Schwintek Slides, are these new on the market ?

93mastercraft wrote:

kokosfriend wrote:
Yes, these things are still needing updates. The rear motor on the large slide of our mouth old Palazzo has popped up and cannot work the slide. At least it is stuck in!! Will need some adjustments!! Advise - do not take a shake down cruise of a week and a half and driving 1200 miles in a brand new motorhome! Go someplace 20 miles away and play with it!!

Barb and the 4 chocolates

Sorry to hear about your Palazzo problems. Join the crowd. Search my posts. Just get ready for the nightmares to begin.

Yours out lasted mine. Mine died in 1 week. Tore up a bunch of other things in the process.

kokosfriend wrote:
Yes, these things are still needing updates. The rear motor on the large slide of our mouth old Palazzo has popped up and cannot work the slide. At least it is stuck in!! Will need some adjustments!! Advise - do not take a shake down cruise of a week and a half and driving 1200 miles in a brand new motorhome! Go someplace 20 miles away and play with it!!

Barb and the 4 chocolates

Sorry to hear about your Palazzo problems. Join the crowd. Search my posts. Just get ready for the nightmares to begin.

Oh lord have mercy! Just search for Palazzo...

hitchup wrote:
DRV Suites had numerous problems with many of the Schwintek slides in 2012-2013. So all 2014's and up will have a cable system. Not sure of the mfg or name though.

Accuslide if it is a cable system. NOT much of an improvement over the Scwintek system in reliability and ease of service. Doug

DRV Suites had numerous problems with many of the Schwintek slides in 2012-2013. So all 2014's and up will have a cable system. Not sure of the mfg or name though.

Yes, these things are still needing updates. The rear motor on the large slide of our mouth old Palazzo has popped up and cannot work the slide. At least it is stuck in!! Will need some adjustments!! Advise - do not take a shake down cruise of a week and a half and driving 1200 miles in a brand new motorhome! Go someplace 20 miles away and play with it!!

Barb and the 4 chocolates

Scwintek has been on the market for about 4 to 5 years. They were designed by a engineer and then LCI (Lippert) purchased his design from him. LCI sells 8000(yes 8000), Scwintek slide systems a month (month). The system is an extremely simple design. The rooms glide on floor rollers and all the Scwintek system does is move the room in and out. The problem is, most trailers have problems as the motorhomes usually do not. The problems happen because when they cut out the sides of the Trailers to have a slide room, some OEM's do not reinforce the wall cut out adequately to prevent the square cut out from flexing too much. Motorhomes, usually have more rigid wall supports that prevent wall flexing. Motorhome problems usually are a failure of a motor or pinched/shorted wiring and not a fault of the design. Trailers can have all sorts of problems from inadequate correct install in the hole and the flexing of the RV causing the room to twist and such. Scwintek is well aware of the fault of the OEM's, that is why they can be difficult to work with. LCI has a specific troubleshooting guide they want us to follow in a failure that is not easy to find and fix. They know that a lot of the problems are the OEM install and not the fault of their system. I personally HATE to work on Scwintek systems, but I have fixed dozens over the years. Funny thing is, once the RV is out of warranty and the RV was fixed UNDER warranty, the fix stays as we never see the unit back. I have had only one system I have replaced, that was not under warranty in the past 4/5 years. Doug

The big reason for going to the Lippert slide mechanisms is the fact that they take up less than 1/2 the space of the HWH hydraulic units. The motors don't physically have to be large because they use gear reduction to produce the torque needed to extend and retract the slides.

We had HWH on our old coach and they weren't exactly trouble free. The main slide needed 3 cylinders to make it move. There was 1 on each end providing in and out motion and a larger 1 in the middle used to equalize hydraulic pressure so the ones on the end operated in a coordinated manner. All in all there was close to 100 lbs. of cylinders and almost 50' of hydraulic lines to power 1 slide.

The Lippert system takes up less space, weighs less than 1/4 of what the HWH system did, requires less infrastructure. There's also no hydraulic fluid to leak on the floor or the ground. Also if there are problems the motors and slide mechanisms can be replaced without disassembling half the slide.

The downsides are that it takes a fair amount of skill to install and adjust properly and it needs an almost fully charged battery to extend and retract full wall slides. I think these types of mechanisms are going to stay around.

Looks like a great idea for a slide system and I will bet that their failure rate is no higher than any other slide activation system. It really simplifies the manual retraction of a slide if it becomes necessary. I do hope they get any issues they have worked out.
Randy

timmac wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
Lippert was touting the new Schwintek Slideout in late 2010.

Forest River, Open Range, Thor Motor Coach, Jayco, Heartland, Tiffin, Winnebago, Shadow Cruiser & Crossroads all used them.

So they have only been on the market for about 3 years and all those companies jump on the new slide outs, it appears many issues with them so far, they must have been a cheaper option for the manufactures to go for something new and unproven, if I ever move up in another motorhome I will stay away from these till they get the bugs worked out of them, I have seen the motors on the Schwintek Slides and they are small, don't know how they even would work on full slides but some have them.

Simple......don't buy.

By the way.....when it comes to DC motors 'size' doesn't mean weak.