Quote:
Originally Posted by TwoBrewDogs
Great thread and fix. 2015 Montana, 3611RL here.
I have repaired some of my Darco using metallic duct tape. It sticks very well and does the job, for now. I see some UHMW strips in my future however as this is a ridiculous problem for these RVs to have.
My bedroom slide seems to have some form of plastic sheet as its bottom and it rides on a few plastic rollers. No issues here.
The dining slide would appear to have one continuous white plastic strip it rides over. The Darco rip resulted in staining the carpet at the rear of the slide. For now, all seems fixed.
The kitchen slide has a horizontal rubber seal across the face where the slide floor goes into the coach. In fact, an 8" section tore off today... I see no white plastic strip. I do however have some noticeable wear stripes every couple of feet along the width of the slide out bottom. This leads me to believe that this slide out uses rollers like the bedroom one. Yet it still has Darco.... This slide also makes the most noise when moving in and out. It has the stove, residential fridge, pantry, TV cabinet and fireplace all in that slide, so I'm sure it's heavy.
My question to you is this; by only having the UHMW plastic under a portion (outer edges in your case) of the slide, are you introducing any bowing by the center of the slide not also having that extra thickness? Or is 1/8" just too little to worry about? I'm wondering if I would need extra strips over more of the rollers to prevent any issues.
You also said you would slide the UHMW on top of the wear strip rather than beveling it and letting it ride up if you were to do this again. That sounds like an improvement. How does one lift the slide up the little bit necessary to accomplish this? As there would be less horizontal force on the UHMW strip's front edge, I see no need to change the position of your first set of screws.
Again, great modification that a lot of people will end up using. Thanks.
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IMO and after two years of ruining that large hydraulic slide in and out countless times I’ve observed ZERO issues with the rest of the flooring .. if I had another area on this same slide where the Darco was to fray I would add another UHMW strip in a micro second without hesitation
*** This hydraulic slide has NO rollers and uses an inner and outer wear bar that the entire slide floor ramp up onto when retracting and ramps down off of when fully extended
I felt after watching the initial motion when retracting where the slide floor bottom ramps itself up onto the outer wear bar that had I simply lifted the slide a tad and slid the UHMW strip in between the outer wear bar and Darco maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch that the INITIAL inward motion would be perfectly smooth
But.. after two years of using as is with the beveled leading edge I simply habe no reason to change it
ONE thing I would do different “In my specific Install is I would have made the UHMW just a tad longer so that when then slide is fully retracted the UHMW was still on the outer wear bar.
OR.. I would bevel the opposite end if the UHMW strip just like the inward side so that when the slide begins its initial motion to extend and ramps onto the outer wear bar it would be smooth as silk..
Lastly.. the slide with the UHMW strips moves in and out much faster and smoother than the opposite large hydraulic slide does.. I will be adding UHMW strips on the outer edges of that slide this year when we return from our upcoming 3 week trip. I have no a Darco wear yet on the other slide but I can see it’s coming
Different slides will require different approaches. The PDF I put together along with the video gives folks some concepts to ponder and then adapt as they see fit. Or not.
Someone asked my why I didn’t jist buy some slide skis.. or recover the entire Darco bottom..
I’m not fond of the slide skis and would never recover with Darco,lif I had to do the entire bottom it would be with UHMW..
My bedroom slide is also hydraulic with a hard plastic covering on the bottom.. it hasn’t yet cracked (9 year old RV)..
If it does I will recover the entire bottom with either UHMW or HDPE.. my BR hydraulic slide uses the Lippert BR cradle slide setup so it would be easy to repair the bottom covering