Why is there rusty water coming out of one of my slide-out motors?

[permitwriter]

A few days ago, ready to leave the campground, I operated the full body slide, it came in a few inches & stopped. Tried to rock the switch back & forth a little but it wouldn’t budge. I could hear the rear motor operate but the front was silent.

I looked up the procedure for manual retraction. It seemed a little time consuming, but it wasn’t too bad. The hardest part was removing the screws for the trim & seals. They were a little hard to access because the slide only came in a few inches. But I eventually got them all except one that I had to drill out.

Next step was to remove the motor retainer springs and lift the motors up & out. Surprisingly, the slide was relatively easy to push in. Drop the motors back in to hold the slide in and we were ready to go. But when I pulled out the front motor rusty water came out. Hmmm… that probably has something to do with why it wasn’t working. The original owner had warranty work done on that slide and the motors had price tags on them: $489.99. Currently they are $315 & $250 on Amazon & eBay.

The coach came with a Good Sam extended service plan, administered by Assurant so I contacted them per the service agreement. Several items need repair, including a balky leveling system, so I filed a claim for all of them. The coach was purchased at a Camping World, serviced at a Camping World, and Camping World is the closest repair facility to me, so I contacted them. It will be six weeks before I can take it in.

We have trips planned so I decided to do what I have done since I was a boy. If it’s broken (or even if it isn’t), take it apart!! I think my parent’s patience ran out when it was our lawnmower that I took apart & reassembled. Hey, it ran, not well, but it ran.

So, I disassembled the offending motor. Even though it was probably ok, I cleaned & re-greased the planetary gear system. And just because I like doing things twice, I used a grease that was too thick the first time. The motor was a mess. I had dried it out in the toaster oven & sprayed WD-40 into it to free it up and that made it all rusty & oily. But contact cleaner did a good job of cleaning it all out. It had quit because one of the brush springs had rusted & broke, but I was able to bend it and make it work. Put it all back together & it ran ok.

Oh, how did water get in the motor? I have my theory. The motor itself is covered with a vinyl cap, strapped in place with a zip-tie. Motors for sale online do not have a cap. Did Winnebago have an expectation that the motors might get wet and thus installed those caps? The motor slips up into a section of u-channel then drops down to engage the drive gears. It’s a very tight fit, the edges of the u-channel are sharp & I couldn’t get it in place because the vinyl cap hung up on the edge of the channel. I had to bend out the channel & file it down, so it wasn’t so sharp. Remember that warranty work on those motors I mentioned earlier? The vinyl cap had a tear in it. I suspect that they shoved that motor into place and tore the cap allowing water to enter. I put a bright light inside last night. I could see gaps in the sealant right above the motor where water could enter. Either the sealant wasn’t installed properly or had disintegrated or both. I wrapped electrical tape around the cap to cover the tear and replaced the exterior sealant with new. Hopefully, no more water issues.

The rear motor is ok. It’s much easier to slip into place so the cap was intact. But I had to repair the exterior sealant outside of that motor also. And don’t be misled. This little bit of writing represents hours and hours of work over 2 days.

The extended service plan has exclusions for leaks & water so I don’t think this will be covered. All I really want now is a new motor. I’ll install that & keep the old one as a spare.

Questions, comments, additional information are appreciated. Thanks.

[R.Wold]

yeah I have a question. Does the slide work properly now?

[permitwriter]

Yes, it's working now but I'm not entirely confident that motor will last. Plus, sometimes it seems to slow or hesitate a little. It has a system so the controller can keep the motors in sync so the slide moves in & out evenly. That seems to be working ok or maybe that's the cause for the hesitation. I should probably just buy another motor to restore my confidence.

[153stars]

Ill bet it still the brushes. If you had a digital caliper you could of measured the brushes for replacements for 5 bucks. You might want to chuck the armature up and turn the commutator with some sandpaper . You can do by hand but some speed will get nice and round again. I cleaned up a UTV starter that I don't think they turned down the commutator at all ,it wore the brushes out in 2yrs.
A motor shop I used since i was 16yrs old is now closed sadly . I could get brushes, capacitors , could order replacement motors for air conditioners. They would cross reference ones with secret model #s . We used them for our plant as well until they closed.

[R.Wold]

Originally Posted by permitwriter

Yes, it's working now but I'm not entirely confident that motor will last. Plus, sometimes it seems to slow or hesitate a little. It has a system so the controller can keep the motors in sync so the slide moves in & out evenly. That seems to be working ok or maybe that's the cause for the hesitation. I should probably just buy another motor to restore my confidence.

Well that’s a fine bit of work. Also interesting that you identified the likely cause of the problem during manufacturing and improved the mechanism. I’d also recommended a motor shop for a professional rebuild. Slide motors are ridiculously over priced. For my 2016 Ventana they want $800 - for one little electric motor!

Fortunately for me La Mesa is picking up the tab as the issue was identified when I bought the rig, but I didn’t want to wait around in Tucson for a week or so to get it fixed. So the Sacramento location is handling it. The labor by the way, is $600 so you are saving quite a bit by tackling it yourself.

But if I had to do it myself, I’d take the motor to Boyle’s Future Tech in Auburn Ca (strange name but an automotive electric motor shop near me) and have them freshen it up, probably for around $75. I’ve been using them for about 30 years and fortunately they are still around.

As your story (nice writing by the way) clearly shows, unreliable slides can be a very unpleasant experience.

[Lt Dan]

Question is what slide mechanism do you have? From your description it sounds like a Schwintek motor arrangement but that's just guessing. As for the plastic cap, I think all of the new replacement motors come with that due to the electrical connectors pulling loose on the open motors. You definitely should not have water at that location and I would suspect a leaking slide seal allowing water in when you are on the road since it's the front motor. I would be as concerned about water damage in the walls as rust in the motor.

[permitwriter]

Originally Posted by 153stars

Ill bet it still the brushes. If you had a digital caliper you could of measured the brushes for replacements for 5 bucks. You might want to chuck the armature up and turn the commutator with some sandpaper . You can do by hand but some speed will get nice and round again. I cleaned up a UTV starter that I don't think they turned down the commutator at all ,it wore the brushes out in 2yrs.
A motor shop I used since i was 16yrs old is now closed sadly . I could get brushes, capacitors , could order replacement motors for air conditioners. They would cross reference ones with secret model #s . We used them for our plant as well until they closed.

Thanks 153stars. I can do that. I think the brushes are ok. It was a bit of a trick to get them out of the way to re-install the housing over the armature. I could chuck the armature in my drill press to clean up the commutator.

[Mark_K5LXP]

For what some of these slide motors cost I think it's definitely worth giving them a 2nd lease on life. And since it's water ingress even a new motor would suffer the same fate so the root cause needs to be identified.

The motor shop I work with doesn't touch small brushed motors but they have an armature tester they will look at one for me. This will at least help track down if there's a failure there or in the field coil. When it comes to brushes and brush holders I've had some success robbing parts out of other motors and getting it to work. I hate the idea of junking a motor just because of some damage to one basic component part of it. Bearings are a usually sourceable by size and type and can be readily replaced yourself. So short of a "short" or open in the windings most anything else can be refurbished. In a perfect world the industry would use a standard case size and shaft allowing retrofits but between the motors, gearbox and drive mechanisms this is all one-off stuff. Bad enough they're as fragile as they are then to use single source parts on top of it. I love having a slide but I'm always nervous to push the switch. Shame it has to be that way for what amounts to be a very academic mechanical operation.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

[153stars]

Off the shelf brushes may be square ended or have different radius you can put a piece 400grit sandpaper on commutator and carefully create a good radius on them. Then if you can jump the motor wires let motor free spin to break the brushes in with no load for a while. It's things we did when teenage and poor to get starters working again on the cheap or free.

Originally Posted by permitwriter

Thanks 153stars. I can do that. I think the brushes are ok. It was a bit of a trick to get them out of the way to re-install the housing over the armature. I could chuck the armature in my drill press to clean up the commutator.

[permitwriter]

Originally Posted by Lt Dan

Question is what slide mechanism do you have? From your description it sounds like a Schwintek motor arrangement but that's just guessing. As for the plastic cap, I think all of the new replacement motors come with that due to the electrical connectors pulling loose on the open motors. You definitely should not have water at that location and I would suspect a leaking slide seal allowing water in when you are on the road since it's the front motor. I would be as concerned about water damage in the walls as rust in the motor.

It's a Power Gear system. Motor # is 1510000227 which cross references to Lippert # 364262. I see covers on the new motors. Some of them are a little different then mine & I didn't realize they were covers. Good ole Amazon, it was $315 yesterday and $435 today. But there are several on eBay for less than that. There definitely were gaps in the sealant in those corners where water could get in. I sealed them up as best I could but my light test today was inconclusive. I can see a little light but some of the original sealant is translucent and the sealant I used is white and lets light through some.

[Suprz]

Originally Posted by permitwriter

It's a Power Gear system. Motor # is 1510000227 which cross references to Lippert # 364262. I see covers on the new motors. Some of them are a little different then mine & I didn't realize they were covers. Good ole Amazon, it was $315 yesterday and $435 today. But there are several on eBay for less than that. There definitely were gaps in the sealant in those corners where water could get in. I sealed them up as best I could but my light test today was inconclusive. I can see a little light but some of the original sealant is translucent and the sealant I used is white and lets light through some.

Power gear is now owned by Lippert like everything nowadays) and if I remember correctly the new slide mechanism is like the schwintek but more of a rack and pinion set up instead of the usual funky schwintek rails.

[permitwriter]

Just trying to conclude this thread. I had some slide motors saved in my watch list on eBay and one seller lowered the price from $235 to $200. The seller had 100% positive feedback, said the motor was new, and it looked new in the photos, so I bought it. USPS held on to it for a couple of weeks, but it finally showed up. Before I installed it, I sprayed that corner of the slide with a jet nozzle on the garden hose. The old motor was still installed, and the slide was closed tight. But that resulted in a surprising amount of water inside the coach.

Upon close examination & comparing the front & back corners, it was clearly apparent what the problem is. It is just crappy, lousy, extremely poor installation of the seals by Winnebago. It’s been that way since it was new. There’s a vertical piece of foam rubber on the inside of the slide flange and both horizontal and vertical rubber hollow tubes on the coach walls. Compared to the back corner the vertical foam rubber doesn’t go up high enough and the horizontal rubber tube doesn’t extend forward far enough. Those two should meet to provide a complete seal but they don’t in the front allowing water in. In the pics, the back photo is taken from above & you can see how the seals meet. The photo of the front is from an angle and you can see how they don’t meet. I did not move the slide between the two photos.

I bought some self-adhesive hollow tube weather stripping at the auto parts store. It wasn’t very self-adhesive, but I had also bought 3M Yellow weather strip adhesive. I’ve used that successfully in the past. I glued on several pieces of the hollow tube weather stripping, but it still leaked. I added some more pieces and used some sealant also, but it was still leaking. Just a little but still leaking. So, I tore everything I had installed off and bought some different weather stripping. The new weather stripping can slip inside of the hollow tube seals. I used the new stuff on the coach walls and the old stuff on the slide flange. I sprayed it with the garden hose jet and got no water inside. Never satisfied, I climbed up on a ladder and blasted it at close range. That resulted in water inside. I’m pretty sure that the pressure of the jet forced water between the seals and there is not actually a leak. I had some ½” plastic angle so I screwed a section of that to the coach to act as a shield over the seals.

Oh yea, I’ve installed that new motor and it works well. I’ve reinstalled the trim &, hopefully, this project is done. One other item of interest. When I initially removed the trim, several screws were missing. I couldn’t understand why Winnebago left them off. But then I snapped the head off the 2nd screw I installed. I was using an impact driver. Sure enough, there were no missing screws, just ones missing heads. Undoubtably, Camping World did that when performing the warranty work on that slide.

[permitwriter]

Whoops, here's the photos.

[leadman]

If you decide to replace the seals check out Steele Rubber. They have a huge assortment of seals.