Slides and Jacks, oh-no!

We are at Cape Disappointment State Park, WA

We have been exceptionally lucky that our MH for the most part has been pretty trouble free. We have had a few minor problems but nothing major until yesterday.

We were at the Quinault Beach Casino parked in their RV lot about a half mile from the casino, all by ourselves, over looking the ocean. We were scheduled to drive a couple of hours down the coast to Cape Disappointment SP where we had reservations for Thursday and Friday nights.

I had retracted the bedroom slide and the large living room slide and started to bring in the small living room slide and nothing happened! I also found the leveling jacks were not operating. This was followed by a hot electronics smell. Investigation revealed the motor for the hydraulic pump was very hot and apparently had burnt out. Unable to bring in the slide or get the jack up we were stranded in a very isolated spot.

I called our MH road service, Winnebago, the hydraulic people, HWH. I also pulled out all the reference materials and manuals I could find.

I knew the theory on manually raising the jacks but I had no clue on how to get the slide in. The Winne manual covered in detail where and how to crank in the large slide and how to slide in the bedroom slide, but of course it didn’t mention the small slide at all. The road service called back and had a service tech scheduled arrive sometime before 4pm, its 10am now. The call to Winnebago was little help as they apparently didn’t have the slide in their manuals either. HWH took a message and said they would call back. Surprise they did about an hour later. They knew more about the MH than Winnebago did. I got some good information on how to release the pressure in the hydraulic lines and where the valves were to accomplish this task. They said once the valve was opened we could just push the slide in.

About 3pm the RV tech arrived. He wasn’t that familiar with our specific equipment but had worked on similar stuff. I showed him where the motor was under the front steps and after checking for voltage, using my meter because he left his at the shop, he jumped the solenoid on the motor and nothing happened confirming my original thought that it was burnt out and probably the source of the electrical smell. Next he opened the valve to the slide and the three of us tried to push it in. It didn’t budge a fraction of an inch! He tried a second valve, there are three , one for each slide. Still no luck. He opened the third and still no movement. He then opened the valves for the jacks and they retracted. Hooray! As I was looking over his shoulder I thought he was missing the valve that HWH indicated should be opened. He had been opening something in the back of the assembly and HWH said it should be in the front under the jack valves. I told him this and he opened that valve. The three of us again pushed on the slide and lo and behold the slide started in and we were able to push it all the way.

We finally got started toward Cape Disappointment around 5:30pm. As we started driving out of the parking lot the MH tilted to the right and the slide moved out a little. Oh! Shit! I had visions of the whole right side of the MH flying out and landing on the side of the road. After a very tense 2 hour drive we arrive in the DARK to the SP. Found our site and parked.The slide is still about 3 inches out but didn't appear to move any further.

We’re staying here at Cape Disappointment SP until this Sunday when we will cut over to I5 and drive down to Cummings in Eugene, OR. where we hope to get the hydraulic stuff fixed. Then we’ll continue down I5 and save the coast till next year.