Torn Darco on slide bottom repair

[ChuckS]

Thought folks here might be interested in this repair I did to some torn Darco covering on one of my main hydraulic slide outs. The OEM Darco covering held up pretty good for 8 years.. late last year on our last trip of the year I noticed the outer edges on both side of this main slide starting to fray more and wear down to the bottom floor material..

Replacing the Darco covering would require the slide to be removed from the unit. This is not beyond my abilities to remove a slideout .. but I saw no sense in going through all this and recovering with same material..

NOTE.. the wear shown in this short video was not caused by something under the slide floor outer edges.. it is.. must fair wear and tear in my opinion

Note.. with the thickness of the UHMW strip I used for this repair the slide out required NO adjustment in the vertical height and side to side alignment was perfect

The video gives you a quick overview of the damage to the Darco, the material used for repair, and how the repair was accomplished

This repair is for hydraulic slide outs that use OEM wear bars to ride up onto and travel along the Darco bottom..

I see no reason why this repair and material couldn’t be used on those slides using rollers underneath..

That said.. if you have an electric in wall Schwin Tech slide I can’t say how this repair would affect the tracking of the two slide motors and their gear teeth along the wall mounted tracks..

For the hydraulic thru the frame style slide out the gear pack teeth remain fully meshed with each other during all travel motions…as shown in this video

https://youtu.be/EtgzzhXodlk

[sourdough]

Chuck thanks for the video and information. Lots of folks have problems with the darco material as have I. Hopefully this will give those experiencing issues a path to repair. I have used the uhmw on 2 trailers and it works well.

[Folkie]

Chuck,
How did you machine the 37 deg bevel in the UHMW?

[roadglide]

I have uhmw I installed 5 years ago . I have cable slides with wear bar shot so I raised the slide and sled the uhmw on top of the wear bar. I used it on the ends only. The Draco is still very good on my camper . I would never let it get that bad water flows down and under the slide .