3220 Passport main slide hanging up.

[ls1mike]

Well this summer it started chattering and hanging up. Would shake the whole trailer. Finally had some down time to look at it. I have these weird compression rollers on this slide. Only two. When the slide gets to end of travel outbound it sinks down, the rollers help push it up going in. They were bad, replaced them. No change. So the I adjusted the cables no change. I figured it was the wear bar/glide rail or the Darco on the bottom of the slide. So I called the dealer 4000 to 5000 dollars to replace the tray with the rollers and wear bar. Locally it was 3000 to 4000. Well I wanted to try something before throwing in the towel and trading in a paid for, no leaks, recently sealed, wheel bearings packed, everything works travel trailer.
So in comes the UHMW (Ultra High Molecular Weight Plastic). We use this stuff a lot at work. It has great lubrication and anti-abrasion properties. I had to jack up the slide so it was up off the wear bar. In order to get sheets between the wear bar/glide rail and the bottom of the slide.
I put three strips of on the bottom of the slide. 1/4 inch think, buy 39 inches long, the two strips on the ends are 8 inches wide. The one in the middle 10 inches wide. I attached it with 3/4 inch countersunk pan head screws. It raised the slide about a 1/4 of an inch so I didn't have to adjust anything. Tons of clearance. SUCCESS!!! Thing operates better than it did when it was new.

Slide out repair - YouTube

It has always acted like that coming in the rollers have to push it up over the lip.
Slide out repair 2 - YouTube

 

[Wayne]

Mike,

I'm not sure what the original problem was, it is that the slide had slumped down from use and the gears weren't fully engaged?

Wayne

 

[ls1mike]

The friction between the wear bar and the draco was causing the slide to jump/hop, so it was not smooth going in or out. Shook the whole trailer.

The glide rail/wear bar is the plastic piece. The entire slide rides on that piece going in or out. The rollers really don't do much. They are a compression type. They have a rubber block in the middle of them. As you go in they rise helping the slide get over the lip. As the slide goes out it sinks down at the end of travel to be level with the floor, so the rubber block compresses. The Darco material is what is riding on the glide rail. To fix it I would have had to remove this tray replace it and replace the Darco as well. That requires removing the slide. Since the wear bar wasn't that bad the UHMW provided a nice smooth uniform surface for the slide to ride on.

Video of how my two slides work. I did way too much research as a lot of RV shops had no idea what I was talking about until I showed them the above picture. Not even my local Keystone dealer. In the video at 3.19 he talks about the pan and rollers.

 

[Wayne]

Thanks for the post! I understand what was worn and how you fixed it. Hopefully others with the same problem will see your post and save themselves thousands of dollars to fix.

 

[ls1mike]

Yeah my whole setup is weird with the compression rollers. This works even better if you don't have the stupid tray and rollers. Most slides don't drop down at the end of travel. Ones like that just stay at one height during the complete range of travel.