2013 Journey Slide Rollers

[JacobB]

Hello,

I have a 2013 Journey 36m, when I put the passenger full body slide out it hangs up and jumps twice before being fully extended and same when it goes back in. I had it into my local service shop and upon inspection they noticed that when the motorhome was built one of the slide rollers under the slide were mounted in the wrong spot. On the bottom side of the slide they put reinforcement plates for the slide support rollers to roll on, but one of the rollers is missing it’s plate by almost 12 inches and now the roller is hanging up as it’s hitting another plate. I contacted Winnebago and they told me there is nothing they can do for me, and my service shop will need to remove the whole slide to fix this problem. Getting quoted around 15,000$ for a factory issue from when the motorhome was built is very upsetting. Has anyone ever heard of something like this before? Thank you, Jacob

 

[JacobB]

Attached are pictures. You can see in the 1st picture where the plate is and where the roller is rubbing. The other picture shows the plate the roller hangs up on

 

[creativepart]

Welcome and I’m very sorry for your problem. However, your RV is 11 years old or stated another way… 10 years out of warranty. So, it’s not surprising that this repair would not be covered by the factory.

Did you purchase the motorhome new back in 2013? Because if not, there is no telling what various previous owners have done to that slide when it was in their hands. I realize the shop is saying it was built wrong at the factory but really there is no way anyone could be totally sure of that unless they’ve been in possession of the motorhome the entire 11 years.

If it was improperly built at the factory then one has to assume that side has never worked correctly this whole time. Including when you first acquired it. Is this an issue that just recently started being a problem?

$15,000 is a lot of money and sounds high for that kind of repair. You might consider taking the RV to the factory in Iowa for service. They are best suited to fix things like this. And while they've said they won’t cover the cost, if they see it as their fault they very well may perform the work at a reduced cost.

 

[JacobB]

I will have owned it for 1 year next month. I completely understand where you are coming from, but I don’t see in this particular situation how a previous owner would have cut the tabs off that mount the roller and move them over. You can see wear “rub marks” on each plate from the rollers and you can clearly see in this picture that there isn’t a single scuff on the one plate. I guess moving forward my plan is to take it to a few other shops and get some quotes and decide what to do from here. If all else fails I will see how I can get the motorhome back to the Winnebago factory, just not easy being in Southern California. I appreciate the reply. Thanks

 

[creativepart]

Is this what you are thinking is incorrectly installed? That roller belongs left to that larger panel?

If so, I have seen plenty of YouTube videos where folks use blocks and bottle jacks to lift the slide to take weight off of the roller in it's opening and move/add rollers. I'll see if I can find one of these. It looks like a fairly big job but not a "remove the slide $15k job."

 

[creativepart]

Here's a super simple "short" that illustrates "kind of" the process:

Another solution is to leave the rollers where it currently sites and install a piece of sheet metal for the existing roller to ride on. Here's a video on that process:

 

[Wintermute-WO]

Now this is something I can answer! I will try to attach pictures later today to help illustrate my response. My 05 is probably much different, and it had these PTFE pads that the slide moved upon. The pads cracked and ate the bottom of my slide almost exactly like your picture. I did some measuring and ended up taking the remains of that pad and the metal stand out completely, replacing it instead with a new roller. I used a floor jack and some 2x4s to lift the slide as far as possible to permit me to access the space below. Also required temporarily removing that weather stripping along the bottom edge. I used some Lippert rollers from Amazon, screwing them into the edge of the floor since there is no way to access it from the top without slide removal. Once I had the parts in hand it was only a matter of minutes getting things swapped out and it works better than ever.

 

[Wintermute-WO]

The red piece you see is where I sawed off a piece of cutting board so I could close the slide without tearing more of the bottom up. It was not intended as a permanent fix, and got the job done until the rollers arrived. If you search for Lippert slide roller on Amazon you'll find the ones I used as replacements. You can see in the pic how I mounted them to the subfloor. Grateful this worked because I wasn't looking forward to trying my luck at removing the slide with the loader on the tractor! Also, now I am thinking I will make those metal plates for the rollers to glide on, so thanks for sharing that video creativepart!


Edit to ask why my photos are always rotated?