Hydraulic slide out issues while traveling

arglebargle wrote:
Welp, after weighing the pros and cons I went ahead and traded the 5th wheel in for one that didn't have hydraulic slides on the theory that at least if a mechanical/cable driven slide stopped working, it could be troubleshooted in an unambiguous way (it seems that the various failure modes of hydraulic slides can be ambiguous as far as which part is broken, so shops will often need to replace multiple parts in a row, meaning a broken hydraulic slide can be a multi-month wait, which is incompatible with full time rving).

Unfortunately, 3 nights after the trade, the _exact_ same symptoms appeared on the new trailer - bedroom slide works, other slide motor makes noise but room doesn't move. Since it was used, there's no warranty. I also can't trade it in any time soon because the stupid title is being mailed to me, so I no longer have a trailer with a title in hand. I hate paperwork.

As far as the current problem, I tried manually cranking the slide out, but it looks like the axle (might be the wrong word, the thing that you manually crank) is crooked and most likely disconnected. The tip is visible through the crank hole, but it's visibly crooked, doesn't feel like it's connected to anything, and it looks like it's resting on the top of the trailer's underside liner, causing the liner to sag a bit. I think if the liner wasn't there, I might be able to assess whether it was broken or just fell out or something. As it is, there doesn't seem to be any user accessible parts or anything visible that could let me troubleshoot further.

I'm currently waiting a week for a mobile tech to take a look (unfortunately all the mobile techs in the area I called are out at least that long, shops are even longer). In the meantime, I'm hoping that maybe someone has some tips on how to troubleshoot this just in case it's a simple problem I can fix (like the axle has fallen out of a hole and just needs to be shoved back in).

You can easily cut an inspection hole in the belly material, then tape it back up. Cut 3 sides, with the "hinge" side towards the front and make it large enough to get your head inside to see what's going on. Afterwards, use some Gorilla tape to hold it back in place. This will at least tell you if the entire sheet needs to come down or if you can cut a larger access to do what needs to be done.

Good luck; you can certainly use some!

Lyle