Saturday, June 2nd, 2018
We were packed and ready to leave on our long-awaited, much
anticipated trip to Alaska. Michael had set up his camera on the tripod in
front of the Siesta, set the timer, hurried to get into the picture with Nina
and me, and the shutter clicked, capturing our eagerness for departure. One thing remained before buckling in: To retract
the slide -out. Easy to do with a push of the Extend/Retract button in our Class C van-type 24 -feet long Four Winds RV. I pushed Retract. Nothing happened.
I pushed it again, and again, and after several more attempts, still nothing.
Now Michael began diagnosing the issue and just like that, we’re smack dab in
the middle of our first mechanical problem – before we’re out of the driveway!
It took some doing, about an hour and a half’s worth of
fiddling, of checking wires, checking fuses, disconnecting wires and
reconnecting until Michael decided to disconnect the slide-out motor
altogether. He then attached one end of a rope to the slide-out on the inside
of the RV and the other end of the rope out the door to the John Deere riding lawn mower. It
worked! By slowly driving forward across the yard, away from the RV, he was
able to pull in the slide-out.
And we drove without another glitch to our first stop – 4 ½
hours south to our house in Ypsilanti, where we spent that evening and the next
day with our daughter, Ellen, and grandchildren, Lillian and Bobby. (Son-in-law
Bobby was attending a wedding out east, but arrived home Sunday evening in time to say good-bye.)
Michael found the problem with the slide-out while we were
there. It was a wiring problem, a
loose wire, something that probably happened a couple of days prior when he was
working under the kitchen sink. Okay. Now
we were ready to roll!
Monday morning, 9:00, we were out of our Ypsilanti driveway
and getting onto I-94, heading west, as in west (and then north) to Alaska!
Thanks for posting!
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