Emergency window

On my 2006 the rear bed tilts up from the front as an emergency exit. When I tested this as an exit, it broke the nylon guideways for the underbed slide....so be careful
 
Sorry to add to the emergency window quandry,

but I am still wondering about the best way to make an exit through it,
assuming an occasion arises when an emergency exit must be made. :rolleyes:

It's easy to say, crawl out on your stomach and land on your feet.
I have not seen a video of somebody doing a demo of this acrobatic maneuver.
Some of us are recliner folk. :)

I do have an idea about mounting a rope emergency ladder above the window
and using that in an emergency exit. Holding the rope in a descent would
at least help to maintain a vertical descent with a landing on your feet. :confused:
 
Over the years, TM took a number of approaches to the emergency exit. Some involved moving yourself tight against the rear wall, at which point the rear edge of the bed would sink and you could tumble out onto the ground. Of course, if there was someone else on the bed, it wouldn't tilt - oops! This approach also required you to release a bed latch, so in an emergency you had to remember to do that.

In later TMs, you had to lift the forward edge of the bed and slide under it onto the rear bumper. But that meant you had to be closer to the fire while you wrestled with it, so again I wasn't convinced.

More recently, TM began using a special rear window as an exit. It was quick and easy, and as far from the fire as possible, but it required that you know know in advance how to operate it, and where the latches are. Aside from the fact that no one ever told me about it, I thought that was a pretty good approach.

Don't get too fancy. The TM is a small space, and if you have a grease fire roaring four feet away, the last thing you want to deal with is deploying a rope ladder. Just get out! A hard landing is a small price to pay, especially if there are others behind you waiting to exit.

Bill
 
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The rock guards on the escape window would need to be unclipped as well. I would guess that escaping by lifting the bed would require sticking something in the open gap to hold it while crawling out.

One day I filmed a fire of an RV across the street from my house. They go up quick and are hard to put out, though the TM has no motor. Sadly I found out shortly thereafter that a friend of my brother in law died in the fire. He had been working on the motor, likely had a fuel leak and the engine cover wasn't properly seated.

 
Regarding the rock guard, they don’t put them on the rear window anymore. I have one and if I were to use the escape window I’m pretty sure I would just donkey kick it off the hinge.

But I don’t see myself using the escape window for fear of getting stuck like Winnie the Pooh. I’ll use the old bed lift method. We keep a broom handle tucked in the foot of the mattress frame to use as a prop rod to hold the bed up.
 
Shane -

How about putting a hinge on the end of the prop rod, and attaching it to the underside of the bed platform. When you raise the platform, the prop rod simply swings down by gravity, and drops in place with no need for you to locate it or set it in place.

Bill
 
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Bill-
Neat idea. I’d have to check and see if it gets caught on anything while sliding the bed in and out.
 

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