Slide Topper Issue

[timlisajax]

Hi Tim

I found the link for the instructions on the lippert site

https://lci-support-doc.s3.amazonaws...cd-0001265.pdf

I have to replace another one myself. After nearly 4 years, the living room slide topper separated, probably dry rot.

Ordering a roll so I can probably replace all of mine, since there are holes on the others.

Mike

Hi Mike - thanks very much for the link.

I read elsewhere on the forum where someone used Gorilla glue to the fabric around the polycord. Not sure I want to deal with all that.

Mine is a Carefree topper but I assume the installation would be similar. One thing I don't understand is why the roller has to come off the camper. Seems I should be able to tension the roller, and slide the material in the roller channel and the channel on the camper at the same time. I may be overthinking this.

I found a 50' x 4' box of Solera material on Amazon for $166. It claims it fits Solera, Carefree and Dometic. I don't need 50' but may go ahead and order this as I'll have leftover material for if/when another one comes apart.

Question - did you have to take your roller off or were you able to do the job leaving the roller on your camper?

[Walaby]

I took mine off. Just seemed like it would be easier. You could probably do it with it on.


If you do it before I do, let me know how it goes.

I shoulda tried Amazon. i went ahead and bought from Lippert when I was online getting instructions. Woulda saved probably 50 bucks. I always do check Amazon. Not sure why I ignored my own norm.

Mike

[Always Learning]

Hi Mike - thanks very much for the link.

I read elsewhere on the forum where someone used Gorilla glue to the fabric around the polycord. Not sure I want to deal with all that.

Mine is a Carefree topper but I assume the installation would be similar. One thing I don't understand is why the roller has to come off the camper. Seems I should be able to tension the roller, and slide the material in the roller channel and the channel on the camper at the same time. I may be overthinking this.

I found a 50' x 4' box of Solera material on Amazon for $166. It claims it fits Solera, Carefree and Dometic. I don't need 50' but may go ahead and order this as I'll have leftover material for if/when another one comes apart.

Question - did you have to take your roller off or were you able to do the job leaving the roller on your camper?

I have Carefree Alpine toppers on my 337. Never liked them, strange hardware, cheap fabric only one spring. I had a shop replace the fabric and they took the roller tube down. With the tube down they were able to roll the fabric on the tube and get it smooth and straight. They also rewound the spring with the number of winds specified in the manual. Now the toppers works great and are tight and minimal flapping. From what I saw the shop guys doing it takes two people with ladders to make the job go smooth. I have watched some videos where they put the fabric on as you describe but they were shorter slides. You kitchen slide if like mine is pretty long.

Pick a warm day to put the fabric on. Gets stiff in cold weather.

[timlisajax]

I took mine off. Just seemed like it would be easier. You could probably do it with it on.


If you do it before I do, let me know how it goes.

I shoulda tried Amazon. i went ahead and bought from Lippert when I was online getting instructions. Woulda saved probably 50 bucks. I always do check Amazon. Not sure why I ignored my own norm.

Mike

I'm the same way. Usually check Amazon first but at times have paid more elsewhere. I priced the 50' roll at ETrailer, Tweedy's, and a few others. Amazon was best by far.

I'll let you know how it goes. May be a week or so as I'm getting new tires, repacking bearings, replacing shocks, etc. Lots of stuff to take care of after our last trip.

[timlisajax]

I have Carefree Alpine toppers on my 337. Never liked them, strange hardware, cheap fabric only one spring. I had a shop replace the fabric and they took the roller tube down. With the tube down they were able to roll the fabric on the tube and get it smooth and straight. They also rewound the spring with the number of winds specified in the manual. Now the toppers works great and are tight and minimal flapping. From what I saw the shop guys doing it takes two people with ladders to make the job go smooth. I have watched some videos where they put the fabric on as you describe but they were shorter slides. You kitchen slide if like mine is pretty long.

Pick a warm day to put the fabric on. Gets stiff in cold weather.

Agree with the cheap fabric. Good to know that there is one spring. I may try it without taking the roller down. My thought is the fabric will align itself with one or two extensions of the slide room. If it doesn't work, I'll pull the roller off. And yes, the roller is about 14' long. Excellent tip on doing this on a sunny day. Wouldn't have thought of that.

[Always Learning]

Agree with the cheap fabric. Good to know that there is one spring. I may try it without taking the roller down. My thought is the fabric will align itself with one or two extensions of the slide room. If it doesn't work, I'll pull the roller off. And yes, the roller is about 14' long. Excellent tip on doing this on a sunny day. Wouldn't have thought of that.

Only the economic Carefree models have one spring. The higher end models have two springs. Check the Carefree site for a manual to your model of slide topper. The Alpine manual is a well written manual with a lot of good information. If you are going to take the tube down make sure you pin the spring(s) so they don’t unwind which can be dangerous.

[lorend]

Hi Mike - thanks very much for the link.

I read elsewhere on the forum where someone used Gorilla glue to the fabric around the polycord. Not sure I want to deal with all that.

Mine is a Carefree topper but I assume the installation would be similar. One thing I don't understand is why the roller has to come off the camper. Seems I should be able to tension the roller, and slide the material in the roller channel and the channel on the camper at the same time. I may be overthinking this.

I found a 50' x 4' box of Solera material on Amazon for $166. It claims it fits Solera, Carefree and Dometic. I don't need 50' but may go ahead and order this as I'll have leftover material for if/when another one comes apart.

Question - did you have to take your roller off or were you able to do the job leaving the roller on your camper?

Just helped a friend replace their main awning. With three people it was still a fight to get it to run back thru the roller. Putter the awning back in the track on the trailer was not bad at all. We had talked about trying to leave the roller on the rv. Were realized why they say to take it off. This awning did have two springs.

[Walaby]

I believe my Solera awning's have two springs. It's been almost 4 years, but I have two original pins, so it makes sense.

It really wasn't all that difficult to install, and removing the one that went bad wasn't hard either. At the time, my grandson was 15 and he helped me. Took just the two of us to install all four, to include the large ones (14 ft) on living room and kitchen slide outs.

Mike

[timlisajax]

Hi Mike - apologies for not getting back to you sooner on the slide topper install. Finished the job and wanted to take a trip and tow with it to make sure there were no issues. The biggest reason for not getting back to you is I forgot. So there it is. LoL.

First thing I did was remove the old fabric which was easy since there was no tension on the roller. Once I got that off, I noticed there were long set screws in either end of the track that were used (I assume) to hold the material in place on the roller. Since I wasn't going to remover the roller, I had to MacGyver a square tipped bit with some vice grips to slowly get the screws out. Once I go the screw backed out enough, I just grabbed with with pliers and yanked it out.

Next step was to use a burr tip on a Dremel to open up the channel on the roller a couple of inches. It's ugly, but once the fabric is on the roller, its covered up. Before installing the fabric, I turned the roller clockwise 14 full turns to tension the spring. It's extremely easy to do and at turn 14 I could hold the roller with one hand while putting on oil filter vice grips to hold it.

Then with my wife on the roof and me on the ladder, we worked together to feed the fabric into the channels on the camper and roller. We sprayed silicone into each channel which helped the fabric slide in. Once it was in the channels, I held the roller with one hand and released the oil filter vice grips and slowly let the roller tension itself. It took a few minor adjustments to properly align the fabric, but so far so good. I didn't use a set screw on the roller since it has about 2' of fabric wound around it before it extends to cover the slide. Not sure I'm describing it well - its 4' of fabric with 2' covering the slide. The other 2' stays on the roller. It hasn't shifted on the roller and I doubt it will.

Hope this helps. It's easy to do without removing the roller and I'll do it like this in the future when one of the other toppers lets go.

Sorry about the pics. I think you can figure out the orientation. I think if you click on the individual picture, the will load properly.

[timlisajax]

And one last pic of what it looks like finished.