Slides on Newer Birds

[Lloyd Chaffin]

David thanks, that is some good information and I thought we might
better start another thread since I got so far off of RIV. My seals
have always leaked when it rains. A new seal made it somewhat better
but still leaks. Wendell at Fort Valley actually raised the air
pressure in my seals to 25lbs because I complained about them leaking
and he said that is all you can do. He said that would not hurt them.
After getting your post I will go check my pressure and make sure I
turn it down to what you suggest because keeping it high has not
helped my leaking issue.

You are very very lucky to have the HWH slide. Count your blessings.
Our slides where designed and built by Bluebird. The bedroom slide is
run by a 12V electric screw motor which needs 120V to work. Yes that's
correct. They put a 120v to 12v converter on the bedroom slide to
make it work so you must have "shore power" to move your "12v" slide.
Go figure. The living room slide works off of air pressure and needs
over 100lbs of pressure before it will move. So when you get ready to
move your coach in the morning you must start the engine and air up
the system while waking people up just to put your slide in. Yes, I
have a 120V Aux compressor but it will not air up the system with the
suspension dumped. It just runs forever and never airs up but if you
start the engine it airs right up. Fort Valley says that's
normal.Both slides have separate computers with "software" involved
along with several different sensors, air activated and electric
locking pistons, and a few other goodies to make either slide work.
The computers often get confused and have to be rebooted. The
hardware and software that run the slides was not made by Bluebird
and is very difficult to get or fix. Shall I go on? That's just for
starters.

Yes, David I really like my M380 or I would have gave up on it
several months ago. It does drive like a dream and is very well built
frame and suspension wise (I never even mentioned the ALUCIBOND
issues whish is another whole story). I know I sound like a
complainer but I have really spent over 2 years working on my M380
and taking it back and forth to Fort Valley. I
think I have earned a little venting time. Believe me I have wanted
to talk to other owners who have gone through this but there are not
a lot of M380 owners to talk to but I do have a couple good M380
friends and yes they have had hell too getting their coaches fixed.
Yall have problems too but at least there are a bunch of people
to talk to on the older coaches. I may be wrong but one reason why I
am talking now on this forum is because nobody seems to know what
happened with M380's and LXI 450's. We have been kind of a quiet
group mainly I think because we all had so many problems that we
didn't want to talk about publicly in fear that we may never get our
coaches fixed. Some comments have been made like "greedy" and "not
supporting CCW". Even though I didn't buy my 380 new I still
purchased
a almost new (had 7K miles on it) Bluebird when I could have bought a
Prevost or something else. Don't you think that maybe the 380 and 450
owners pumping millions of dollars into CCW buying these coaches has
possibly helped keep them a float? Just a thought. Would CCW already
be defunked if nobody bought a 380 or 450? So why does CCW
treat us like crap? Again I feel so sorry for the 450 owners because
there problems surpass mine by far. My heart goes out to them. At
least I can use my 380 now and I'm only out 10 to 15 thousand and
hundreds of hours getting mine fixed (Under Warranty). Some of these
people's coaches are still sitting and can't be used with no fix in
sight. The only reason why I'm not in that boat with them is that I
couldn't afford a 450 when I purchased my 380 or I would have bought
one and my dream coach would be parked at Fort Valley too.

Thanks for the technical tips and I am going to go check my seal
pressure right now and turn it down. I haven't given up yet and
thanks for letting me vent some!

Lloyd Chaffin
2004 M380
Haslet TX