Our 2021 Beacon 42 FLB has 3 Schwintek slides. The front living room slides extend & retract together which is quite a trick!
Somewhere between Truth or Consequences NM and Dalhart TX the door side slide bottom track extended 3 1/2” at the bottom with the top tight to wall. When trying to move it in via the wall switch it affected the opposite slide. It took one month to obtain a repair reservation. The track on one neeeded to be replaced plus rods, gears & wheels were replaced as well.
If you are ever in the Owatonna, MN area I recommend Owatonna RV Services to repair anything! Excellent to work with and they got us back on the road with working slides.
Lots of dissatisfaction with Schwintek slides in blogs and YouTube videos.
Glad to hear you got the system working. Not a fan of the schwintek slide system either. Luckily we only have two (bed slide and front vanity) and they are still working.
I have been looking closely at replacing them with the Vroom slide system.
Vroom slide systems which looks to address a lot of the shortcomings of the Lippert implementation, but certainly isn’t cheap.
I-39 from Rockford South to Bloomington is some of the roughest roads I’ve driven. So- some of the flashing screws on outside of RV worked out about 1/2”. Slides worked fine when we landed & now to get some lock tight on them-all will place blocks under couches to reduce bounce on in wall Schwintek frame, the couches are too heavy!
Really sorry to hear of your problems with the Schwintek slides but I can tell you from experience that they are a lot more reliable than the cable slides I had on a Montana one time. I was always having to adjust and replace cables that stretched or broke
I agree about the condition of the roads nowadays I do not think there is a vehicle out there that handle them without a lot of maintenance.
stay on top of it
I have seen folks move from screws to rivots when this occurs - seems to be pretty common. I have had mine removed several times for flex related issues and when one of the screw holes werent biting Tiffin put a rivot in to hold.
As with Stuart I have been considering switching to Vroom for sometime however I havent had issues that justify it yet (knocking on wood).
I am sure you checked but making sure you looked at that expansion joint and you dont have a bulge down there. When Flex occurs at the point the bulge will press the schwintek slide out.
Thanks for tips. We did have frame flex repaired by welding plates to reinforce the frame. I see 1 rivet on bottom which may have been as you suggested.
Last night I replaced 4 screws on the front side & used lock tight on the. Today we travel to quad cities so will get a chance to see how that works .
I used #10 screws 1 1/2” to secure the trim piece to replace the factory screws #8 1 1/2” screws.
I’ll place plastic leveling pads underneath each slide out when traveling to reduce the “ flopping” of slide outs & hopefully extend the life of these Schwintek in wall slides!
Here is photo of leveling pads under front room Schwintek slide out rooms boxes that each contains a heavy queen size hide-a-bed. The bedroom slide has 3 support rollers so no need for extra bracing. 41FLB 2021 front living room
This image really helps demonstrate the situation and not something I have had to worry or think about. My only schwinteck slide is the bedroom slide and the slide is support by rollers.
After taking one of those schwintecks apart and seeing what the screws have to hold into I can understand a slide in the air with added weight in it to give some problem. Hopefully you pads help your situation until you find a long term solution.
That’s quite a fix for a not well thought out design for using that type of slide mechanism. It’s no wonder you’ve had issues with those slides. That photo really points out the problematic design.
Like Ryan, our schwintek slides have a number of support rollers and they’re at floor level height, not hanging in the air.
