bottom of the bed slide in rear slide out

[cvin]

doing some research on upgrading the mattress/mattress base in my unit

wondered how firm the bottom of the bed slide was, especially if i put something like the froli bed system in it
seems if it is not firm and flat there would be no improvement no matter what you put on top of it

so looked under the mattress last nite and see that the board under it seems to flex a decent amount just pushing on it with your hand

in these rear bed slides have others added thicker plywood or something to them on the bottoms?


thanks for any input on this

[sourdough]

I have not modified the base under our mattress but intend to. I replaced the OEM mattress with a much heavier residential mattress. It seems to bow in the middle due to the weight and lack of support. Revising the base is on my to do list....;)

[BigTexRex]

I've replaced the wood because I wanted to put in a slightly bigger mattress, so I removed the chipboard and put in custom cut plywood...very easy to do.

[Frank G]

Saturday we tore apart the bed on our 2016, 325RL Laredo. The OSB sheets were in two pieces with no bracing between them or additional supports. I took some pictures but lost them. The seam was across the bed mostly centered. I left the front piece in place and glued and screwed a 2x6 x 48" halfway under the front piece and attached it to the side boards. This allowed the bottom OSB sheet to lie on the 2x6 supporting it in the middle. We screwed this sheet in place without glue so it can be removed. This firmed everything up and will try it soon.


Hoped this helped

[cvin]

Thanks for all the info guys

thinking I will get my handyman out so we could take mine apart and see what we could do to beef it up also

Bigtex how thick of plywood did you put in yours?

I am pretty concerned about weight especially since I may end up adding a little bit heavier mattress soon
And my trailer has that weird rear bed slide with nothing for support except the cables...

[cvin]

looked at this again tonite and looking at it from inside/the top i think the walls of the slide are put down on top of the bottom part of the bed
not seeing any way to take it apart other than take a jigsaw, cut the wood down the center and try to see what is under it like that

where it is parked right now i cannot put the slide out , will move it and do that if you guys think we can put more supports in from the bottom, i have no idea how that bed slide is put together

considering just putting 3/4 inch plywood cut to fit over the whole thing? would like to see under there and add supports- sure it needs it- but wondering if just doing the plywood would work, thoughts?

[tech740]

If you are trying to stiffen the sheet of plywood the mattress rests on, why not just put another piece of plywood underneath and screw them together. Two pieces of wood screwed together will not flex easily at all. And is stronger than one piece the same thickness. The screws will not allow it to flex much if at all. I built some wood ramps for an old flat bed trailer this way. 8klb tractor and they didn't give. Just thinking that this would make it so that you don't have to pull the entire frame apart that the mattress sets on. Maybe I am missing something.

[cvin]

Hmm we did not think of doing that

Handyman was just here and he agrees looks like the walls of the slide are on top on the bottom, so other than trying to cut that thin piece of wood covering out from the top and maybe getting supports in there somehow and then plywood over the top not sure what else to do

Found a few references on another forum about one sagging from the bottom and keystone taking it apart and adding 2x4 wood supports under warranty but no one saw it apart and others argued the bed slide is metal framed and that did not make sense...

At this point we were thinking of just adding 3/4 plywood over the top

But will consider this method of doing the 2 pieces screwed together for strength

I will take some pics of the top of the bed and post them here in a little bit

[Gary-n-Liz]

We have an Outback Terrain 2015 with the rear slide. We replaced the OEM mattress, but put a sheet of thin sub-flooring over what was originally there. Seems to be working fine.
After a few attempts with Keystone, they finally said the slide could support 750 pounds, so we just added up our weights, mattress etc. and make sure we got nowhere near that number. If you're looking for a good mattress provider, Mattress Insider in Colorado sells excellent products cut to the size you need. It's their claim to fame; they also call you to verify the measurements you gave them so you get what you need in spite of yourself.

[cvin]

hey gary is thin sub flooring stronger or equal to 3/4 inch plywood? i would be very open to anything that is less weight and as strong

not too worried about being overweight on the slide, just figure it is built like the rest of the camper meaning not great
so any help i can give it i want to

disappointed it looks difficult to see the actual frame/supports under there, if i could make it stronger i would


i will check out mattress insider, thanks for the tip

[cvin]

wanted to update this

first tech740 the bed does not have any plywood on it, just a thin sheet of some kind of flimsy board

gary i went to a woodshop today and we talked over different things to put down and they thought the subflooring was a good idea, so that is what i got today

before we had lifted the mattress up but not taken it out

today i removed in for mondays install at the wood shop
and i see there is another seam where you can pull up the staples and see what is underneath

the bed is supported with metal tubing and better supported than i expected
in between the metal tubing is that same white styrofoam looking stuff that is in the floor of this trailer

definitely wont hurt to support it better with the subfloor but it was not as bad as i feared, it did seem kind of lumpy so hoping the subfloor will give a more solid/smooth base

took some pictures for anyone else wanting to see how it is made and i put the measuring tape there to give some idea of how far apart they are

there are metal tubes running front to back but i did not pull the wood up or cut it out of there to see how many cross tubes there are if any
the sides of that thin sheet are under the walls

closer to the outer sides there is one support close to the wall and what looks like 2 bigger tubes right next to each other a little further in, not sure if those are actual supports or some kind of channels for the cable slide...
tried to take pics of this also

rather than post a bunch of pics in this thread figure i will put them in my album folder if someone wants to see how the rear bed slides are made

hope this helps someone else

[cvin]

wanted to update this

took it to the shop to have them put the subfloor in, watching the relatively small guy crawl around on top of the bed with and without the subfloor was pretty discouraging
in fact could not tell there was a whole lot of difference with the wood in
we used close to 3/4 inch subfloor

i was standing back in the toy hauler inside door area and you could really see how much it was moving

the bed was in - which i do not think matters- but the bottom was really flexing way more than i expected as he moved around up there

not sure what to think
guess it is possible it has a broken weld/welds somewhere, but that is going to be difficult to diagnose
would have to pull the new wood and cut out that entire thin wood covering and hope we could see the welds everywhere

may get a new mattress and go from there but right now pretty discouraged
although have to say not at all surprised, goes right along with the rest of the quality of the trailer


gary any chance you noticed how much flex yours had when you were working on it?

[cvin]

update

been using the original mattress on top of the subfloor we put in the bottom of the bed slide and it seems much better just with that support....

so getting a new mattress has moved down the list of things to do