LONG STORY SHORT By Kristine McGowan  For the first 14 months of our Big Trip, we were very lucky. We’d towed our trailer some 50,000 miles across 37 U.S. states and two Canadian states, and the entire way, Holt had given us no issues. Sure, we had a couple hiccups—some leaky spots in our kitchen sink, a burnt-out fan in the range hood—but nothing that brought us to a halt. Nothing that made us question whether we could finish our trip as planned. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, our slide-out gave up.* We couldn’t call this one a hiccup. Sure, maybe we could live with the slide-out retracted for the rest of our trip—but in the following weeks, we’d come to loathe that idea. When extended, our slide-out turns our trailer into a spacious, comfortable home. But retracted? It reduces our already-small living space by 25% and leaves us with just a foot-wide walkway to get from our bathroom to our bed. We wouldn’t enjoy life on the road with Holt in such a state. And if we’re not enjoying ourselves, what’s the point of being out here? We decided we had two realistic options: get the slide-out repaired ASAP, or call off the remainder of the trip and head home. If you know us, then you know we didn’t consider the second option too seriously. We’d do our damnedest to get the slide-out repaired, even while we were on the move. It took a combination of patience, luck, and a lot of phone calls—but eventually, we succeeded. Here’s how we pulled it off, from beginning to end.  The famous New River Bridge in New River Gorge National Park, where our problem with our slide-out began. The ProblemBefore we get to the repairs, let’s take a look at the problem with our slide-out. It started the morning we broke camp near New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. Jason and I were packing up Holt in preparation to move to our next campground. When I pressed the button to retract our slide-out, it coasted into the trailer smoothly—until, about halfway in, one side of it got stuck while the other kept moving. I lifted my finger off the button before the issue could get worse. Then, hoping to straighten the slide-out, I pressed the button to extend it again; fortunately, it had no trouble moving in that direction. Once it was fully extended, I performed the syncing process recommended for our slide-out, as outlined in our trailer’s owner’s manual. Note: Our slide-out is a Schwintek. It uses two electric motors, one mounted on top of each corner, that move the slide-out in and out of the trailer. If those motors don’t operate in sync with each other, the slide-out can become crooked, as ours did. After syncing the motors, I retracted the slide-out again. It coasted all the way home this time, but along the way, it made some loud popping noises that set my teeth on edge. Still, the slide-out had retracted, so we could get moving and stick to our schedule. We finished packing up and headed for our next campground near Louisville, Ky., hoping this issue would turn out to be nothing more than a temporary hiccup. Hours later, we unhitched the trailer in Louisville, leveled it, and extended all four stabilizer jacks to the ground. Then we attempted to extend the slide-out. Once again, about halfway out, it got stuck. And this time, despite our repeated attempts to sync the motors, it would not fully extend. It kept getting stuck. What’s more, the slide-out’s tracks (i.e., the upper and lower gear racks shown in the diagram below) didn’t look good. Something had damaged their teeth, shaving strips of metal off their edges. One rack was missing two teeth entirely. That’s when we knew we didn’t have a hiccup. We had a serious problem.  A diagram of our Schwintek in-wall assembly, designed and manufactured by Lippert Components, Inc. TroubleshootingHere’s the thing: In the world of RV service shops, nothing happens fast. Countless RVers have taken their rig to a shop for repairs, only to not see it again for several months. If we wanted to keep the trip going, we couldn’t afford that kind of time. We couldn’t devote more than a few days to repairs, let alone months. To (hopefully) avoid a service shop, we decided to try fixing the problem on our own. We contacted technical support at Lippert Components, Inc., the manufacturer of Schwintek slide-out systems, for help. From our campsite near Louisville, we spent a couple hours on the phone with a support technician, trying to pinpoint the cause of our slide-out’s behavior. By then, Jason and I had learned that we could only extend and retract the slide-out by engaging its electronic manual override—which got the slide-out to move, sure, but also made those loud popping sounds a whole lot worse. With the technician’s help, we ran several tests. Some involved remote visual support that allowed the technician to examine our slide-out through my phone’s camera. Others required us to go out and buy a multimeter to check the voltage of Holt’s batteries and the slide-out’s motors.** In the end, the technician determined that our slide-out had gotten askew. One or more of the spur gears may have skipped teeth in the gear racks, hence those metal shavings. The only solution: Remove the slide-out from the racks, adjust it, and then reinstall it. Which, as you can probably guess, wasn’t something we could do ourselves. We couldn’t avoid it: We had to get an RV service shop involved. Cost of Repairs Thus Far Multimeter: $50 Total: $50  A map of our travel route from the place where our problem began (115, New River Gorge National Park) to our first Camping World appointment in Green Bay, Wis., indicated by a star. The numbered locations correspond to our other stops as outlined on the Our Route page. The First Appointment: Assessing the DamageAfter a few phone calls, we quickly realized that our options were limited. Many RV “service shops” listed in our area and the areas we’d soon visit weren’t shops at all. They were mobile RV technicians—a great option for RVers who need repairs on the go, but they couldn’t help us. Our fix was too big for mobile techs; they didn’t have the equipment required to adjust our slide-out. We’d have to take Holt to a brick-and-mortar service shop. It took many phone calls, but eventually, we found a Camping World near Green Bay, Wis., that could look at our trailer—in 11 days. It was the only service shop we’d found whose availability lined up with our travel schedule. We booked it. We followed our planned route for the next couple weeks, trying to enjoy ourselves in places like Indiana Dunes and Isle Royale National Parks despite the slide-out. It wasn’t easy. During the one time we extended the slide-out using manual override during this period, the damn thing grew even more crooked, to the point where it couldn’t sit flush against the trailer wall anymore. It even scraped a hole in the surface of our wooden floor. After that, we stopped moving the slide-out and tried living with it retracted—which only made us even more impatient for our appointment. Finally, after 11 days like this, we dropped off Holt at Camping World and drove ourselves to a nearby Starbucks to anxiously wait for their assessment. It took just a couple hours for them to call us back. Their assessment: Our slide-out likely had shifted out of alignment while we were driving along rough highways in Ohio and West Virginia. (I can’t tell you how many potholes we hit so abruptly that they made my teeth hurt.) As the Lippert technician had guessed, the slide-out got askew enough that its spur gears skipped teeth in the racks the next time we moved the slide-out, damaging the racks in the process. The good news: Camping World managed to realign our slide-out. We could extend and retract it again without engaging the electronic manual override. The bad news: Our slide-out’s gear racks had sustained enough damage that we’d have to replace the entire Schwintek system: racks, H-columns, motors—everything. The parts cost around $1,500, not including $250 in shipping. And it would take about 10 days to receive them. Camping World knew that we live in our trailer, so in the interest of getting us back on the road, they advised us on how to “limp along” to the end of our trip without replacing those parts. But they couldn’t make any promises, of course. We might make it to our trip’s end like this. Or our slide-out might get stuck again. The second possibility loomed large over our heads. Even after Camping World’s adjustment, our slide-out made several loud popping sounds every time we moved the slide-out. The spur gears, still skipping teeth in the racks. It was only a matter of time before the thing got crooked again. This temporary solution had an expiration date, and we had no way of knowing when that was. It could come after our trip ended, or it could come before. We’d already spent hundreds of dollars on this realignment. We didn’t want to throw money at another one down the road, especially not while we’d have to pay for more significant repairs eventually. No. To avoid going through another realignment, we’d have to do the full repair: replace the entire Schwintek system. And we’d better do it soon. Cost of Repairs Thus Far Multimeter: $50 Camping World readjustment in Green Bay: $396 Total: $446  A map of our travel route from New River Gorge National Park (115) to our upcoming stops, ending at Ann Arbor, Mich. (124). After our appointment in Green Bay (121), we planed to head back east, past some stops we’d previously made. One of those stops (118, South Bend, Ind.) would draw us back. The PartsHere’s where a bit of luck came our way. The folks at Green Bay Camping World estimated that we’d spend roughly $1,750 for the Schwintek parts. They said we’d have to wait about 10 days for those parts to arrive, too. But in the same conversation, they told us where the parts are manufactured: at one of Lippert’s plants near South Bend, Ind. That’s interesting, we thought. We’d visited South Bend recently, and our planned route would take us right back to the area in about a week. Could we order the parts and pick them up ourselves? We called Lippert to find out. Yes, we could pick up the parts ourselves, Lippert told us. The plant operated on a make-to-order basis, but once we placed our order, the parts would be ready for pickup within a couple days. A week was plenty of time. Okay. Once we had the parts, though, who would do the repairs? We weren’t coming back to Green Bay. We looked ahead in our schedule and found another Camping World, this one near Toledo, Ohio, where we’d arrive a few days after passing through South Bend. We called them up. Lucky for us, they had availability. How funny. After all that had gone wrong, everything abruptly fell into place. We could stick to our travel schedule, get the parts a little faster, save $250 on shipping—and on top of that, Lippert charged us less for the parts than Green Bay Camping World had quoted. We placed the order and told Lippert we’d see them in a week. Cost of Repairs Thus Far Multimeter: $50 Camping World readjustment in Green Bay: $396 Parts ordered from Lippert Components, Inc.: $1,340.02 Total: $1,786.02 The Insurance ClaimGiven what we’d learned at Camping World in Green Bay, we wondered if our insurance could help us with these repairs. We have comprehensive and collision coverage on our trailer, each with a $500 deductible, through Wawanesa Insurance. We didn’t know whether our slide-out’s damage, caused by potholes along highways in Ohio and West Virginia, would qualify under our policy. Still, we might as well try, right? We gave Wawanesa a call, and I have to hand it to them: They began working with us right away. We filed our claim and explained our—ahem--unique situation, being thousands of miles from home and attempting to get repairs done on the road. Our insurance adjuster didn’t bat an eye. He hired an independent appraiser near our next campsite in Chicago to look at our trailer and document the damage for Wawanesa. Within days of filing our claim, we’d met with the appraiser, and a week after that, we’d have an estimate of coverage. The only snag was our appointment at the Camping World in Toledo. Wawanesa wouldn’t have the estimate ready before that appointment, and if we took Holt in without that, Camping World would have no cost estimate to work toward. If the bill for their repairs exceeded the estimate, we’d be on the hook for the difference in cost. We ultimately decided it was worth the risk. With this appointment, we could stick to our travel schedule, and besides, we’d originally expected to foot the entire bill ourselves. We were happy enough that insurance would cover some of the cost. Cost of Repairs Thus Far Multimeter: $50 Camping World readjustment in Green Bay: $396 Parts ordered from Lippert Components, Inc.: $1,340.02 Insurance coverage: ? Total: $1,786.02  A map of our travel route from New River Gorge National Park (115) to the location of our last Camping World appointment in Toledo, indicated by a star. The Second Appointment: Repairing the DamageAfter all that—ordering the parts, filing the insurance claim, meeting with the appraiser, picking up the parts in South Bend—we finally took Holt in for a complete Schwintek replacement at Camping World in Toledo. The folks at Toledo Camping World warned us that they might not finish the repairs in one day. Their Schwintek specialist had just returned from vacation, and he had a few other items on his plate. If worst came to worst, they could set us up with our partially fixed trailer in their parking lot overnight, so we wouldn’t have to book a hotel room, and then finish the repairs the next morning. We agreed. We didn’t have much choice if we wanted the damn thing fixed, right? We left Holt with them, and just as we did during our appointment at Green Bay Camping World, we headed to a nearby Starbucks to wait. This appointment would take longer than the last one, so we looked for ways to pass the time. We ate breakfast (in the truck, because we had Catsby in the backseat), ran some errands, and eventually found ourselves at a golf course, where Jason practiced his putting while I read a book. Later that day, we got a phone call from Camping World: our trailer was fixed and ready to go. Just four hours after we’d dropped it off. Cost of Repairs Thus Far Multimeter: $50 Camping World readjustment in Green Bay: $396 Parts ordered from Lippert Components, Inc.: $1,340.02 Camping World repairs in Toledo: $793.65 Insurance coverage: ? Total: $2,579.67 The Insurance EstimateWe almost couldn’t believe it. Exactly three weeks after our slide-out gave up, we finally had gotten it fixed, all while sticking to our travel schedule and seeing the places we’d wanted to see. Little did we know we had more good news coming our way. A few days after that appointment in Toledo, we got an email from our insurance adjuster. Our estimate was ready, he said; which bank account did we want him to deposit the money into? Again, we were happy to have insurance involved at all; we still expected to foot some of the bill beyond our $500 deductible ourselves. (After all, we didn’t file our claim until after our first Camping World appointment, so we didn’t expect Wawanesa to reimburse us for that.) So you can imagine our surprise—and joy—upon learning that our insurance estimate exceeded the cost of parts and our Toledo repairs by about $100. Now we really couldn’t believe it. How freakin’ lucky were we? Cost of Repairs Multimeter: $50 Camping World readjustment in Green Bay: $396 Parts ordered from Lippert Components, Inc.: $1,340.02 Camping World repairs in Toledo: $793.65 Insurance coverage (minus $500 deductible): −$1,718.88 Total: $860.79  On the Move AgainIf you’ve read this far, your brain is probably reeling from all the logistics, phone calls, and numbers I’ve thrown at you—in which case, you have an idea of what this experience was like for us. We’re relieved things worked out as well as they did. We could have just as easily walked away from this situation with a much lighter bank account or a still-broken slide-out and a trip gone awry. I’m also proud of how we handled this. We had no blueprint to follow, no instructions for getting our trailer repaired on the road. Yet we looked at our options, made the best decisions we could, and somehow saved money in the process. That said—you can bet your butt that we’re keeping our eyes peeled for potholes now. * For those who aren’t familiar, a “slide-out” is a partial enclosure on an RV or travel trailer that increases the vehicle’s living space when extended.
** Fellow RVers, take our advice: Add a multimeter to your toolbox.
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