Curious About the "Slider"

My '00 16k Reese manual slider wouldn't slide smoothly when new unless I put the NV5600 behind the Cummins in 1st gear and dump the clutch.
I took the hitch apart and cleaned the usual white spray on gunked up grease off.
I greased the pins inside the rollers and sprayed the outside of the slider tubes (square) and rollers with a HD greaseless spray. The hitch worked like a hot knife through soft butter. I power spray at the car wash one or two times a summer and respray when dry. Never had to drop the jacks and take weight off the hitch like some of our earlier sliders were required to do.
I respray 5-6 times each season. If I'm parked on a small incline and flip the lever it slides aft by itself.

TucsonJim wrote:
I installed a new slider, and the directions say to put the landing gear down before sliding it forward or rearward. Of course, I'll blindly follow directions, but I really don't see the benefit of lowering the landing gear while performing this operation. Your thoughts?

Here IMO is the deal with putting down the landing gear, when I installed my Reese slider there were no instruction"s about the landing gear. I would release the lever ,and slide back, and sometimes it would not move for a second ,and then slam back pretty hard . Then on one of the times sliding it back it seemed to hang up a little more then usual, and slammed back hard enough to bend the forward bedrail, after that I started checking, and found out they recommended putting the landing gear down. I only slide it back to make it a little easier to get my fifth wheel parked on my RV pad, it is a little tight . I just pull up to the front of my house block the wheels, and just unhook , and pull forward enough to slide the hitch ,and then just hook back up. Not a big deal for me, it is the only time that I need to use it, and could get by without that, but makes it a little easier to back.

I never lowered the landing gear . I just manually applied the traler brake and pulled forward .

It also allows you to get into the truck and pull forward to slide it back ---

but most people with manual sliders just hold the manual trailer brake control to do that...

christopherglenn wrote:
Other then to reduce the weight on the rollers when it is sliding, I don't see much..

Duh - I'm not thinking too clearly tonight. Of course, that makes sense. but maybe they could be even more specific and tell you to raise it until the weight is off the hitch or something similar to that.

Other then to reduce the weight on the rollers when it is sliding, I don't see much..