geotex1 wrote:
jayspi, how good of a DIYer are you? I'd personally pull the slide box out of the camper (not as scary as it sounds) and replace the bottom where I could work easily to keep everything square and true. I'd use marine-grade plywood as well and do some flashing work with aluminum to keep water out. Your dealer is talking about the same material used for spray-in pickup bedliners. They are using it now in lieu of the fabric and tape, especially on slide-out boxes. I would definitely have this done if taking the box out or repairing in-place. You just need to find an applicator that can do it (not all the pickup sprayers are certified to also install in other applications - see Rhino and Line-X websites).
Well, to be frank, I'm not that good of a DIYer. I plan to learn, but I'm trying to keep it to projects that I'm confident I can finish.
What the dealer did on the INSIDE is dry out the wood completely and then lay fresh wood down on top of it. Not exactly a stellar repair, but the wood on the inside isn't rotted so it works for now. It's something I can circle back to in the future, but right now our main focus is getting it livable.
From what I can tell the slide out is perfectly sturdy, it's just a matter of it dragging in debris. The wood isn't rotted or soft to the touch when it's dry. Is there anything I can do to just patch it for now without having to pull it out? We have about 3 days of sunny weather this week so it's dry right now. After that I can't count on it getting completely dry again until May / June. Even with it covered it will be constant rainy & misty weather that will keep it chronically damp until summer. It's hard to predict when it will be sunny in Seattle again :)
In a worst case scenario, if there's not an easy patching job that I can do, will it cause any permanent damage to the slide if we continue to use it? If that's the case then I'll take it back to the dealer and insist they fix it.
Thanks again...
