Slideout support?

[Sailorsorrow]

Greetings,

Is it a good idea to support the slide while extended? It's a 2015 28QBSS Shadow Cruiser. I'm parked long term for the next six months and living in it. Will support jacks mess up the Schwintek system?

Dan

[Travels with Yoly]

We bought ours (214 WSD) from a large Fun Finder dealer and the tech that did the set-up and walk through is a very experienced technician. We had dealt with him before on our previous trailer and trust him explicetly. I also thought about doing that so I asked him the same question. Mine does not have the Swintek sliders however. He said that the slide out is designed to support normal loads and in fact it is the weight of the slideout that creates the positive seal around the perimeter and especially at the top. He said not to run it out part way and always run it in all the way and out all the way as that's the way the seals were designed to work. When you take some of the load off by using a support, you're actually breaking the seal and can cause leakage issues depending on the degree of support.

[Sailorsorrow]

Interesting! Makes sense. I called the dealer I got mine from and they in a round bout way said the same thing. They also said if I wasn't careful cranking up the jack damage could result in the system gears. I'm not going to worry too much about it. Thanks!!

[michellep]

Neil, my 2015 189FDS has Schwintek slide mechanisms. I wonder why yours does not - maybe because it's a wider slide room???

Now, I have to go make sure...

[Travels with Yoly]

Michelle,

Since I really don't know much about slide-out mechanisms all I can add is what Paul our technician said. I don't think the type or design of the mechanism is based on the size of the slide out but rather simply a choice the manufacturer makes when they order components to do the build. I say this because when Paul showed us the slide out he said that he was happy to see that Cruiser RV "had gone back to the older and more robust system, the _____ (insert name here)". He said that ours was the first Fun Finder that he had seen that didn't have the Schwintek slides and that he was glad to see them go away. He said that they had always been a problem for them relative to the type that we got. I can't remember the name of the type we have but Paul said that they've been proven over time and just have fewer issues.

I could be wrong on my assumption also. It may be that the 2015 214WSD has a heavier slide-out than previous years and therefore required the different mechanism, but they look the same to me in the literature as well as the 2014 we originally looked at.

I have no idea whether or not this is a permanent switch or just a run of trailers built with this mechanism because they got better pricing that month.

I am reminded of the half century old lyric from the Donovan song when he sings .... "that book you are reading is one man's opinion of moonlight" which to me means that just because one guy has an opinion on something, doesn't make it so.