throgmartin

The slide you are talking about is called a flush floor slide. It is more then likely located on your driver front. During deployment the outside of the slide drops down and once fully deployed the inside drops into position to where it is flush with the inside floor. These slides can go out of adjustment. We get a lot of them in our shop that need to be adjusted. We also routinely get customers come in for us to re-adjust their slide after another shop created problems by adjusting it. We had a customer recently that came in from Texas after a shop there adjusted his slide. It wiped the puck lights off the ceiling and dented the roof of his slide and shifted the entire slide left inside the wall.
I can tell you for certain that you have an RVA or Lippert slide. You do NOT have an HWH slide. Monaco never used HWH slides on Knights or Diplomats. Adjusting flush floor slides is tricky. The adjustment procedure is actually performed in reverse. Going too far in either direction can rip your headliner or worse yet damage your slide assembly. This is why I never instruct people on how to adjust a flush floor slide. Dustin and Mike, who are my technicians are experts at making these adjustments. There is a lot of measuring involved as well as their trained ear which hears the motor during retraction and extension. Because they have performed so many slide adjustments they can actually hear when a motor is straining. They know exactly where to look and take measurements for preventing binding as well. Rarely is a flush floor slide adjustment a DYI project. It takes a great deal of experience to obtain a perfectly adjusted slide.
There are a multitude of problems that can cause a slide not to operate correctly. Rotted slide floors, refrigerators that are on slides, bent ram's, jack bolts coming loose as well as other problems. I have no way of diagnosing a slide issue without watching it and inspecting it in person. My advice is to be sure the shop you take it to has an experienced tech who knows these slides and how to properly adjust them. I have seen and worked on many slides in my career that techs adjusted. They thought they knew what they were doing and instead made things worse. I have also seen techs want to perform a multitude of work on a slide when all it needed was a 30 minute adjustment procedure. Sadly, we bill out a lot of labor hours during the course of the year because of techs who think they have it figured out. It is frustrating for us trying to figure out what a previous tech did to a slide. The Texas customer is a perfect example. They replaced the puck lights but never told him about the dented roof or the slide getting shifted. It took Dustin and I over 2 hours to get the slide working even somewhat close to where it needed to be before we could get it back to factory specs. Do your research before rolling into a service center for a slide adjustment. Just because they say they are good does not make it true.

Fixing delamination is a highly skilled process. It requires not only knowledge of the process but also making sure you use the correct materials.
Monaco's walls, which are fiberglass bonded to 1/4 " luann plywood, is attached to the superstructure ( wall braces ) using a specialized glue. The top and bottom of each panel is seamed and attached and then covered by the upper and lower beltlines. Delamination is caused by water intrusion into the sidewalls ( typically through a popped beltline or leaking window frame ). The Luan board rots and the fiberglass then has no rigid structure to support it causing it to bow outward. Because the luan board is so thin it rots quickly when exposed to moisture/water.
Fixing a large delam area is ultra expensive and even fixing a small area is very costly. Finding a service center to do the work is even harder. There are only 2 shops that I know of that do wall replacements the correct way and have the knowledge base to affect a perfect delam repair. The process is painstaking, requiring the right environment, temperatures, etc. It also requires the correct clamping process employed in all the right areas using specific bonding agents.
I was brought in to testify in a court case as an expert witness early this year in a delamination job that went bad. One of our members here had his coach " re-walled " at a Florida dealer and the walls delaminated and popped in a few short days. His coach was reduced to a 40,000 lb worthless piece of rolling fiberglass. Thankfully he took pictures of everything including each step in the process as the coach was being re-skinned. It didn't take me long to spot all the wrong processes they used. When he complained because the majority of his walls popped and delaminated, the dealer told him to go pound sand. So he hired a lawyer. The law firm sued the dealer and their insurance company. The insurance company elected to go to trial. That is when the coach owners law firm brought me in as an expert witness. My deposition and supporting documents helped persuade the insurance company to settle at the 11th hour just before trial. Obviously because of the settlement agreement I cannot name the dealer or the member here.
Here is my advice - If you have a delaminated wall........... Leave it the hell alone and live with it. 1.) The process to have it repaired can easily exceed the value of your coach. 2.) You will play hell trying to find a service center that truly knows the process and knows what they are doing. I have heard it all before - " My Uncle Jacks neighbor is a great fiberglass guy and works on corvettes ". Trust me when I tell you the process for professionally repairing delamination on a motorcoach wall far exceeds most body guys abilities. I know of two people who are truly experts at this process and both are no longer in the RV Industry. One of my very dear friends supervised the building of your coach at the factory and was in charge of the body construction department. He was Monaco's number 1 guy in the body building department. If you asked him he would tell you the same thing I told you - live with the delamination. There have been coach owners who have repaired small delam areas on their coach walls before by gutting the wall from the inside and replacing small sections of the luan board leaving the fiberglass in tact. How it turned out I am not sure as I never seen the finished job. I don't recommend it unless you are one helluva craftsman, have a great deal of experience working with adhesives and can build jig's and know how and where to brace/clamp the outside area.
Just as a footnote, I have delamination on my coach. I fixed it by not looking at that area. Problem solved. 🙂