Today was a maintenance day for the Barbarian Invader. We have had a slide-out room gasket loose and fouled up since right after we bought the trailer and the time had finally come to fix it with some very effective but extremely messy sealant we bought in Ohio last year.
If the bean counters at the manufacturing facility had let the builders use proper sealants when they built the trailer, this repair effort would not have been necessary. Instead, during manufacture the builders elected to use no sealant whatsoever and gaskets suspended from above using only friction to keep them in place soon were overwhelmed by simple gravity and fell from their perches.
One of the reasons why the builders did not use sealants is they are extremely difficult to apply in-place unless you are less than 5″ in height, have more than the usual issue of elbows and wrists and/or were a previous circus contortionist. After clearing all our stuff out of the way, we collapsed the slide-outs to a position where we could work on them and we started. Considerable grunting and cursing ensued, followed by hurried clean-ups of sealant accidentally ejected from a large tube while application to the nearly invisible target was attempted. After some time, we believed we had finished but found some problems when we attempted to return the slide-outs to their extended position.
Again the slide-outs were retracted and after some additional applications, spills, cursing, finger-crossing and application of pure will, the slide-outs were again returned to their extended positions without apparent issue. I just hope I have not sealed the slide-outs in their extended position permanently. I’ll let you know when we need to move on February 5.