My third and hopefully last blog about our kitchen slide Schwintek motor. For the details on how we got to this point click here.

My Son Jeff and Daughter In-law Corrine arrived at camp yesterday afternoon. Tammy and I went down to see their cabin which was really nice and is on the lake here at Sequoyah State Park in Oklahoma. At 4:15 P.M. I turned to Tammy and said that I didn’t think my motor was going to be delivered; because I hadn’t gotten an amazon delivery confirmation message. On a whim I opened my Amazon App and saw it actually had been delivered. So Jeff and I went to the camp office where it had been placed in their Mailbox by the UPS driver.

Now, before I started on this project I wanted to call Lippert and ask some questions about installing the new motor. The trick will be to line up the four pins while getting the d-shaft to line up with the receiving end of the torque shaft. Here were my questions for Lippert:

  1. Can I use an adjustable wrench to manually turn the d-shaft so its lines up correctly? Or do i need to use the electric harness to turn the motor? Their Answer regarding the wrench was “I don’t know..probably not”. He recommended using the wiring harness after the controller was put in over-ride mode.
  2. Is the wiring harness on top of the motor supposed to be facing the rear of the inside wall or the side of the inside wall? their Answer was vague ”yeah sort of”.
  3. LCI instructions call for silicone applied to the inside seal, I did not believe that applied in my case. Their answer ”Maybe”. The only reason I asked this question was that I really didn’t see any silicone when I pulled that seal back to remove the old motor.

So needless to say I wasn’t overly impressed with the tech I talked to. However, I have watched at least 20 videos on how to replace the motor; so, I felt pretty good about getting the new motor installed. My only concern was how long it would take to line up the pins in the bottom of the motor to their corresponding holes.

Note the D-shaft and Pins on bottom of motor

Jeff came over to the camper at 7:00 AM the next day and we moved the kitchen slide in 1 foot. I pushed the slide button to retract the room. This moved the right side of the slide into the kitchen as Jeff pushed the bad side in manually. Then I got on top of the couch next to the slide. This allowed me to look down into the coupler to see where the D-Shaft needed to be positioned. I slipped the motor up and into its collar, and into the coupler. The pins were maybe a 32nd of an inch from their holes. I gently nudged the slide room out; and the motor dropped right into place. Beware, the smallest nudge of the room moves the motor quite a bit.

Next, I went up on the roof and replaced the set screw. Then I went inside the travel trailer and re-timed the slide room. I would say that re-timing the slide room took longer than installing the motor. All in All, this was a twenty minute job at most to install the new motor. The process was anti-climactic…just the way I like it.

An hour later I was cooking breakfast for the entire family, and then Jeff and I hit the golf course. This issue did not interfere with our vacation at all except for the stress of the first evening.

Get those taters on the Blackstone!

Now our plan is to pick up a few spare motors because this could happen anytime; and I do not want to be scrambling to find and replace a motor in 100 degree heat again!

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