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Tip Replacing Dinette slide floor - anyone done it?

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RichStar

RVF Newbee
Joined
Oct 17, 2022
Messages
4
I'm going to need to replace the floor on the dinette slide on my Highland Ridge 27RLS Light. It has gone rotten due to the moulding that holds the rubber slide material on the floor failing to hold the material in place. I repaired the moulding a number of times but every time I open the slide it allows the rubber material to come back out of the moulding and expose it to water that drips down from the A/C. I have removed the moulding in the photos below to show where the rubber material moves to after the failure. The other end of the slide is OK and the rubber has held in place with the moulding. I think it was installed badly by the factory. We bought the trailer in 2019 as a 2018 left over model. We have only used it a handful of times due to my bac surgeries and my mothers-in-law stroke, nursing home care, and COVID. Needless to say, we are not very happy with our purchase. And we got no answers from Highland Ridge about the prospect of them covering the cost of repairs due to bad workmanship.

Has anyone else replaced or repaired the floor on a slide before - we are going to do it ourselves because we don't have the $2400 the dealer wants to do it.

Thanks
Richard
 

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I'm going to need to replace the floor on the dinette slide on my Highland Ridge 27RLS Light. It has gone rotten due to the moulding that holds the rubber slide material on the floor failing to hold the material in place. I repaired the moulding a number of times but every time I open the slide it allows the rubber material to come back out of the moulding and expose it to water that drips down from the A/C. I have removed the moulding in the photos below to show where the rubber material moves to after the failure. The other end of the slide is OK and the rubber has held in place with the moulding. I think it was installed badly by the factory. We bought the trailer in 2019 as a 2018 left over model. We have only used it a handful of times due to my bac surgeries and my mothers-in-law stroke, nursing home care, and COVID. Needless to say, we are not very happy with our purchase. And we got no answers from Highland Ridge about the prospect of them covering the cost of repairs due to bad workmanship.

Has anyone else replaced or repaired the floor on a slide before - we are going to do it ourselves because we don't have the $2400 the dealer wants to do it.

Thanks
Richard
Here's an update: We finished replacing the floor ourselves. We cut out the area of the floor (about 30x44") and cut a new 3/4" plywood floor piece. We added material to the top and bottom side of the wood and painted the wood with epoxy paint to make sure we had it sealed good. we added a metal piece to the bottom of the wood to act as a barrier and also made sure we had a flange that slide under the old floor, so we had strength to keep the floor pieces from rocking under weight. we also added metal to the top of the floor to do the same thing as the bottom. we put down the original linoleum floor with a good glue and started re-assembling the dinette.

The thing that struck me most as we worked on the trailer was this: The MSRP on this trailer was $46,000 and after seeing the shoddy workmanship of the trailer I'm amazed that the manufacturer gets away with this. We didn't pay full price for the trailer because it was a left over 2018. We purchased it in 2019 as a new year-old model. Since then, because of taking care of my mother-in-law at home first and then in a nursing home (she was 96) we only used the trailer for a period of 20 days over the years since we bought it. we have had issues with the plumbing, the slides, and the water leak from the seal that was put in poorly. we are talking about renting the trailer out thorough Good Sam's RV Rentals, but we are not sure if it will hold up to the task. We will be selling the trailer after this next year and purchasing a class A motorhome - probably a 2002 - 2004-time frame because we have noticed that they were actually built better than the new ones today.
So that's my update! I hope all who bought a Highland Ridge trailer have better luck than we did.
Have a blessed day!! Richard
 
Glad you got everything fixed and a nice update for others.

It is good to be handy while pursuing this lifestyle.

As far as renting goes I’ll just provide some info on our neighbors that had two class a gassers they rented out…

Each time they came back they had things to fix as well as cleaning them up for the next rental. Once a renter got stuck and they put boards under the tire to get out of the mud - this was thrown up into the wheel well and busted a few things resulting in major repairs to two compartments as well as other things.

Just my thoughts but I’d never rent ours out and take the chance.
 
Glad you got everything fixed and a nice update for others.

It is good to be handy while pursuing this lifestyle.

As far as renting goes I’ll just provide some info on our neighbors that had two class a gassers they rented out…

Each time they came back they had things to fix as well as cleaning them up for the next rental. Once a renter got stuck and they put boards under the tire to get out of the mud - this was thrown up into the wheel well and busted a few things resulting in major repairs to two compartments as well as other things.

Just my thoughts but I’d never rent ours out and take the chance.
Dennis, thanks for the thoughts. we had to think hard about renting the trailer. We have our own horror stories too. we had a motorhome rental when we lived in Michigan. We rented out class C motorhomes. we had 5 class C's from 21 to 28 feet long. For the most part we had great renters that took care of the RV's and returned them in good shape, but we had a few that didn't. We had one go out with fishermen that decided to clean the fish in the motorhome even after we told them not to and they stopped payment on the deposit check. We rented to folks from the German consulate, and they ran the engine out of oil while driving the RV through the mountains - guess what! Diplomatic immunity applies to not having to pay for damaged motorhomes. The third renters got taken by a dishonest mechanic that told them the tires on the motorhome were bad and wouldn't last in the mountains! He sold them a full set of tires. When they got back, they wanted us to pay for the tires. Luckily, they brought the old tires back, so we had our tire supplier take the new off and put the old on (they were in very good condition) and we gave the renters the tires. Those are the ones we remember but there were hundreds of folks that brought the RVs back on time and in good shape, so I guess we did OK.
So, our trailer just went live on Good Sam's rental, and we'll see what happens this time. We are going to start looking for a Class A towards the fall. I think we'll go with a Newmar or a Tiffin/Monaco. They seem to be put together well.

Thanks again for the comments!
 

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