The little challenge

I mentioned a challenge in the last post and didn't want to keep you in suspense.  As you have probably figured out by now, if you have a motorhome things break or act up fairly often.  When you consider it's basically a house that bumps down the road it isn't that surprising although it does get a bit frustrating when it's one thing after another!

We have a sliding cargo tray in both of our basement compartments, the front one is powered, and the rear one is manual.  Our coach came that way from the factory.  Here is a picture of what a cargo tray or "Joey Bed" looks like.

This one is generic, and since it is raining right now it will have to suffice.  As I said the front tray is powered.  On the passenger side there is a hard wired switch that enables you to run the tray out towards you and then send it back in, and on the driver's side there is a small remote control that lets you do the same thing from that side.  So smart me left the basement door open in a hard rain and the remote didn't work, I figured I had fried it, but replaced the battery to see if that was the problem.  Still didn't work.  So I figured I would just get another, but when I found out it was more than $100, I decided I better be SURE it was no good.  I contacted the manufacturer and they said to reprogram the unit and see what happened, then if it didn't work I could be sure it was the remote. Well, at about the same time, we noticed that even with the switch it was reluctant to move sometimes?  So Jan crawled into the basement and pushed on the appropriate  button to initiate the programming and nothing happened???  Now what?  Back to the manufacturer, he says it sounds like your control box is the problem instead.  Not the rain afterall.  Oh great, but okay, we'll have to get another control box.  So I go to move the slide back into the middle or parked position with the switch and it goes the wrong way.  So I run it the other way and it runs right out to the limit towards me!  No good! Now on the powered slide, it is the motor and mechanism that locks the slide in place so it can't move when you are driving the coach.   There is a manual release so I crawl into the basement and pull this big lever to allow the tray to move freely, put it in the middle and realize I have no way to keep it there.  I figure no problem, I'll just release the lever and it will lock in place.  You have to understand that when the tray is in the middle it is tough to crawl in over all the stuff on the tray to get to the lever, anyway good to go I think, so I close the doors and I'm done until I get the part.

Not so fast.  We go to leave the motorhome to go up to the house and Jan yells something is very wrong!  I go out and there is the passenger basement door all bent out as evidently the tray is trying to come out even with the doors closed.  There is an interlock to prevent it, but with a bad box, who knows what is happening.  We look absolutely everywhere for the fuse or breaker for the tray and find nothing!  I can't kill the power to it.  And I can't open the basement door, so we run around to the driver's side, but with all my tools we can't reach the lever nor can we move the tray!  So after leaning all my weight on the sprung basement door we are able to pop it open.  We step back and relax when the motor on the tray starts running on its own again!  So now I grab a pair of dikes and reach in and with a big shower of sparks, cut the wire supplying the power, and finally kill it.

So I crawl in and pull the lever, we block the tray and I try to find the part.  After contacting no less than 10 suppliers, we find out it is a special order and it will take 2 weeks to get no matter who we order from.  We are leaving in a week......  Oh the joy!  Well now we have 2 problems, where to send it, pretty easy to solve, but how are we gonna keep the tray in place so when I go around a corner it doesn't try to come through the basement doors?  We end up rigging a locking system by drilling a couple holes and dropping a pin through to keep the tray in place, not too convenient, but it beats having it moving around damaging things. So now we are good to go until we get the new part in a couple weeks.

Off to New England next Sunday!