The Verdict on our Slide-out

Monday morning at the factory—the noises start at 6 AM when the factory workers arrive to start their day. We were thrilled to get a knock on the door and see Nevin (Ken’s brother and great technician). We breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we were in good hands. We walked through our punch list and showed Nevin our crippled slide.

Our crippled slide- note the angle!

His reaction—“no problem”! While he’d never seen anything quite like it, he told us that it would probably straighten out without damage to the frame. When he returned about noon, he told us that they’d probably start work the next morning and “would we like him to pull our slide out?”. While I was away at the grocery store, he used a separate controller and our slide was out and we had our motorhome back! I came back to a fully extended slide- something that we haven’t had for 3 weeks!

Even better—the next day when they took our coach in for repairs, they couldn’t find anything wrong. The slide and the jacks were operating perfectly. So, there was no repair bill for $1000’s of dollars and no permanent damage to our slide. Nevin’s diagnosis- the lock arm on the slider deployed before the slide came into the motorhome—the motor kept pulling with the slide arm on the outside of the coach and the slide bent up), But, since we had a major malfunction of the slide and the probable culprit was the circuit board (once again, lightning does strike twice—in our case 5 or 6 times), we asked them to replace the circuit board.

With our bill paid and our minds put to rest, we headed to bed early for our 10 hour drive to Memphis the next morning. About 2AM, we awoke to the sound of an buzz. We got up and found that the Pressure Pro (tire monitoring system) was on and beeping. We unplugged it and heard another beeping sound. John got the flashlight, headed out to the outside compartment with the transfer switch (yes, the one that was just replaced 3 months ago- our 4th one so far). Sure enough, the smoke alarm was sounding because the wires had, once again, started to melt. Depressed beyond belief, John unplugged the electrical and we got a few more hours of sleep before going back to the factory techs with our problem. Another day of sitting and waiting while they replaced the transfer switch. (This time, they put in a metal box vs. the plastic one we had before. They think it's possible that it was installed improperly ---from Day 1--that the wires were not properly cut back and each time it was re-installed, they were using the same corroded wires. Not sure if I understand it completely, but we're feeling better about a factory install of a brand new metal box.

We spent the day in the Customer Lounge talking to other Newmar owners. How strange they are! One couple would take their lunch to the railroad station every day and count the cars! (They bring their own lunch- don't trust eating in restaurants. Oh, they also collect old Army jeeps.) The other couple regaled us with tales of their son- who works for a mattress company- and is the guy who delivers the new mattress and takes away the old one. They told absolutely gross stories about the mattresses with bedbugs and the one that had been used for the delivery of a baby. Yuck! (And, of course, everyone in the lounge agreed that this bed bug thing is coming from immigrants and from China.) They didn't finish up with our coach until about 1:30- so we decided to spend the night and have another night at the "Hideaway". We got the inside scoop on the state of the motorhome industry. Newmar's factory staff has gone from 1200 to 400 people! The town, which basically lives on the two motorhome plants, is filled with "For Sale" signs and alot of people have just had to walk away from their mortgages and leave for other cities to find jobs.