Front slide is tilted down

Thanks leon. Ken.

Thanks leon . I owe you one. Ken

Finally I got the problem with my front slide tilting down fixed. We were camping next to a bridge arcitect and he told me to do the following
l. Place a jack under the front support arm. then unscrew the 4 bolts. then just hit with hammer to get the slide level. Then go to the other side and do the same thing. Less than 5 mnutes and my tm was like new again.
He also said that The TM was not put together right from the factory. He said that the 4 bolts on each arm should have the lock washer on the inside and he told me to buy regular washers for the outside. I went and bought 32 washers and changed all of mine. He said for $3.00 worth of washers will save everyone trouble in the future. I am just wondering if all the tms had only 1 lock washer on the outside of the 32 bolts on the the arms. Mine is a 2000 2720sl.
Sagbags1

[Bill]

Ken -

Hmmm. I've reviewed this thread a couple times, and I can't make sense of it. Mostly, I can't tell what part of the TM was tilted. Is it the slideout, the part that contains the couch and the two side tables? Or is it the upper front shell, the thing that pulls up and out, and has the front window and a couple side windows in it?

The original post makes it sound like the slideout is tilted. If this is the case, then the torsion bars have nothing to do with it. As Commodore47 noted in the very first response, it is possible to pull the slide out too far. There are stop blocks under the floor (as CAmark noted in the second response), but if you pull the slider out hard enough, it will hop right over these stops. If the slider comes out too far, it will definitely sag.

Beyond that, the slideout is attached to a pair of big black metal arms near the hitch. As you pull out the slide, the arms swing out and support it. If the arms don't swing out, or if there are spacers missing, then the slide might drop down at the front. By the way, the slide is attached to these arms with big long bolts WITHOUT NUTS OR WASHERS! The bolts don't function as bolts - as Commodore 47 noted, they are used as pins, and they are not supposed to have nuts or lockwashers. We have a flurry of omigods about once a year on this fact.

If it is the shell that is tilted, then the problem is most likely the pocket stops inside the wall. (Old-timers on this board will remember being introduced to the mysteries of pocket stops by Happy Trails back in 2001 or so.) The stops halt the movement of the shell at the point where the lift arms are vertical. If the pocket stops are broken, then the shell can move too far. The arms go beyond vertical, and start down the other side of the arc. The rear end of the shell can't drop, because it is resting on the rear shell, but the front end of the shell can indeed drop. This won't cause the slider to tilt, though. And of course, adjusting the torsion bars won't fix broken pocket stops.

Either way, I can't imagine that beating it with a hammer and adding a lockwasher on any set of bolts would fix it. So I'm pretty confused, and without a picture or two, I'm probably not going to get unconfused. But to answer your question, no, I've never heard of a problem such as you describe, with a solution such as you describe.

Bill

Yes, It was the top slide that was tilted down. He placed a jack under the arm,loosened the 4 bolts, and as he jacked the arm up, he hit the big black round piece of metal down.I've had a lot of people look at it,and he was the first one to fix it. The guy that fixed it has been a bridge arcitect for over 25 years so I not only greatfull for his knowledge on fixing my trailmanor but I also believed him when he told me to buy 32 washers and place them on the outside of the arm and take the lock washers that trailmanor put on the outside of the arm and put on the inside of the arm.

[Bill]

Ken -

Aha! I think I'm getting the picture now. The top SHELL (not called a slide - that was part of the confusion) was tilted down. Apparently this was because the lower end of one of the forward-most lift arms was slipping down onto the torsion bar (the the big black round piece of metal). So he jacked up the arm, whacked the torsion bar back down - i.e., out of the lift arm - and rebolted.

Then the extra lockwashers would prevent this from recurring.

Sometimes terminology stands in our way more than anything else. Anyway, I'm glad you got the problem fixed, and my congratulations to the bridge engineer who figured it out.

Bill

Sorry, I looked at my previous posts and I did call it a the top slide out. I sure that's what was confusing everybody. Now that I know better, I'll do better. The important thing is that he said that if the factory would have put the lock washers on the inside of the arm instead of the outside and added 32 regular washers on the outside of the arms, this would never have happened. He said that just by adding those 32 washers ($3.00),added years to opening and closing my tm without troubles. ken