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As I posted about a month ago, the seal on 540's salon slide blew out. Driving out to Miami from OR or WA state wasn't really going to be an option for us. But as has been stated before, there appears to be zero history of anyone other than Newell replacing the seal on the salon. Lucky us -- an expensive job AND we get to be pioneers! On the plus side, we were in one of the few other places in the country where I felt we could probably find someone capable of doing the job -- not too far from Eugene, OR -- land of Country Coach and Beaver coaches, with lots of people in the area who worked in the service centers for those coaches for 20+ years.

I called pretty much anyone from Bend to Portland who appeared to have experience with large coaches, particularly those mentioned on HWH's service center web page. Unfortunately, HWH could not give me any additional information as to experiences with the places they had listed -- ie did they have experience with slides, leveling systems, etc. I also did a lot of research on Country Coach and Wanderlodge forums. After about a week, we settled on Oregon Motor Coach in Eugene. They have done the seal replacement job on a number of Foretravels, which apparently also used the HWH flat floor.

Before the nitty gritty, I would say that I highly recommend OMC if anyone needs work done in the area. They were very professional, thorough, and they did not complain or show any reluctance to the fact that I shadowed them all day for 2 days (we had a few other small things done while we were there). Oddly enough, there were 2 other Newells that were there, a 2006 for an air leak and a 2008 for a roof A/C replacement. Both other owners seemed satisfied with the work done as well.

---

And now for the actual job...

I spoke with Mark Merritt (sp?) at Newell the week before we took it in so that I could be as educated as possible on the procedure. He explained that there would be 1 of 2 ways that the slide needed to be disconnected from the rams to pull the room out of the coach. Either:
a) With the floor down, look underneath it -- if you can see the threaded end of the rams, you can disconnect it there.
b) Otherwise, there will be a connection to the rams in 2 places -- 1 in the front passenger side wheel well and 1 in the ceiling of the bay behind the mid-entry door.

I asked him if there were any teflon glides or anything that we should replace while the room is out being that this is a (known on wood) once in a very long time thing. He indicated that there were 5 teflon glides, so I had them send me 6 (they were only like $1.50).

He said that we would need to remove the top valence, front wall and rear wall of the slide room in order to get it out (not entirely true in our case, we did not need to remove rear wall).

Once at OMC, I helped guide them on room disassembly being that I had already had to remove the top valence and front wall myself once before. I figured I could at least save them the time I had spent figuring that out before. Based on the information from Mark, we also tried to remove the rear wall. We seemed to find all of the screws, however the wall appeared to be pinched at the top by the ceiling and wouldn't pull out. As we could visually see and physically feel that the front face of the wall did not extend past the aluminum outside of the wall, we decided that the slide could come out without removing it. I wish I had known that up front as this was probably an hour trying to get that wall out. The one thing on this end which did extend past the wall was the brush. The aluminum holding the brush extended about 1 inch above the curved corner of the top of the slide. There was enough room to merely bend the aluminum back to prevent it from extending past the slide.

Once the inside was ready, we extended the slide all the way out but stopped the extension just prior to the slide pins engaging.

The threaded ram ends were not visible under the floor, so we checked where Mark had told us and easily found them. One was in the bay rear of the entry door and one behind a panel in the front passenger wheel well. The panel was riveted in place. I believe the bolts on the ends of the rams were 1 1/8".




Luckily Tom had provided a piece of information to me that Mark at Newell had not -- the new slide seal needs to be placed around the slide before supporting and removing the slide. Because it is basically just a big inner tube, there are no ends and the seal is the correct length for the salon slide -- no cutting, no joining. Once you have something supporting the slide, there's no way to put the tube around the slide. So, we put the tube around the slide before supporting it. With how much it hung down, it seemed too long, but it's just an illusion.

OMC lined up a fork lift centered on the slide. Long, padded 4x4's were placed on the forks that extended most of the way across the room. For extra assurance and maneuverability, they used a floor jack under each end of the slide with a piece of padded plywood on top as well. This allowed some extra maneuvering and also helped provided additional support of the ends of the slide room.



Once the room was supported, the bolts were removed from the ends of the rams. OMC had about 8 guys come over and watch/monitor various places while the slide was pulled -- inside the coach, each ram end, each corner of the slide. The forklift then started to slowly pull the room out. After maybe an inch, the coach started to lean as the lift pulled, indicating something was catching somewhere. They called Newell and they indicated that in earlier coaches, there is a piece of angle iron in the center of the slide that is used to actuate the limit switch at full room extension. This was easily found in the non-pass through bay right above the center of the slide. Just a short piece of angle iron bolted onto the chassis. After removing this, the slide easily came out the few inches needed to access the slide seal.



Newell had indicated that if the seal was original, there should not be any adhesive to be cleaned out of the seal track. If it had ever been replaced before, the old adhesive would need to be cleaned out. Fortunately, there was no adhesive. Once the old seal was pulled out, they cleaned the track out with a solvent.

Newell also stated that the seal was directional. I forget how they stated the inside versus outside was identified, but in the end we found that the new seal was symmetric and Newell confirmed that the current batch of seals does appear to be symmetric.

The bottom of the slide seal is done first. The feed hose for the seal in 540 goes through a hole in the square tube of the chassis just adjacent to where the slide seal pressure regulator and solenoid sit in the large pass-through bay. The new feed hose was thicker than the original feed hose, so they needed to drill it out a bit larger. The bottom of the seal is done from outside the coach. The slide is pulled out just enough that the top of the slide clears the side of the coach. This allows for the slide to be lifted/tilted up a bit to provide enough room to work on the bottom of the seal from outside.

Basically, the seal is lined up in the track and every once in a while some adhesive is applied to keep it in place. Unfortunately, I did not pay attention to the spacing of the adhesive at this point. Newell had stated that about half the tube would be used. The seal is slightly long and does need to be "stuffed" in -- it is not stretched within the track.

Once the bottom of the seal is completed, the rest of the replacement is done from inside the coach. Note that it was very tight between the floor and the coach wall to get the seal in. In our case, we put LVP flooring in, so care was needed when stuffing the seal between the floor and the track to make sure no damage was done.

The rest of the seal was just like the bottom, stuffing it in and adhering periodically. Newell indicated that only about an hour is needed for the adhesive to set. In our case, it was the end of the work day, so it was allowed to set overnight.

Before we connected the slide seal air line back to the coach, I had them verify proper pressure from the regulator. I wanted to make certain that the original seal failure was not caused by a faulty regulator delivering too much pressure to the seal. The last thing I wanted was to immediately blow up the new $1160 seal.

Unfortunately, we found that the teflon glides in 540 were riveted into place. And there was no room to possibly remove the rivets and get the old glides out. And if we had been able to do so, we would not have had room to do anything to fasten the new ones in, although I question whether any fastening is required as the weight of the slide should always be present. It's possible we could have forcibly removed the old glides and just relied on weight to hold the new ones in place, but I did not want to find ourselves in a situation where fastening was required but impossible. As the old glides appeared to be in good shape, I opted to leave them alone.

Everything else was just done in reverse -- push the slide in slowly while making sure that the threaded ends of the ram were lined up with their respective holes, put the room back together, remount the piece of angle iron and put the ceiling panels and access panel back in place.

Honestly, it's not rocket science. The most time consuming part is taking the room apart and putting it back together. Pulling the room is just a matter of supporting it properly and pulling it out slowly to make sure that nothing is getting caught.

Total bill was about 15 hours of labor. I believe that Newell does it in about 10. Those extra 5 hours were well worth the cost of diesel and the time to drive out to Miami and back.

There are some additional pictures in this gallery as well:

http://newellgurus.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=160

Coach 1639 parked at Santa Fe Skies

Has any owner of a classic updated the fuse panel fuses to DC circuit breakers?

something like this:

https://store.bassproducts.com/Push-To-R...akers.aspx

any input on it will be very helpful.

        I have coach1518 with the cummins 600 engine.  I added freon and slugged the compressor and need to replace it.  Does anyone know the model number for the Sanden compressor for this engine?   Any suggestions appreciated.  We are in Houston Texas.

Hello to everyone whom shares the feeling of freedom, sense of excitement and adventure every time you pull up anchor and depart for the next place of wonder and fellowship. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Steve, I have spent the last 40 years of my life in no particular order raising 4 children, starting and managing 3 businesses, being married a total of 28 years and divorced twice. During that time I built or renovated 6 homes for my family, started my obsession with motorhomes in 1983 with a 1978 28’ class A and worked my way up through a 30, a 36 and a 40’ Eagle. Most of our motor home expeditions were winter affairs traveling with my children to almost every ski area in the Northeast and then out West. Ask me anything about how to boondock at 8,000 feet in subzero temps with blizzard conditions. Or ask me what can’t go wrong, especially in one of the early coaches! 

Well times have changed and so have I, no more children, with the lady of my dreams and finally finished being a slave to work. I retired this year at 63 and am planning how to spend the next 3-4 years traveling around this magnificent continent meeting interesting people and looking for adventures  wherever it may be. Right now I am doing my diligence and comparing a select few coaches. Newell’s are high on the list for all the obvious reasons, the market for Newell’s has me looking at coaches between 1999-2003. There are some exceptions and this is where I am going to ask for some help.

Newell’s seem to be made for the long haul, many are powered by Detroit’s, I get somewhat confused when I hear of Detroit’s having rebuilds at 100–150K. What’s up with the million mile tag line? That being said when would mileage be a concern with a Newell? The construction and materials of these coaches would seem to indicate the potential for many years of usage. I guess my question would formulate to how will or when mileage affect the price of a coach? And by virtue should mileage affect the price? I wish to thank anyone for advice and look forward to future ownership of a Newell.

Just purchased our second Newell from Montana, here are both of them headed to Beaver lake in Arkansas.

i am posting this on behalf of a fellow guru who is currently driving.  he has an 02 newell.

he said while driving all the gauges and everything electrically related to having the ignition on goes dead on and off randomly.  he hears clicking in the relay panel in front of the passengers feet.

suggestions?   he has replaced the ignition relay several times in the past for ignition being dead.  

thanks

tom

    What is the proper name fro this actuator?

As related in another thread I drug the Aquahot exhaust trying to back into my driveway a couple of weeks ago and ended up with a puddle of coolant on the street.  I assumed that I had cracked the weld where the exhaust enters the tank.  I talked to Rudy and he tended to agree but suggested I pressure test it to make sure.  I finally got my hands on a pressure tester and after pumping it up I got no leaks.  I fired it up on diesel and brought it up to near boiling but still no leak.  After starting the engine to pressure up my air systems to check them I started getting the leak.  Any Ideas?

K     Any ideas beside this inverter being made in China, Junk. Why it will not power my T.V.

1. I can plug a drill into the outlet on the inverter and it works fine.


My system should be very little draw since the inverters just power the 2 tv’s. When I attempt to switch  the inverter switch the solenoid works but the inverter errors as it drops volts eventually blows the fuses on the inverter. 

2. Second clue is if I plug into a gfci plug from my house it will trip also when I try to plug in my tv circuit. I can plug into another house plug and it will work fine.

3. I question is my problem the 12 volt/ 120 ac relay causes me issues, if so do I even need this relay. Could I just connect the hard wire the 120 volt wires together. I wonder though if the power would back feed to the inverter. I’m thinking the relay must activate when shore power plugged in because I have power at tv’s

Lastly I remember those plug style inverters are a little finicky. Will a hard wired in inverter solve my problem.

Any thoughts?