It finally happened – the dreaded Schwintek failure. I had a sick feeling this day would come sooner than later. Just as I was putting out my Kitchen slide I got what seemed to be a blip in the electricity going to the slide. I thought “Wow, that’s weird, that’s never happened before”. The slide continued to go out but it seemed a bit off on one side. So I tried to bring the slide in and only one side would move.

I went to the controller which is inconveniently located behind a closed panel in the bathroom and found the error code; it was flashing 8 red, and 2 Green in sequence. The Control Panel lists the following error for his sequence: ” Hall signal not present: Encoder is not providing a signal. Usually a wiring problem“. OK, a little vague and general, for instance; what is the encoder and where is it located? My research on-line leads me to believe that the encoder is part of the motor and relays information about the RPMs of the motor to the controller. This is apparently how the motors stay in sync.

The Controllers for the Schwintek Slides

I ended up resetting the controller to bypass the system and pull the room back in. Bypassing the system basically tells the controller to ignore any features but electricity to the unit.

Please don’t think that this is an easy fix that you can use long-term. Many issues can be made worse if you decide to ignore the controller over time. It’s always best to determine the root cause and then address it.

If you have read my previous post regarding the Schwintek system, you know that I am not a fan. There are a number of reasons for that, the main being that if your slide gets stuck in the “In” position you will not be able to access the screw on the outside of the trailer to free up the motor so you can replace it.

And of course now we are two weeks away from our first (hopefully annual) family camping trip to Oklahoma. So, when it rains it pours. Travel Trailers are like dogs; dogs never get sick during the week, just the weekends when your vet office is closed. The same with Travel Trailers, except they have issues right before a major trip. They also seem to have issues when RV Repair facilities are closed.

So now I need to decide based on conversations with Lippert and my RV Guys, what the next steps are. The motors are not cheap (the after market ones are much cheaper but that’s a little worrisome). If Lippert tells me that 9 out of 10 times this is a motor issue, then I need to decide if I tackle this or hand it off to a dealership.

So I called Lippert and the Tech told me that 6 things can be the cause of that specific issue.

  1. Voltage Issue
  2. Ground Short
  3. Bad control Module
  4. Bad Harness
  5. Bad Motor
  6. Bad Mechanism

Now it became a matter of ruling things out. Since the system could be overridden and went in smoothly with no issues, I could rule number 6 out. The other tests would need to be done after I pulled the rig out into the driveway so I had room to work on it.

I called my RV Guy Charles in the meantime and he said it just probably got out of sync and didn’t think I would have a problem now. Well, as it turned out Charles was correct. When I put it in the driveway and operated the slide it worked normally. So, I now believe the power interruption to the slide while I was putting it out (The wow that’s weird incident) was the cause, and this caused the slide motors to get out of sync.

I am glad it’s working again but I am still nervous that my problem may not be over, but we will find out in a few weeks when we go camping. I am crossing my fingers. Regardless of the outcome, I certainly understand more about this system today than I did yesterday.

I probably would have no problem replacing a motor by myself in the future but if the problem were in the wiring harness, that would a much bigger issue to tackle by myself. Electric Issues are never fun; so let’s hope everything is good!