lippert schwintek slide system problem

dougrainer wrote:
My Jayco's with that type fold out and Schwintek have rollers. They are on a steel bracket that raises them to roll on the bottom of the slide floor since there is nothing but wall below the room. Doug

Gotcha, I fit 2 J-38's on ours and had to fab up my own brackets. Luckily there was just enough room to get them in between slide and opening bottom with the fabbed brackets attached. And yes probably a factory oversight as I have seen some with, and some without. Factory oversights seem to be a common thing now days.

Rockwood/Forest River was not much help, unless I wanted to drag it on over to the dealer and wait unknown weeks or months for resolution.

I can't imagine a Schwintek was ever meant to be installed without rollers. Must have been a factory "oversight".

My Jayco's with that type fold out and Schwintek have rollers. They are on a steel bracket that raises them to roll on the bottom of the slide floor since there is nothing but wall below the room. Doug

dougrainer wrote:
RalphCramden, Your post is good but you need to edit one part. There is NO WAY a Scwintek system can be installed with NO floor rollers. No way. If you attempted to install the box with no rollers you could not get the box to glide into the hole. It would scrape the carpet or Lino. Besides when LCI audits the OEM, they would notice no rollers and LCI does Audit the OEM's for design and correct install parameters. Doug

Doug, not to doubt you, but I have a 2017 Rockwood 23WS with a build date of 4-16 that came with no rollers on the ward slide, I installed them myself even though I never had a problem with it. The slide is 5'-6" wide. I also have personally repaired a few that had no rollers, granted not monster slides, from a few different manufactures. At some of the other forums I used to frequent its easy to find posts where people have had Schwintek issues and it turns out rollers were not used, or not enough rollers also. I remember one which I seem to remember being a Primetime product, that only had one roller dead center on a 10' long slide.

Here is a good picture I had to go back and find from what I call my Pre PDI, that's my ladder and was taken on the dealers lot. This was taken less than 2 hours after the dealer signed for the unit from the transporter. It was a unit I had ordered from the factory in the fall of 2015, which ultimately I refused to buy, for not only this issue, but a 3 page list of build defects. You tell me how this was supposed to operate. FYI there are no rollers under that slide either. Believe it or not it actually worked, but made one hell of a noise and looked real wonky doing so LOL. Well in fairness it ran out, not sure if they ever got it to go back in .

RalphCramden, Your post is good but you need to edit one part. There is NO WAY a Scwintek system can be installed with NO floor rollers. No way. If you attempted to install the box with no rollers you could not get the box to glide into the hole. It would scrape the carpet or Lino. Besides when LCI audits the OEM, they would notice no rollers and LCI does Audit the OEM's for design and correct install parameters. Doug

Schwintek is very dependent on the original install. If they have the racks and drive mechanisms out of alignment, as well as the opening in relation to the box off, it causes all sorts of issues, one being the timing going out of sync every time you operate it. If your capable read every manual and troubleshooting doc you can find at Lippert's website, and start taking measurements. They tend to change and move/remove that tech info a lot on their site, because they don't want you working on them. I wont go into every step but the first thing I would check is extend the slide fully and measure from top rack to bottom rack on each side, both near the sidewall and front of the slide, they should all be close to the same, as in parallel with each other. The lower rack is kind of hard to get screwed up as its an L and attaches to the bottom corner of the box, but if the upper rack is not parallel with the lower, thats not good. Then take a 2' carpenters square and put the 16" leg on the sidewall. The racks should all be close to the same alignment with the 2' leg of the square, not necessarily perfectly parallel with the square, but all the same and not off by much, say 1/8' max, they should be square with the H column which is mounted to the opening sides and is what holds the motor, drive rods, bearing blocks etc. These manufacturers are notorious for counting on the Schwintek assembly to totally support the slide itself with no rollers. Not so much of a big deal on a 4'X 4' wardrobe or headboard slide, but can be a huge issue on a large slide.

I've repaired / reinstalled quite a few, and some were so out of alignment from the original OEM install, it was a wonder they ever worked at all.

The Schwintek was never originally designed to be used on some of these 12' long full height slides you see it on now days IMO.

I once watched two Bozos during a tour of one of Keystones plants installing slides with Schwintek drives. The first thing they did was removed the factory bracing that keeps the racks in alignment and is supposed to be removed after the racks and H columns are mounted, and toss them in the trash bin. Then they blew the racks on the box by eye. They went on to the next on the line without ever using a tape from what I could tell. I also had a trailer I ordered come in with the racks so far out of alignment that when it was extended, one side lifted an entire inch as it came out.

Should be able to 'sync' motors

Resynchronizing the Slide-out Motors

*Fully extend the slide room using the switch. Keep the switch engaged until the motors shut down on
their own.

*Retract the room 1-2 inches.

*Repeat steps 1 and 2 until both motors shut down at the same time. In many cases, two or three repetitions are necessary to re-sync the system.

*Fully extend and then retract the room. Again, always let the motors shut down on their own before releasing the switch.



LCI Schwintek Owners Manual

We had the same issue. The motors were out of sync. Ended up replacing one of the motors under warranty. When I contacted lippert they were very helpful in recommending a local repair shop that did warranty work for them. Try contacting them for advice.

Try "timing" the motors. You tube has great videos on how to do this. Just type in "timing schwintek motors" in the search bar and view a few videos.