shwintek slide out system

[Parrott]

These motors have tremendous torque. You can not spin the shaft by hand. Looks like it just isn’t lined up properly. Is the screw that holds the motor in place in your picture? Bumped the switch.

[papacarp]

Made some progress on this tonight. Here is my working theory about the issue and what I did to solve it.

Observations:
1. The upper bearing block was missing both rivets and had slid down in the vertical track by about 1/4 inch.
2. The lower bearing block still had both rivets

Theory:
1. The upper horizontal track was installed too low on the side of the push out. This resulted in the upper block being a weight bearing device effectively holding the entire slide out up. The full weight of the slide out was on the gibs and rivets at the bottom of the bearing block. In the picture you can see where the block gib opening is relative to the rivets
2. Eventually when we went over some bump, the rivets finally failed and the entire upper block fell down about a quarter of an inch
3. The shaft did not move however, so it effectively lifted the motor out of its place and apparently the small screw on the outside was not enough to either keep that from happening OR keep the motor from spinning

My hacked solution:
Raise the horizontal track up by 1/4". this eliminates the weight on the track and allowed the motor to seat into its holes again.

It seems to be working again. I'll add a follow up post later after I get a few miles on this with the title "all clear - solution worked" or "actually that wasn't the problem and now I've really screwed up my slide out".

Thank you to all for your ideas and recommendations.

[Cincinnati Kid]

Originally Posted by papacarp

Made some progress on this tonight. Here is my working theory about the issue and what I did to solve it.

Observations:
1. The upper bearing block was missing both rivets and had slid down in the vertical track by about 1/4 inch.
2. The lower bearing block still had both rivets

Theory:
1. The upper horizontal track was installed too low on the side of the push out. This resulted in the upper block being a weight bearing device effectively holding the entire slide out up. The full weight of the slide out was on the gibs and rivets at the bottom of the bearing block. In the picture you can see where the block gib opening is relative to the rivets
2. Eventually when we went over some bump, the rivets finally failed and the entire upper block fell down about a quarter of an inch
3. The shaft did not move however, so it effectively lifted the motor out of its place and apparently the small screw on the outside was not enough to either keep that from happening OR keep the motor from spinning

My hacked solution:
Raise the horizontal track up by 1/4". this eliminates the weight on the track and allowed the motor to seat into its holes again.

It seems to be working again. I'll add a follow up post later after I get a few miles on this with the title "all clear - solution worked" or "actually that wasn't the problem and now I've really screwed up my slide out".

Thank you to all for your ideas and recommendations.

Interesting. Our Schwintec slide went goofy on us tonight, so I've been googling like crazy. 2 points about your theory. I'm not saying you're wrong, but just observing.
1) That long winded guy with all the videos said that one side has metal rivets, and the other has sacrificial plastic rivets. They're supposed to break to allow for frame twisting or something.
2) The tracks don't carry the weight, that is a function of the wide rollers under the slide, attached to the floor.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you- just trying to figure it out for myself, and had just watch a really long video about it.

[papacarp]

Originally Posted by Cincinnati Kid

Interesting. Our Schwintec slide went goofy on us tonight, so I've been googling like crazy. 2 points about your theory. I'm not saying you're wrong, but just observing.
1) That long winded guy with all the videos said that one side has metal rivets, and the other has sacrificial plastic rivets. They're supposed to break to allow for frame twisting or something.
2) The tracks don't carry the weight, that is a function of the wide rollers under the slide, attached to the floor.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you- just trying to figure it out for myself, and had just watch a really long video about it.

Yea, google is our friend. I've learned so much about our slides system.
1. Yes, there are two sets of rivets. The metal ones hold the gibs in and the block at a certain height should not break. The plastic one holds the block to the vertical track during installation. The plastic one on at least one side should break which allows the block to "float" between the wall and the slide (expanding and contracting with heat or whatever)
2. agreed, tracks should not carry weight. mine was!

[klassic]

If yours was carrying weight then your rollers have intended into the floor enough to make your 1/4” difference. I’m sure your problem is on the heavy fridge side.
OR your floor cantilever is dropping at the fridge end.
There’s no way (I guess maybe) for the rack to be installed 1/4 low, as it installs in one complete piece.

I’m on really good terms with the shop manager at my dealer, he’s showed me how the floor at the rack is noticeably bent down on a rig. He said it’s very common for him to see this.
He slid a straight edge out off the main part of floor and there was a 3/4 drop at the cantilever.

About the rollers pressing into the floor….mine are pretty deep, but not deep enough for the metal bracket of the roller to scar the Darco.
Rock had to take his back to the factory, where they lifted his slide up to install plates for the rollers to ride on, and not indent into the floor.
Rock carries more beer in his fridge than I do, so he needed more support

There’s also another floor support bracket hidden behind the plastic skirting end piece, below the end of the slide. It could be bent from weight and the pounding of road bumps. I don’t have one, Rock does..I guess it depends on the model, or who was building that day.

[tld]

My 2021 fifth wheel (bought July of 2020) has now been at the dealers for 2 and a half months because of schwintek slide problems. Both the bedroom and kitchen schwintek slides will work for a while and then suddenly quit working properly. And yes, the switch is being held for the proper amount of time after fully closing and opening to allow the motors to sync. And all of the other procedures recommended or required per LCI are done, repeatedly. My dealer, in coordination with techs from Jayco and LCI (LCI makes the slide components), has replaced all motors, all controllers, wiring harnesses, thermal breakers, measured for squareness of slide, checked rollers, made continuity tests, checked for kinking, and on and on and on. It looks like maybe, and that's a big maybe, the bedroom slide may be fixed, but, the kitchen slide still does not work properly. The slide specialist at my dealer says that the schwintek system should never be used on the larger and heavier slides. He believes that because the kitchen slide is so heavy, and that it is obviously heavier on one end than the other, what is happening is that one end moves a few microseconds soon than the other, and then by the time the slide has moved out a foot or so the motors are far enough out of sync that the controller shuts them down. Or, that the slide moves in out or out far enough to get out-of-square just enough that the motors start working too hard and draw too much current through the auto-resetting thermal breaker and trips the breaker. It, of course, resets after about 15 seconds and you can keep trying. One of the techs at my dealer told me that based on the schwintek problems that he sees coming in for service he would never buy a trailer with a schwintek slide on any of the trailer's large slides.

[Parrott]

Originally Posted by tld

My 2021 fifth wheel (bought July of 2020) has now been at the dealers for 2 and a half months because of schwintek slide problems. Both the bedroom and kitchen schwintek slides will work for a while and then suddenly quit working properly. And yes, the switch is being held for the proper amount of time after fully closing and opening to allow the motors to sync. And all of the other procedures recommended or required per LCI are done, repeatedly. My dealer, in coordination with techs from Jayco and LCI (LCI makes the slide components), has replaced all motors, all controllers, wiring harnesses, thermal breakers, measured for squareness of slide, checked rollers, made continuity tests, checked for kinking, and on and on and on. It looks like maybe, and that's a big maybe, the bedroom slide may be fixed, but, the kitchen slide still does not work properly. The slide specialist at my dealer says that the schwintek system should never be used on the larger and heavier slides. He believes that because the kitchen slide is so heavy, and that it is obviously heavier on one end than the other, what is happening is that one end moves a few microseconds soon than the other, and then by the time the slide has moved out a foot or so the motors are far enough out of sync that the controller shuts them down. Or, that the slide moves in out or out far enough to get out-of-square just enough that the motors start working too hard and draw too much current through the auto-resetting thermal breaker and trips the breaker. It, of course, resets after about 15 seconds and you can keep trying. One of the techs at my dealer told me that based on the schwintek problems that he sees coming in for service he would never buy a trailer with a schwintek slide on any of the trailer's large slides.

Does your big slide have the 3 tracks on each side?

[tld]

No. Just two tracks.

[Parrott]

Originally Posted by tld

No. Just two tracks.

Some have had an additional track installed to help with the larger slides. Your dealer should have this info.

[tld]

So far neither Jayco nor LCI have suggested to the dealer to modify my slide to a 3 track system. Since nothing has worked so far, it will be interesting to see if the next recommendation from Jayco and LCI will be to change the slide to a 3 track system.

[papacarp]

I just wanted to post a follow up to my previous posts on my slide out and what I did to fix it. I'm happy to report that after 1 month full time on the road the modification I did seems to be working fine. I haven't had any issues with the slide outs since then. Hopefully that helps someone at some point down the line with theirs. I'll certainly post here if anything comes up.

On a related note, I came across another guy with a 2016 Jayco Seneca exactly like mine and he had very visible rollers and skid plates of some kind on the bottom of his slide outs. I don't seem to have those, and if I do, it would just be the rollers and they would need to be well hidden behind the skirts. That also might be related to my problem. Perhaps my '16 was one of the early season models that didn't have the rollers, or perhaps they just missed it during mfg.

[klassic]

So you never replaced the rivets back into the gibs?
Where are the gibs now?

You definitely have rollers…the system couldn’t operate without them.
Either pull bottom the seal back, or lay on the floor inside and shine a flashlight in the gap.
I have one of the earliest 2016’s.

[papacarp]

Yea, never replaced the rivets. gibs: last i checked, were floating in about the right spot vertically now so I didn't worry about it.

Yea, i looked hard but couldn't find them. someday I'll probably get an angle where I can see them.

[Rock]

When I took mine to the factory I asked about changing to the slimrack, they said could not be done. I asked about the three rack system and was told unless the slide wall was built for that it could rip the track off of the slide. When I picked it up besides the nylon plates they put in on slide bottom on every roller they said this. We adjusted ur slide cause there is a sweet spot it has to be just right. I said how can u adjust the height of a a schwintec slide. Got the deer in headlight look. They were full of IT. It is a BS system and the bottom gib block should not be drilled thru. They did that to save money. Bouncing down the highway makes the shaft drop and finally disengages the motor. In my case that happened to the back one two years ago. This year the front one fell out to the ground on my kitchen slide. See my post on Catastrophic slide failure. My bedroom slide shafts are now dropping.