Slide weight & refrigerators? Best Maker for Slide outs?

I have a Dometic fridge on our slide. After 3 years no issues. Have no idea the manufacture of the slide (How do I tell?). Our bedroom slide is Schwintek but its short and very light weight. No problems there either. The living room slide with the fridge is an entirely different design with large rails on the underside.

We have a Norcold fridge in our slide and it works fine. Don't know what make our slide mechanism is. I've read that the flexible arrangement of the propane hose or 12 volt wiring under the slide can be a problem sometimes.

Have had a couple of people ask what happened to the roof vent for our fridge.

My fiver has refer in slide and have never had any problems. Refer will ice up on the lowest setting even in August. Not a full timer but I take 9-10 trips a year.

I have a 2014 Bighorn with the 4-door Norcold in a slide. Been fulltiming with it since July-2013 with no problems.

I have also read how the fridges don't work as well if in a slide. Not sure if it is accurate or not. Mine works fine. Maybe Old-Biscuit could give us an opinion on that ??

our kitchen is in our 12' slideout and we've had no issues other than a couple blown slide fuses, for the nearly 10 years we've owned it.

Newmar was the pioneer with slides. Ours was trouble-free but we didn't have kitchen appliances in the slide and we wouldn't do it.

Our motorhome has the frig in the slide and personally I would never purchase another rv in this configuration.

The frig weighs 328 pounds empty and the material on the bottom of the slide on the frig end started to disintegrate where it rode on what I believe was a plastic roller. The roller also developed a crack due to the excessive weight.

It was necessary to install stainless steel plates on both ends of the slide and replace the rollers with metal ones. This was not an inexpensive fix.

The slide works fine now but I have to use plastic sheets under each end when closing the slide to keep the metal plates from damaging the floor

rrev wrote:
Old-biscuit, is that really all that's needed to take care of the seals is baby powder? I admit, I never did anything to my last trailer we had for 4 1/2 years but my new one, I'm being a little more picky. That translates to I spent way more money.

YES

I have not used anything but washing dirt/dust etc off of seals and then when dry just wiping them down with baby powder in a sock

Seals are as pliable now as when new which was in Sept 2006

Old-biscuit, is that really all that's needed to take care of the seals is baby powder? I admit, I never did anything to my last trailer we had for 4 1/2 years but my new one, I'm being a little more picky. That translates to I spent way more money.

Slide outs are built to carry the weight of all components installed in them PLUS the added weight of people, items and components.

All slideout mechanisms have some problems.....schwintek slide outs in my opinion are at the top of the TROUBLE list

We opened/closed our slides weekly for 7 yrs of FT travel. During which we had one failure (broken drive gear tooth on a hydraulic operated slide)
2 hydraulic and 1 electric driven

Man built it---it will fail. Most can be fixed relatively easy and not too expensive.
Stuff happens. Deal with when it happens.

Really low maintenance-----dust/wipe down the seals two/three times a year with a sock full of talcum/baby powder and wire brush rack when needed is all I have done and slides go in/out same now as when we bought 5vr 8 yrs ago

Slide outs are a great invention (happened back in the late 1930s but really came to market in 1980s)