living room slide grease?

Its been a long time since I have posted. We are having month-long trip to Maine from Florida (where we live now) in our 2004 2720 SL and are on the road right now using WiFi, in South Carolina.

Our living room slide is getting pretty hard to pull forward. Is there anything we can put on the metal tracks or somewhere underneath that would lubricate it and make it easier to move? We are leery of grease for the mess and not fond of petroleum based products that make strong fumes.

I hope one of the many "TM Gurus" has an idea to share. Thanks!!
smookie

Thanks for answering so quickly, Leon! We were concerned about the strong smell of silicon spray on the interior. Outside would be fine. Are there certain silicone sprays that have no odor? What we did for now is to scrub the metal sliding track clean with a pot scrubber pad and rub some bar soap on it. There is no smell other than Dove soap. Tomorrow, we will take down our TM and I can see if it worked. If not, silicone spray will be our next remedy.

A way that we have helped this situation on our pop-up is to use sealing wax used to in sealing jelly jars. It doesn't have an odor to it.

Bob Pollock

[Bill]

Don't grease anything - for exactly the reasons you say. The slideout doesn't really slide - it runs on rollers.

There are a couple things that can make it gradually harder to "slide".

1. The track (the aluminum strip on each side of the floor) is dirty or gritty. At one point, we had the misfortune of getting some overlooked kitty litter on the track. Yup - it got REALLY hard to slide. When the slider is all the way out, you can see most of the track.

2. During setup and teardown, are you carrying more weight on the couch than you used to? Is your husband sitting there while you try to slide it? Are you carrying cases of wine or soda on the couch? This will make it harder to slide.

3. On older TMs, like my 2002, the edge of the slider floor (in front of the couch) eventually began to sag a bit in the middle. As a result, it began to drag a bit more as it slides over the carpet. At some point, TM added an extra roller to overcome this problem, but I don't remember if it was in place for the 2004 models.

The solution may be to raise the slider with a jack (easy to do), and shim up the rollers a small amount (maybe 1/4"). Works great. If you think this would be a solution, send me a PM and I'll give you more detailed advice.

Bill

I believe that year, the carpet is rolled around the edge of the slide-out and fastened ( staples or glue, I'm not sure) to the bottom surface of the slide. If the slide is easier to push in in than to pull out, it might be worth looking to see if the fastening is coming loose and binding on the carpet underneath.

-PAal

I just had a patio door serviced at home and the service tech advised that I might periodically lubricate the tracks with a dry spray lube containing Teflon - I assume the same would work on your TM. He also suggested that I never use a petroleum based for the reason others have mentioned - that the petro based products will attract dirt and eventually gum up the rollers.

Thanks for all the helpful advice. We are going to Bryants RV in Dallas, PA tomorrow because we have water leaking out of our skylight molding. This happened today, during heavy rain, and luckily for us, we are camping near Allentown PA, 90 miles south of Bryants and have an appointment tomorrow morning. We will ask about the stubborn slide out and of course, the leak. BTW, the slide is a lot easier to pull and push now with cleaning the track and rubbing it with bar soap.

Once again, we (fortunately) "fell into a mud puddle and came out smelling like a rose." In 1997, we broke our sewer tank on our 1988 Model 20 TM, only two hours away from the TM factory. How lucky was that? Mr. Hulsey came out into the parking lot, looked under our trailer and said that he could fix it the next day. Our roof never leaked till today, but it did so 90 miles away from the place we bought it.What a great company! That is why we have owned 3 TMs since 1992! smookie