I was hoping that things would go smoothly as we set up after arriving at our campground in Oklahoma. However, it only took five minutes before our Schwintek motor failed. It became apparent quickly that the motor was completely shot. That’s when all the fun began.

I started by doing a number of trouble shooting steps to rule out the controller. Of course all of this involved getting into the fetal position on the bathroom floor and working with the controller. The worst part was unplugging the motors at the controller and getting them plugged in again. The controller is so close to the floor it is almost impossible to find where they plug in.

Next I called Lippert to confirm my diagnosis. It was pretty much controlled chaos in the trailer. It was over 100 degrees in there and I was coating the floor with sweat. I don’t sweat a little, I go into full drench mode. Meanwhile Tammy is outside at the picnic table trying to keep Eva happy. Worse yet, Eva’s food is trapped in a cupboard that we can’t access until that slide is extended.

Well now that we know the motor is toast we have to figure out if we can get a mobile RV service to come and replace it. After trying eight different RV repair places we knew we were on our own. This meant I would need to find a ladder. The staff at the Park Office told me that the maintenance department did not have one available for me to use. I have to say, that was really disappointing. Then Tammy had a stroke of genius.

She asked ”can you go up in the roof and hang over the side to remove the screw”? What a great idea. I got on the roof pulled back the rubber strip and the screw was almost all the way out. I was able to remove it by hand, thats pretty sad. So add that to my inspection list for the future!

I came back in the trailer and popped the old motor out and tammy and I moved the slide little by little to the fully extended position. After inspecting the motor I could see the red power wire was loose and had crossed over and fused to the negative wire. In my opinion these harnesses should be plug and play at the motor. However, they are direct soldered to a multi-wire terminal. This is a horrible design except for Lippert who can sell a whole new motor when a wire breaks.

The next stop was Amazon for a replacement. I had it shipped to the camp office. The camp office in only open until 5:00 PM each day so that could be a problem.

On the bright side my son Jeff will be here on Sunday afternoon and we can get the motor put in on Monday. In addition the temperatures will be much cooler. Stay tuned for more fun!!!