Direct drive slideouts

2oldman wrote:
I have gear slides on rails and no manual way to retract them. Been living with that for 12 years.

And the vital missing bit of info... any failures?

The new version of the Schwintek slides have no way to manually disconnect the drive motors and push the slide out in. When my main slide failed in November (just before a long trip) due to excessive wear of the gear tracks, I had to jack the slide-room up with a 2-ton floor jack, to un-bind the gear teeth. At that point, it was able to go back in. I was worried it would have to be towed back to the factory on a Landoll.

The ORV factory replaced the entire drive system on the main slide-room. Now, it's pulling away from the frame of the body. Also, I'm getting binding in one of the rear slideouts now. ORV will be picking it back up to fix those new Schwintek problems. My advice, avoid the Schwintek system. Luckily, I bought a brand who bends over backwards to support their product. If it were any other brand, I'd probably have had an accidental trailer fire by now.

My slide is gear on rack driven. You can indeed crank it manually; provided you are willing to remove the couch trim, lay on your belly with a socket wrench and extension and reach really far.

Not particularly handy but doable.

There are several different brands out there but they basically come down to gear driven or cable slides. If you know the mfg, you can download the manual. Our trailer has a gear driven side, don't recall the brand, but it can be manually closed with a crank.

I have gear slides on rails and no manual way to retract them. Been living with that for 12 years.

I posted the links in this thread the other day. I wondered about them myself. They explain how to remove the screw that holds the motor and then push the slide in by hand if needed.

Schwintech slides