Schwintek Slide issues and resolutions

[bwandrack]

Good morning,


I'm taking a little time to tell you about an issue we had this past weekend with our bedroom slide. Hopefully this will save someone else from struggling like I did.


We have a 2015 Elevation Talladega toy hauler. We really like our trailer, especially the large front bathroom. It sure makes showering and getting dressed a breeze. When the bedroom slide is in, the path to that bathroom is blocked, but we also have a 1/2 bath in the back, so not usually a big deal.

On Friday evening as we were setting up, our bedroom slide would not go out. It would go out about 3" and then suddenly cock to one side and stop. It would then come back in, but if I tried going out again the same thing would happen. My first guess was that one of the motors had died. We recently had a visit from hurricane Florence and I thought some water may have been forced in and damaged a motor.

I had no idea where the motors for the slide were, so I called my father. He has about 25 years of RV experience and he's my go to for advice. He told me that the motors would be under the bed and that I would need to get under there to diagnose the problem. Well, getting a king size mattress off the bed platform and into the front bathroom with the slide in is not as easy as it sounds. I even tried encouraging it with some words that I wouldn't use around my mom.

To keep things a little short, I got the mattress off and most of the platform disassembled only to discover that my dad may have been incorrect in his assessment of the motor location. I did discover that there are 110 volt outlets on each side of the bed though. We've had this trailer for 3 years and never knew that!

We had a busy weekend planned and I was extremely frustrated, so we got the bed back together and I decided that we would just deal with climbing over the bed for the weekend and make an appointment the following week to get the issue fixed.

On Sunday morning I had some free time, so I started doing some research and learned that the motors are actually behind the rubber seals on the inside of the slide opening, right at the top. One on each side. A couple of YouTube videos convinced me that I could easily swap out the bad motor. If you Google this, you will see how easy they make it look!

However, with the slide all the way in, there is no way to remove the screw on the outside and my arms were just barely too short to actually reach the motor on the inside. Stuck!

More research led to to the manual override process. This involved interaction with the motor controller. My first thought was ugh! Under the bed again. But I realized that I hadn't seen it under the bed. I started thinking and realized that I had seen it in the basement. Sure enough, there it was. It has a green light that would blink once and a red light that was blinking like crazy. There is a key on the front of the controller that will tell you what's wrong based on the number of red light flashes. I had 8. I figured 8 must be REALLY bad. More flashes, more problems. It told me that there was a short in the wiring between the controller and the motor. I noticed that the plug for the bad motor was in the controller a little crooked. The wire was tied down so tight that I couldn't get enough slack to straighten it out. After loosening a couple of zip ties I got some slack and fixed the connection. Next I followed the instructions and the controller and put it into manual override mode. I was then able to run the slide in and out and both motors were working. I tried it 3 or 4 times and all was good. All of the blinking lights on the controller went out.

I know this is a long post, but here is a summary of the steps I should have followed.

1) DO NOT call my father. He is a wise man, but he led me down a rabbit hole that cost me 2 hours and a ton of grief from my wife.

2) Learn all that you can about you systems as soon as possible so that you know what to research.

3) Do some research BEFORE trying to fix things. That's why God invented Google and YouTube.

4) Don't immediately assume the worst. Things are rarely as broken as they seem.

I hope someone has the patience to read through this and it helps solve issues for them. That's the reason these forums exist!


Have a fantastic day,


Bill

[dagst1]

Good write up. You may save someone else some time and grief.
Also your dad was right as some bedroom slides have the motor under the bed.
Happy Camping!

[Jagsix]

Excellent post. I’m sometimes a measure once - start over kind of guy so I agree that a little research can go a long way. It’s not always bad. Sometimes it’s worse.

[Papa-T]

Thanks for sharing. Good write up.

[Bchaisson]

The motors on mine top corners of slide. Mine have broke 3 times. It on a piece of junk crossroads Toyhauler. It’s 2013. All 3 ac’s replaced. One twice. Roof replaced. Slide out replace completely. Repair shop said cant keep them in stock the replace so many. Floor getting soft. I would never recommend a crossroads. Trading in as soon as possible! Good luck with yours.