brady seal install

[Kurt Ickler]

I have my new Brady seal...2001 Lx40 front slide... (on the shelf until I need it)....now it is time to install it. Next week I will be jumping into this project. I have reviewed (several times) the couple of install threads on other sites.If anybody has words of advice,or words of encouragement please share it. I have the seal, the Loctite 595 adhesive...what else do I need? I saw there are seal retainer clips....are these a necessity or can the old ones be used? If anyone would like a picure sumary ...just let me know!

[Itchintogo]

Yes sir we enjoy picture summaries here. I think this might be the first LX install on the web??? Most of the others have been Lxi as far as I know.

[davidbrady]

Hi Kurt,

I've never done an LX. For some reason I had it in my head that you owned an LXi. Should be essentially the same procedure but the location of items may be different. I have detailed pics of my LXi installation, but nothing for an LX, so yes, it'd be great to do an LX pictorial.

You can reuse the HWH retainer strip, but new retainer is available from Roger Anderson at DRI or Ryan Saari.

You also need some supports to support the outside of the slide body once you remove the plates connecting the slide to the HWH Rams. Here's what I used:


I padded the stand with a section of 2x4. Notice how the slide body is only extended 6 inches or so:


Something to keep in mind is that the slide body should never be reversed in mid position. In other words, fully complete the motion from fully retracted to fully extended and vice versa. As a safety precaution I disabled the lock solenoid pigtail at the HWH slide solenoids. This isn't strictly necessary but it definitely eliminates the possibility of a locking pin piercing the slide body. In the above photos the slide exterior lower body panel is already removed.

First thing is to get the old air seal out. To do that you need to:

(1) dump the suspension and put the coach on its HWH jacks,
(2) locate the HWH slide control solenoids and unplug the "lock solenoid" pigtail (optional),
(3) disconnect the awning arms swing them up and tape them off at the roof,
(4) fully extend the slide and remove the lower body panel (a dozen or so sheet metal screws),
(5) fully retract the slide and then extend it about 6 inches,
(6) locate the HWH air seal manifold and close off the air petcock, at this point you may want to pull a power wire off the Thomas air compressor,
(7) place your jack stands, bottle jacks, and padding under the slide as shown in the pics above,
(8) with the slide body supported unbolt the exterior plates from the HWH rams,
(9) climb inside the bus interior and remove the necessary interior panels to get to the upper plate bolts - there's four of them on each plate, 3/4" wrench, remove the plates,
(10) jack up the slide body slightly to allow insertion of supporting shims or platforms. I used platforms:


Those strips of plastic are polyurethane. The platforms are kind of overkill. You need some sort of stripping but the platforms aren't really necessary. I've seen George Morris and others use strips of the polyurethane inserted between the slide and the body work like this:


What's not shown in the picture are two glide strips that are screwed to your interior floor. These strips are lined with the same material. You need to jack up the slide body far enough to place polyurethane strips between the slide body and the top of the glide strips. This is the bearing surface that you'll use to push the slide body in on. I used platforms, two of them placed on the floor from the interior side to rest the slide on and to serve as a bearing surface. Continuing... Step:

(11) insert your polyurethane bearing surfaces, it's a lot easier if your bottle jack padding isn't obscuring the interior glide strips,
(12) lower the slide body onto the bearing surfaces and push the slide body into the interior of the bus. Push it in far enough to fully expose the air seal. If you go too far you'll push the slide off the roller tracks - don't do this!
(13) the air seal should now be fully exposed and ready for removal.


More to come, stay tuned...

[al perna]

Being New to the LXI slide coach , I would ask the Forum ,How do you know you need a SEAL ?

[BruceSummerlin]

Al, my slide was leaking. I believe it was bad when I bought the coach. After I HWH seal, a mechanic stuck a screwdriver in it by accident . Then I did a Brady seal and I can for the first time hear it inflating and deflating. It's a great sound !

[al perna]

Bruce . by leaking you mean AIR ? that would make sense , the compresor running all the time ??

i ask cause a few times while bringing the slide in or out, I needed to repeat the proscess a few times before

the seal would deflate . that is turn the key on at ignition , turn key at slide wait the 45 or so seconds . the light would come on , but I could not see daylight .

The first few times this happened I tried to move the slide in or out anyway .

this was a mistake as the slide would shake left or right before completly stopping .

I worry during this learning curve if I may have damaged the seal .

[BruceSummerlin]

Al, both. My compressor ran way too much. But if my drivers side was higher in a rainstorm, I would get wet on the sofa. I could never hear air leaking, but if the compressor was off I could see light through the seal. The slide would also hang up on the torn section.

[davidbrady]

Mine developed an air leak that I could hear when deflating the seal. While the air compressor ran and the vacuum pump did its thing, I could hear a whistling sound coming from the upper corner behind the captain's chair. Interestingly, my seal didn't leak when inflated. When inflated the puncture sealed itself against the side of the slide. That's right Al, eventually mine stopped fully deflating leaving the seal to rub against the side of the slide body; however, I never noticed the slide rocking. One thing to remember about our vintage of HWH slides is that you need to leave your finger on the retract/extend button long enough for the hydraulic pump to stop. This allows the sync-cylinder to recenter itself. Plus, whenever I retract the slide I always first extend it again (even though it's already extended) - the slide doesn't move but the pump runs and stops re-centering the sync-cylinder in the process.

[BruceSummerlin]

(03-03-2013 15:10)davidmbrady Wrote:  Mine developed an air leak that I could hear when deflating the seal. While the air compressor ran and the vacuum pump did its thing, I could hear a whistling sound coming from the upper corner behind the captain's chair. Interestingly, my seal didn't leak when inflated. When inflated the puncture sealed itself against the side of the slide. That's right Al, eventually mine stopped fully deflating leaving the seal to rub against the side of the slide body; however, I never noticed the slide rocking. One thing to remember about our vintage of HWH slides is that you need to leave your finger on the retract/extend button long enough for the hydraulic pump to stop. This allows the sync-cylinder to recenter itself. Plus, whenever I retract the slide I always first extend it again (even though it's already extended) - the slide doesn't move but the pump runs and stops re-centering the sync-cylinder in the process.

David, explain you're last statement please. If I retract and let it run till it stops, then extend, won't it start to move out?
Thanks

[davidbrady]

Hey Bruce,

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon this nugget, but the idea is meant to re-sync the synchronization cylinder before starting any movement of the slide. It's a safeguard that's probably more important if you have the slide extended for a prolonged period, months. In this case if there's leakage anywhere in the hydraulics then the slide body hydraulic rams may not articulate uniformly. HWH knows that overtime and with limited use the synchronization cylinder can become out-of-sync so they built in a method to ensure that it can resync itself. To re-sync, the synchronization cylinder has to hit its end-of-travel where bleed valves open allowing fluid to flow freely through the cylinder, thus re-syncing.

So, say you've had the slide extended for a few months. Instead of simply retracting the slide and risking an out of sync synchronization cylinder and a racked slide body, you push and hold extend which starts the hydraulic pump which forces fluid thru the synchronization cylinder (because the relief valves are open connecting all internal reservoirs forcing any air out of them), and you hold extend until the over current sensors shut off the hydraulic pump. (The slide doesn't move, it's already extended and we're just extending it a second time). Now you're sure that the synchronization cylinder will do its job and keep both rams tracking together. So, you now push retract and you bring the slide in. You can do the same thing when extending the slide; i.e., first push retract and allow the pump to push fluid thru the synchronization cylinder.