Slide alignment problem after awning hangs

It all seemed pretty solid but I'm thinking there will be something not perfect and I'll probaby replace. That said, I hit it with the PB Blaster before bring the slide in and it came in like it was new. Surprised me. So there is still life in this assembly but I don't want to be messing with it again in two years.

Your gaining Bill. 2 steps forward.

By chance did you look/feel for bronze bushing play on the pinion gear shaft ends plates? Curious if they are worn or not.

Keep at it, your gaining. The cross shaft telescoping being froze up, not surprising especially if the shaft assembly is outside the frame where road splash can get at it easier causing more corrosion. I was shocked mine came apart. For sure grease or anti seize it well when you put it back together.

Thanks

John

Well, got the pinion assembly out. That was easy. The connecting arm dropped down but would not slide apart. Spayed it with penetrating oil but it didn't help. Turns out the bolt is hung up inside the shaft from the pinion assembly. Must be bent. It moves freely in the holes in the cross arm. I cut off the threaded side and tried to turn the bolt using the head. No luck tried everything I could think of. Wouldn't budge. Will try to slide the cross arm apart tomorrow, maybe using a ratchet strap to apply more force. If I can get that apart, it should be easier to get tho bolt out. If not, I'll just cut off the bolt head and drill it out. Getting there at snail speed. lol At least it was a nice warm sunny day. Being under there in 30 degrees and stiff wind was getting old fast. I'll have to inspect closer but the pinion gear assembly looked good. The rollers spun freely and it looked good in weak light. But I cant spin the gear until I get the bolt out. Such fun.

Yeah, that helps. I was thinking it should be in. Ideally it would be fully out because it needs to be for me to try to correct the timing. I'll just hope that I can see why that bolt wouldn't come out and fix it so that it will come out when I run the slide out again. There's got to be a way even if I have to put in a narrower shear bolt for one trip. I'm hoping this one might actually be easy. I'm due for something being easier than I expected. ;)

When I get around to replacing the wear tabs, is that just a matter of disconnecting the inner arm, running it in past the wear tabs, replacing wear tabs, pulling the arm out and reconnecting in the same location? Or is it more involved? I won't be doing this now but thought since I'm down there fooling around, it won't hurt to have a general idea of how it's done.

bearsnob wrote:
. Things are moving freely and the bolts should not be hard to get out. How should I brace the arm before taking the assembly out and do you have any tips beyond that?

Hi Bill,

Sounds like you have had a bugger of a time with that bolt. And laying on the ground working overhead. Not fun.

When you ask, how should you brace the slide arm when dropping out the pinion assembly, if that is what you are asking, then:

In my case, I had the slide all the way in when I pulled the pinion assembly out. The weight of the slide was held by the slide floor resting on the camper floor. On mine, there was no load on the pinion rollers. The pinion assembly came out real easy. No load at all.





BUT, that is my slide and the way the ends of the arms where adjusted. If your end of arms is higher then the slide floor, the arms may be holding up the slide floor load above the camper floor at the wall of the camper. You will need to watch for this. You can check if there is load on the pinion rollers by trying to spin them. If there is no load, they "should" spin by hand if they are not frozen up. With load, they won't and the bolts will come out real hard too. The slide arms while they can move some, should not drop out the bottom as there is a bent in edge on both sides still there to prevent fall out. Makes like a "C" shape. See mine. Yours should have those formed in edges too.

If the slide is fully out, the pinion rollers could have a good deal of load on them.

Ideally you take the pinion assembly out when the slide is fully retracted in. In may case, the pinions are inside the frame making it easy to do when the slide is in. Yours I believe are "outside" the frame. Is that correct?

If they are outside the frame and I'm assuming you need a little room to work in, then only put the slide out 8" to 12", just enough to work in there. Then you need to jack up the slide enough until you see the weight come off the arm and the pinion roller spins by hand. Then you know the weight is off the arm. Then you can take the pinion assembly out. If the pinion cannot be turned by hand, then weight is on the arm. (or it is frozen but you will see drags marks if the roller is frozen)

Do not jack the slide out in the middle of the floor area, no good there. There is no support. You have to lift at a wall area like the slide arm is doing. The wall ends are OK and the long wall is OK, just not out in the open area of the floor

Does that sound like it will fit your situation?

Here are some pics of me holding the slide up when I was fixing slide floor rot... NOTE: The slide is full out when I did this. The flanges where against the side of the camper and I had a concrete surface to jack from. In your case try try and get the jack as close to the slide as you can so something does not shift on the ground below you. I'm assuming you are on a dirt/gravel campsite








Hope this helps

John

John, Nothing worked. I'm ready to drop out that pinion gear assembly as you suggested. Got the nuts off and penetration oil on the bolts. Things are moving freely and the bolts should not be hard to get out. How should I brace the arm before taking the assembly out and do you have any tips beyond that?

Can't wait to see why that shear bolt is such a bugger. I even jacked the slide up to try and get it out like that other fellow said would work for sure. Wouldn't budge. Broke my socket adapter trying to turn it. Put a pipe on a wrench for leverage and when the head of bolt was starting to break, I stopped. Good thing I have your method because that and drilling it out are pretty much the only options I see.

Thanks,
Bill

Hi Bill,

No worries on the reply time. Hey, stuff happens... I figured you where up to your ears in something...

If this is really 2", OK that needs to get corrected for sure.

Bill wrote:
Right now they can't possibly be parallel because the slave rack is out of time by at least two inches.

I agree, get that taken care of. If it is really an entire 2" or even if 1 1/2", and it has been doing it a long time, that might be why the slide side wear plastic pad got burnt/tore out.

And the out of parallel can wait. It will not fix itself if it is wrong unless you unbolt the slide floor from the slide arms mounting brackets. And the C channel welded in the frame are not moving any time soon...

Now that all this is coming together this might have been the wear time line. To early to tell just yet, but here goes as you can look and see is any of this fits.

I think your camper is a 2005 from you sig. Mine is a 2004. And you may have had more use on yours. I did not retire until last August so we had only been weekend warrior'ing it since 2003. I know that my bronze bushings are now worn in the pinion assembly. They are not worn enough to jump teeth, but worn enough I will replace them before I put the slide drive back together.

A "thought" on how this came about.

1. Over time the bronze bushings worn out or enough to lower the pinnion shaft. The master rack one may be worse worn then the slave.

2. As time went on, somewhere along the way, the slide jumped a tooth. Maybe not all at once, and maybe it happened several times to create 1" or 1 1/2" of the 2" being off on the slave rack. The teeth jumps being small went unnoticed.

3. With the slave rack accumulated off that far, that would put the slide in a bind so to speak being nonparallel on the slide moving in and out.

4. Since the master rack does not need the gear drive to work as the hyd cylinder pull/pushes that arm, I can see the slave rack side being behind on the retract motion. This "might" pull the master rack away from the sq shaft side and put excess pressure on the hyd cylinder rod side plastic wear pad. Over time of this happening, the pad wore out. This will also affect the slave side wear pad on the sq shaft side.

5. The awning event may have been the final straw to float this to the top. I do not recall which side, master or slave side, the awing got hung up on. If the slave side, that makes more sense and the added drag made it jump a few more teeth during that event. Not that you got all 2" in one jump, the awning may have only jumped 1/4" or 1/2". Enough that it was load enough you really heard it.

I doubt the master rack wear pad tore out or wore out in one big event. I'm thinking it took time, a good while, maybe a year or more. If the slide was starting to come out of time and kept being used that way, then over time that pad took the blunt of the wear and went out first.

Once you get past the bolt and get to your next place, then the reality of changing those wear pads will come to mind. While the bronze bushing in the pinion drives comes out pretty easy, to put new plastic wear pads in, the whole slide arm has to come out. Means with the slide all the way in OR with the slide fully supported and out, you unhook the end of the slide arm from the hyd cylinder or on the slave side, the pinion assembly and pull out the arm, change pads and then put it all back together. And reset up the slide. Before you get to this you need to document where all adjustments are and understand how to adjust the slide correctly when it goes back together.

Hope this helps and good luck

John

I'm still trying to get that darn bolt out. It's not making a lot of sense why I can't but I have a few more tricks to try including yours. I should have just drilled it out but I keep thinking that if I can find the way to get it out, then I can fix the other ones too.

I'm remembering rub marks from the wear tabs in all locations where there are tabs but it's been a while. I'll double check in a bit and measure.

I'm thinking that before I check on how parallel the slide arms are, I need to get both sides pretty close to being in time. Right now they can't possibly be parallel because the slave rack is out of time by at least two inches. That means that side hits first when pulling the slide in and master rack side hits second. At one time the master rack side wasn't pulling all the way in. There was a gap of about half an inch. It was probably the fact that I used a dry graphite lubricant mainly on the pinions that it pulled in all the way last time.

The other thing that's happening is I'm in a RV park and they don't want you doing mechanical work on your rig. We just learned that we're back hosting the middle of next month. So my immediate goal is to get that bolt out, get timing as correct as possible, and lubricate everything really well so I have no problems getting the slide in when we leave and back out at our destination about 90 minutes from here. There I have a large shop at my disposal and rangers who will probably bring me anything I need if it isn't already there. So that's the plan right now.

Do you think I need to measure how parallel the arms are before I correct the timing problem?

Darn it John. I'm feeling pretty stupid about now. I'm trying to do most of this on my phone and on a system that isn't mobile friendly. I was thinking you must have gotten sick or something because I hasn't seen a reply in a while. Then I just realized there was a second page now. You replied quickly as always and I wasn't aware. I'm really sorry about that. Please forgive me

Also, mine has a grade 8, 1/4" bolt in the square shaft from Sunline who built my camper. Lippert made the frame and put their slide drive in it. So it might have been Lippert who put my bolts in originally. One end is full body and no threads in the square shaft hole and the nut end has some threads. That grade 8 bolt shown by the 6 radial lines on the bolt head is not really a shear bolt setup. In my case, I do not have enough motor drive power to shear that bolt. My motor will either ratchet the overload clutch or the motor just stops as it ran out of power. Seems stalling this DC motor is OK.