Fixed- Replace Slide seal due to rusting 'fingers'

[Polyian]

I thought I would share this as there is very little info regarding replacing Newmar Slide Seals. Newmar suggested I have it done by a repair facility but after discussion with the local RV dealer technician I went the following route.

The metal fingers in the slide seal had rusted and disintegrated on the front edge of our LR Slide. The top and rear section were still like new. So I decided to try replacing the front edge section only. I cut the existing seal about 8 inches rearward of the front edge of the slide topper. I cut the new seal so the wiper part overlapped the old seal wiper and then on the advice of the local RV repair guy I installed the seal using Krazy Glue to join the new and old at the Butt Joint. I also glued the overlapped wiper. The Krazy Glue worked well. I cut the wiper part of the new seal at the same angle as the old seal where it makes the downward turn, so the overlap of the seal was the same as before. There were 2 screws at the top corner where the seal makes it downward turn, I put these back through the new seal after it was installed onto the lip.
The seal requires considerable pressure to push onto the lip so I used a small pry bar with a piece of 1/4" plywood as a backing to pry against...this also worked well.
The seal has an adhesive backed outer lip so the last thing to do is pull the tape strip off after you have everything pressed onto the lip and trimmed to length. (Clean the fiberglass with rubbing alcohol before removing the tape strip)

This fixed our loose seal problem. It was easier than I expected (about 2 hours) and cost me about $100 for the 7ft of seal (here in Canada the Newmar seal from an RV dealer was $14 a foot). If I have another problem I will replace the entire seal but that requires disconnecting the slide topper for access. Half of my time was taken creating a square butt seal to join the new and old rubber.

This was a good learning experience for me and I would not hesitate to replace the entire seal myself in the future, though probably easier with a second person to help with the topper. I hope this info proves useful to some, from my research it seems common for these metal fingers in the seal to rust and disintegrate allowing the seal to pull off the lip.

[crolfmilton]

Thanks!

[billyb]

Yea I had the same problem with my bedroom slide seal and I used gorilla glue on the seal where the metal connecting piece had rusted, and it seams to be holding
in good

[Polyian]

As an update, I did some searching to find another source for the seal in case I need to replace any further down the road. I found the Newmar Seal on Com_Net2, Newmar Part # 85582 @ $5.33 a foot.

For me this equates to about $6.50 a foot Canadian. I paid $14.95 a foot here in Canada. Moral of the story is don't buy it from a dealer in Canada.