Slides on Newer Birds

[David Brady]

Hi Lloyd,




Regarding the aux air compressor not pressurizing the

system, many of the older birds have the same issue.

Try this: when
leveling your coach and before you turn off the

ignition but after
everything else is set, try turning the susp dump

valve back on for
about five seconds before you turn off the

ignition. This changes the
air flow circuits and should allow

the aux compressor to pressurize the system. It's worth

a try. This info is from Bennie.



I've always wandered why more 380/450 owners don't


speak up. On the one hand you may be granted more


factory favors by remaining silent, on the other, banding


together on a public forum will certainly pressure BB to


step up to the plate and provide real solutions. Thanks


for the clarification on the types of failures you are seeing


and on the complexities of the systems on your coach.


Wow, very enlightening. I now better understand your


frustration. Your systems are quite a bit different from mine,

but the wanderlodge community is a real hands on set of people,

and can probably offer solutions for many of your issues.



Over inflating a slide seal may actually cause leaks. If you


consider that the seal is say 40 ft long and 1" wide even at


10 psi it exerts 4800 lbs of force on the slide. This can deflect


the sides of the slide causing the gaps between the slide and


the coach to enlarge. Also, when installing the air seal, special


attention must be paid to the corners. The HWH instruction


sheet details this, but many installers ignore the instructions.


If not installed correctly, the corners can crimp which allows


a gap for water to enter, and over inflating can actually make


the crimping worse. Install a pressure gauge and turn the pressure


down.




Best of luck,


David




Lloyd Chaffin wrote:

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

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