RV Slide-Outs - My Top 5 Tips To Avoid Costly Repairs

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the RV inspection and Care podcast and video I'm Dwayne I'm a certified RV inspector and today we're going to be talking about the top five tips for maintaining and protecting your RV slide outs and one thing's for sure RV slides provide a lot more living space inside an RV you may be able to extend even up to 50 percent of the Living Space by using enough slides but slide out rooms can have their problems too and that's especially true if they're not maintained or operated correctly there are many rvers these days that absolutely avoid slides because of the potential problems that they have heard about or they've seen so by following the tips in this video though you can avoid a lot of those issues and problems that can become expensive to repair first of all though let us mention this not all slide rooms operate the same yes they all go out and then come back into the RV but the mechanism or the system that causes them to do that can be very different from one RV to another and there are four main kinds of slide out systems in use today the first one we'll talk about is the electric rack and pinion type of system now rack and pinion just means that you have a circular gear that moves on top of a lateral gear and moves the slide room in and out it's the most common type of mechanism used it's very reliable there's very few moving parts and so RV manufacturers love using that system the second one we're going to talk about has a little bit of a bad reputation it's the Schwinn tag system schwintech uses worm gears at each end of the slide and moves the slide in and out it's actually a Fairly reliable system but some RV manufacturers these days have been using them on very long heavy slides they're not designed for that they are best used for smaller slides like you find in an RV bedroom the third type of system we'll talk about is hydraulic it uses a motor and a pump and somewhere there is a reservoir for the hydraulic fluid now if you know anything about Hydraulics you know that you can use it to move really heavy things around well a hydraulic slide mechanism works very well for those bigger Longer super slides the other thing that you'll notice too is as you operate a hydraulic slide it moves in and out a lot faster usually than the rack and pinion type the last system we'll talk about today is a cable system it's a little more expensive and therefore it's not used quite as often it uses cables that bring the slide out and then cables that pull it back in usually you only see a couple of cables but there are more that are inside the mechanism well those are the four most commonly used types of slide systems but the point is this maintenance is going to be required on all of these systems to some degree so here are my five top tips for maintaining slides the number one tip is make sure you lubricate any moving metal parts that are touching one another you want to do that to keep them moving smoothly but use the right lubrication don't use anything other than a dry lubrication like you see here if you use something else very often dirt or debris will be attracted to that lubricant and then it can even gum up the system so lubricate moving metal parts and use a dry lube the second tip is lubricate your slide seals very often now slide seals are the rubber seals that go all the way around your slide room and the purpose of them is to keep out any kind of weathered debris but especially water from penetrating in around the slide room and replacing a slide seal when it's damaged that can cost you thousands so you really want to pay attention to those seals the number one thing that breaks down slide seals is ultraviolet rays from the sun while your slide is extended so the best kind of lubrication you can use in my opinion is a high quality ultraviolet inhibitor like 303 Aerospace protected I have used that for years and it keeps my slide seals Supple and operating wonderfully the third tip for today is also about slide seals and that is you need to keep them flipped into place when the slide is extended this is one of the most common problems as an RB inspector that I see with slide rooms is that that some of the seals don't completely flip out when the slide is extended so when you have the seal still sticking in then water from rain or whatever can get in there penetrate get into your slide room and start rotting things away and that's a very expensive repair so you need to keep those slide seals flipped out and nice and tight against the wall of the slide now there's a couple ways you can do this you can do it manually if you go around after you set up your RV and put your slides out just check and make sure all the seals did flip correctly if they didn't you could take a ladder with your hand and then run up behind the seal and flip it back into place but there's a way to do it automatically too I had a very stubborn slide seal on my kitchen slide it just would not flip out and back in no matter what I did so I found a suggestion from another rver he used these little small half inch plastic Furniture bumper pieces that you can find almost anywhere and he placed them about halfway down the sidewall of the slide about 18 inches apart from top to bottom and when you do that you just stick them right on the side well as the slide goes out it flips the seal right out and as the slide goes in it flips it back in and it's been on there for years now and works beautifully at this point so keep your seals flipped into place tip number five is know your slide outs listen to them carefully know the sounds they make now all slide out rooms make sounds very often there's little squeaks and maybe a slight moan or two but what you don't want to hear are loud sounds like pops grinding noises loud sounds of any type that means something is not right and when you start hearing that then you need to give that attention in fact let me tell you about another one of my slides that I had an issue with and that's my living room slide it's operated fine for years in and out but I always listen very carefully to all my slides for anything out of the ordinary well this one started making some funny noises so I went online did some research found out that these electric rack and pinion systems often have a problem where the motor housing loosens up the bolts loosen up and makes it looser and therefore causes problems with the slide so I went out there and sure enough my motor housing bolts needed tightening tighten them all down and now my slide moves in and out just like it should so know your slides I would have never known what to do if I hadn't been listening to my slide very carefully if you find anything that's out of the ordinary then do research and get it fixed yourself or get an RV service tech in and get that fixed before it becomes a major issue well my friends maintaining your RV slide outs is going to take dedication it's going to take effort on your part but it will pay you back many times over in fewer costly repairs and less stress and frustration these tips that I've given you today will help you keep your slides in great shape and operating smoothly for many years to come and that's it for now have safe and happy travels my friends until next time [Music]

Channel: RV Inspection And Care

Views: 10,654

Keywords: rv slide, rv slideout, rv repair, rv maintenance, motorhome, rv life, rving, yt:cc=on

Id: 6O1R2ehCZfU

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023