SargeW
Site Team
This falls under the heading of "I hate to let someone else work on my rig". And a lot of the time that someone is a RV dealer who assigns the repair to someone who know less than you, and hurries to get through the job just to get it done. Not always, but it seems that happens a lot. When my rig was still new and under warranty, I noted that I could see daylight under the bedroom slide when it was extended. When I was getting close to the end of the warranty period, I decided to have the dealer fix a few items that were minor, but necessary 
. I had noticed that on occasion I would have varying degrees of wet spots at the corners of my bedroom closet slide. Sometimes it was minor, and others it was significant. I had the dealer replace the rubber seal, hoping that would fix it. I picked it up and didn't get to use the rig for a while due to work, and when I did we were most likely in a dry climate so I didn't notice any issue for a while. I could still see daylight under the slide when extended though. When we started full timing the issue came back from time to time. And in some of the really colder climates we were in we noted that the bedroom would get colder than the rest of the RV during the night.
Then a few days ago during a stop over on the Gulf Coast in Florida, we had some really heavy condensation and dew one night. The next morning I had two really wet spots on each corner of the carpet of the closet slide. That was it, this had to be fixed. I went on Winnie's site and viewed the diagram of the slide parts. Then I called Winnie Customer Service and spoke to a service tech. I discussed it with him and he was really helpful. He also told me that the seal used on the bottom of the slides is not a special material, and is in fact used in many other types of sealing uses.
So, being on the road I went to the most available location for misc parts. Lowe's or Home Depot. In this case Lowe's was the closest, so I went there. I found a good replacement seal in the form of a soft rubber seal used at the bottom of a garage door. The seal even had an angled edge on it that allow it to sit flat against the slideout floor when attached to the slideout opening.
Lowe's garage door seal
This is a pix of the remaining seal on the living room slide. It is a flat piece of rubber with the thinner edge at the top. It is still holding up.
Winnie installed slide seal
Here is a pix of the new seal installed under the bedroom slide.
New seal installed
The new slide out seal was about 1/4 shorter than the Winnie seal, but the new seals flat edge did a good job sealing tight against the slideout floor. The seal came in two lengths from Lowe's, 9' and 16' rolls. The 9' roll was about $6 and the 16' roll about $13. Somehow I think that it was a bit cheaper than getting it from Winnie or a RV dealer for that matter.
The most important thing here was probably prep. I pulled off the old seal and the dozens of staples that were over used by the dealer tech to do the replacement seal. Pulling the staples was a pain, but using a pair of vice grips and rolling the staples out to the side worked well. Here is the really important part. The new seal was tucked in behind the rubber seal that runs up the side of the slideout. Once you get all the staples pulled out you can pull the side rubber back about an inch to tuck the new seal in behind it. That was a point made by the Winnie service rep, and what the dealer tech failed to do. He just stapled it right over the side seal. That is what allowed the water intrusion into the bedroom all this time. And you couldn't tell by looking because the corners appeared to be securely stapled down.
The other really smart thing I did was listen to the DW and buy an electric Arrow stapler for about $40. I was going to try to cheap out with the manual stapler, but one I got under the slide I found that this would have been impossible to use as you have to press the stapler into the space between the slideout floor and RV wall opening. I used 9/16 inch staples, the longest the gun would handle. The whole process took a little over an hour, and cost less than $50.
And after a rain last night, we are in Lafayette La. that was a torrential down pour for about 2 hours, the floor this morning was dry as a bone ;D. I know it was done right, and saved some $$ in the process.
Sarge
. I had noticed that on occasion I would have varying degrees of wet spots at the corners of my bedroom closet slide. Sometimes it was minor, and others it was significant. I had the dealer replace the rubber seal, hoping that would fix it. I picked it up and didn't get to use the rig for a while due to work, and when I did we were most likely in a dry climate so I didn't notice any issue for a while. I could still see daylight under the slide when extended though. When we started full timing the issue came back from time to time. And in some of the really colder climates we were in we noted that the bedroom would get colder than the rest of the RV during the night. Then a few days ago during a stop over on the Gulf Coast in Florida, we had some really heavy condensation and dew one night. The next morning I had two really wet spots on each corner of the carpet of the closet slide. That was it, this had to be fixed. I went on Winnie's site and viewed the diagram of the slide parts. Then I called Winnie Customer Service and spoke to a service tech. I discussed it with him and he was really helpful. He also told me that the seal used on the bottom of the slides is not a special material, and is in fact used in many other types of sealing uses.
So, being on the road I went to the most available location for misc parts. Lowe's or Home Depot. In this case Lowe's was the closest, so I went there. I found a good replacement seal in the form of a soft rubber seal used at the bottom of a garage door. The seal even had an angled edge on it that allow it to sit flat against the slideout floor when attached to the slideout opening.
Lowe's garage door seal
This is a pix of the remaining seal on the living room slide. It is a flat piece of rubber with the thinner edge at the top. It is still holding up.
Winnie installed slide seal
Here is a pix of the new seal installed under the bedroom slide.
New seal installed
The new slide out seal was about 1/4 shorter than the Winnie seal, but the new seals flat edge did a good job sealing tight against the slideout floor. The seal came in two lengths from Lowe's, 9' and 16' rolls. The 9' roll was about $6 and the 16' roll about $13. Somehow I think that it was a bit cheaper than getting it from Winnie or a RV dealer for that matter.
The most important thing here was probably prep. I pulled off the old seal and the dozens of staples that were over used by the dealer tech to do the replacement seal. Pulling the staples was a pain, but using a pair of vice grips and rolling the staples out to the side worked well. Here is the really important part. The new seal was tucked in behind the rubber seal that runs up the side of the slideout. Once you get all the staples pulled out you can pull the side rubber back about an inch to tuck the new seal in behind it. That was a point made by the Winnie service rep, and what the dealer tech failed to do. He just stapled it right over the side seal. That is what allowed the water intrusion into the bedroom all this time. And you couldn't tell by looking because the corners appeared to be securely stapled down.
The other really smart thing I did was listen to the DW and buy an electric Arrow stapler for about $40. I was going to try to cheap out with the manual stapler, but one I got under the slide I found that this would have been impossible to use as you have to press the stapler into the space between the slideout floor and RV wall opening. I used 9/16 inch staples, the longest the gun would handle. The whole process took a little over an hour, and cost less than $50.
And after a rain last night, we are in Lafayette La. that was a torrential down pour for about 2 hours, the floor this morning was dry as a bone ;D. I know it was done right, and saved some $$ in the process.
Sarge
