hours, and then I spent another hours fine tuning the slide adjustments before trying to close everything up since we had basically removed all the hardware that connected the room to the slide mechanism.


The slide is still adjusted all the way up, and like before it wants to "pull in" at the bottom too much making the top lean out. If we stop it just a bit short we do get contact between the gasket all around, but it's not particularly tight at the top especially on the front side. It is further improved if we use a slide lock, but I'm trying to come up with ideas to improve it a bit more.


We are definitely going to swap the vertical adjustment bolts for slightly longer ones as they are not all contacting the bracket leaving the weight on the horizontal bolts. We are hoping this will minimize the chance of the metal rebending if the weight is resting on the vertical bolts more.


Also I was thinking we may be able to remove the whole mounting bracket from the underside of the floor and add a thick metal plate between the underside of the floor and the bracket to give us a little bit more height/in-ward tip. The slide looks to be sitting relatively low in general so we should have vertical space to push it up a bit.


If anyone has done anything along these lines, or sees a major flaw in our ideas, I'm all ears.


I'm starting to see why some RVs have slide locks I think it is for designs that only have one major point of connection between the room and the slide assembly, especially since Winnebago maxed out the adjustments from the get go. (We can tell by the decal positioning.)

[LogHomeFool]

Have you looked at the slide rail mounting brackets underneath. You can lower those down and effectively do the same as raising the outside.

[meow]

Thanks so much for the suggestion. I'm not sure I know exactly what you are referencing. I'm guessing we don't have the type of slide you are talking about, but if I'm wrong I am definitely all ears.


Our slide rails are mounted directly to the underside of the RV and then connect to the outside edge of the slide room as can be seen in the above pictures. The bracket to rail join is the only point of connection between the rails and the room. The room then rests on felt covered 2x4's inside the cab that slide along the floor. The room really doesn't have any space to go any lower on the exterior.


If I"m missing something I'd love to know.

[LogHomeFool]

Originally Posted by LogHomeFool

Have you looked at the slide rail mounting brackets underneath. You can lower those down and effectively do the same as raising the outside.

The outer rail is attached to the chassis with 4 bolts (2 on each bracket) and your slide is attached to the end of the inner rail. I suspect the outer rail is not true to the chassis and making your slideout not flush with the outer wall. That needs to be corrected first since those brackets have jam nuts to raise/lower the bracket. Then adjust the bolts on the end of the rail for a good seal and paint alignment.

[meow]

Thanks for the pictures. This is definately a different type of slide than we have. Ours has no inner and outer tubing. It is a single bar mounted flush with the underside of the RV. The only place to adjust it is the bolts at the outer edge. It's a weird design!


https://catalog3d.winnebagoind.com/l...7424801000.htm

[LogHomeFool]

Originally Posted by meow

Thanks for the pictures. This is definately a different type of slide than we have. Ours has no inner and outer tubing. It is a single bar mounted flush with the underside of the RV. The only place to adjust it is the bolts at the outer edge. It's a weird design!


https://catalog3d.winnebagoind.com/l...7424801000.htm

I see from your parts breakdown that the slide rail is mounted (item 13)directly to your chassis. That slide should be parallel your chassis - if you have a digital level verify they are the same angle. Have you looked at the rollers on the inside that slide on the floor when the slide goes out? If they moved it could cause the misalignment as well.