Great article Jon, Jim, & Roger thanks for all of your efforts. I know that this will be a great help to slide owners in the future.
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Great article Jon, Jim, & Roger thanks for all of your efforts. I know that this will be a great help to slide owners in the future.
Jon, Jim, & Roger,
Great article. Once all the prep was done, how difficult was it to actually install the air seal? Did you have excess material that needed to be evenly distributed? Did you need to stretch the material at the corners? Did you partially inflate the seal to check for kinks before completing the install? Did you temporarily adhere/clip the seal as you maneuvered and distributed it over the entire opening? Anything else about this step that we need to know?
David: The seal is actually "preformed" to fit the slide opening. I assume part of the high cost of the replacements seal is because of the fitted radius corners that appear to be pieced (spliced) into the seal. The new seal has a pressure sensitive adhesive inplace with premask tape. We positioned the top two corners first ( scoring and peeling away enough of the premask to make it easy once in position to remove the premask tape completely in the top corners only. Then once positioned - making contact with adhesive in the top center and then halfing that again for the top. Then installing the air filler hose thru the side of the coach and continuing on to the bottom of slide deals - same drill -corners first then the center and then the sides. It was a simple take your time procedure. Just make sure the air fill hose lays in good and flat. After just hand pressure to set the seal to the frame we used a small wallpaper seam roller to mash it to the frame opening as uniformly as possible.
No streching required. I doubt that a fellow could strech this seal if he wanted to.
So far it is working great!, and I see no reason to expect it to change
Thanks Roger,
I appreciate the info. I can see how the preformed/radius corners would make the job easier. Was there a manufacturers name on the seal?
Great Article. What was the amount of time spent from bginning to end, the man hours. Also, my coach has a control box next to the valves. I believe the Prevost guys used the contol box to retract the pins and deflate the seal. Any info on that?
Gary,
All told we probably had 20 man hours, but you have to understand we were not looking for efficiency and for us it was more important to look at the best way to get the job done. It sounds silly but at least half the man hours spent related to getting the top angles off, something we now know can be done in an hour or less. I won't try to explain how three reasonably smart, sober guys could make such a project out of that, but we did.
Rogers coach also has a control box located next to the Norgrens, but sitting here thinking about how close we came to sending the pins through the glass let me assure you the method described in the article is foolproof. If you retract the pins as described from the room closed position with the aux air at zero nothing can accidently get damaged. We literally had the Prevost shop manual in hand, had all read it, verified the valves were as shown, and did what it said and still had the pins extend instead of retract. We did not want anyone else getting in trouble like that, hence the way we described to retract the pins.
Retracting the pins as described is a 5 minute procedure. If Prevost does it differently I'm sure that is OK, but with all the various slide designs our proposed method works for all and is foolproof.
We spent a lot of time talking and analyzing the steps we took and I think we all agree that the next time two of us do one we could have the time reduced to 12 man hours and eventually to 8 man hours. It is a far simpler job than originally expected. Our next step is to find a supplier for the seals.
No manufactuer name on the seal or packaging. It came in a clear garbage bag all wadded up - just what you would expect a $2100.00 seal to come in.
We did inflate the seal for 24 hours prior to installation to ensure that it held air and did not leak down. That would be a big disappointment to find a new seal leaking air from a manufacturing defect.
We had a hard time staying focused on the seal replacement at the time because Jim Keller was taking us to a Mermaid Show the next day and Jon was getting all excited. Anyone every heard of WeekiWachi. It is a fresh water spring were Mermaids live -- some of them have lived there a long, long, time.
Poor Jim. He picked the Mermaid Show for entertainment but unbeknown to him the mermaids were mostly Medicare recipients. (No joke...one gal was 71 and she had one of the better bodies. The 79 year old mermaid had the day off).
The high spot of the process for me was it gave me an opportunity to kill a lot of dirt and grass (the kind you mow). During lulls in the excitement of removing and installing the seal we three took advantage of the Keller compound by exercising our firearms. I shot more bullets during my time at Jim's than I ever shot in my life, combined. We sampled Jim's big guns, saw how a 12 ga shotgun may be excessive for defending a coach, and we saw grass and paper fly as we blasted away at the target options Jim scattered around.
I think it is safe to say that if you need a slide seal replaced you will not lack for volunteer helpers if you provide entertainment and activities comparable to those provided by Jim. I think a slide seal replacement should be a part of the next POG rally and I am sure we three would be very happy to supervise and provide advice if there were sufficient incentives. I just don't think we are cut out for manual labor however.
Great job on an excellent article!
At first glance, it sure looked to me to be an intimidating task, (and I'm still not sure I would attempt it) but you have clearly demonstrated that taking your time, following step-by-step instructions, paying close attention to detail and having the necessary confidence can produce big dividends.
I would imagine having an even better understanding now of how the slide works is another benefit gained.
Congratulations on the success of your project! :)
We have the HWH slides on our H3-45 and they're working very well.. we also had them on our 2 plastic coaches without any problems. HWH seems to do a good job.. Our seals are not inflated either.. We are thinking of replacing the seals and have been referred to www.cleanseal.com for replacement seals as ours are no longer available so they say. Cleanseal claim to have it all now for RV seals.. I don't know if they have the inflatable ones or not.
Look at the thousands of plastic coaches out there with HWH slides.. It appears to me they're doing a good job!!
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