What's with the no under the bed storage on Laredo 5th wheel?

[Susido]

One of the first things I intend to do with my new 2014 329RE is remove the plywood under the mattress and see if there's any space I can make into usable storage. I know there's a slide mechanism under there but all the other 5th wheels I looked at with bed slides had about 1/2 the bed base available with a separate lid on gas struts. Is this just cost savings thing with the Larado?

[Road-King]

We have a Alpine 5er. I was told that the fresh water tank was under that plywood... Let me know what you find.

[bsmith0404]

Our Alpine has a small amount of storage under the bed (about 6" deep). It's a good spot to put the recliner & couch covers along with some bedding and extra pillows. Other than that, can't get much more in there. I actually forget it's there most of the time. I was told the rest of teh area under it was hydraulics for the slide. Not sure why it was omitted on the Laredo, but I would have to assume the space is being used. Storage is such a big concern/selling point that I can't imagine Keystone wasting potential storage space for nothing more than saving a couple dollars on some plywood and gas struts.

[gkainz]

Our 2010 245RE has under bed storage. The plywood is hinged and has gas struts.

[KanTC]

As gkainz said, our Laredo also had full under-bed storage but it was a non-slide bed & much smaller/lighter FW than yours.

I'm guessing it may have more to do with your floorplan design than an attempt at "cost savings". Chances are they're trying to discourage owners from using that under-bed space as storage.

Bed slide-out mechanism aside, the 329RE already has 3 (of the 4) slide-outs, the kitchen appliances -AND- the full bath on the streetside of the RV. With the table/chairs option (IPO the booth),
that's even less counterweight in the curb side slide-out. Granted, I'm not an engineer ;) but maybe they're trying to discourage what could (possibly?) become a balance/weight/overload issue.

Just some food for thought.....
Terri, the Chevy co-pilot :)

[denverpilot]

Our dealer showed us that there is a bit of the mechanism for the slide that ends up inside there and said that was the reason for the warning.

If you protected things from jamming up the moving parts in there, I suspect it's probably not probably not a problem.

Our bedroom slide in the Laredo definitely does a "tip" thing as it comes in and goes out. Aside from what the dealer said, it may be bad to have additional weight on it as it's going over the "lip" there somehow.

It leans toward the foot of the bed until the majority of the weight gets outside and then it rocks back toward the direction of the head of the bed. Dealer said this was completely normal for that particular slide out when I asked if it needed an adjustment.

[Susido]

While it does seem the 329RE could suffer from some weight imbalance, having a storage compartment at the foot of the bed could only help that since that part of the bed would be approximately centered when the slide is out and mostly on the passenger side when retracted.

Anyway I am curious what's under there, any compartment I could possibly create would be partitioned off from the slide mechanism.

[Campy]

My new Cougar is empty under there except for the slide guts. There is no way to store stuff under there either because of it moving around.

[rabreen]

My 2014 Cougar 327RES also had the plywood screwed down leaving no storage. When spring comes around I am going to do the same thing as you and take a peek under there.

[Bill & Deb]

One of the first things I intend to do with my new 2014 329RE is remove the plywood under the mattress and see if there's any space I can make into usable storage. I know there's a slide mechanism under there but all the other 5th wheels I looked at with bed slides had about 1/2 the bed base available with a separate lid on gas struts. Is this just cost savings thing with the Larado?

Susido

I have a 2014 Keystone Laredo 329RE, same trailer. There is no storage space underneath the bed. I removed the screws from the lower part of the bed plywood and when we get to where we are going we put stuff into the location. You do not want to travel with stuff there as the slide mechanism is there. We also use green garbage bags incase there is any grease there.

In our case we are snow birds so we put our winter coats, boots, gloves etc. along with an extra heater and a fan. When we leave we move that stuff to the back seat of our truck.

Cheers
Bill