Potential 19SM buyer Closing Rear Slide During Rain

[jimk-ee]

I'm interested in buying a brand new 2019/2020 Greywolf 19SM and have a couple questions for current FR owners. When you own a TT with a slide, where does all the water go when you close slide during rain? Next, Quality of FR TT, I'm coming from a 2006 Fleetwood Popup with no issues at all, and now looking for hard sides but small trailer. I read a biased blog on 2019 quality issues, and strangely the big guys (FR, Keystone, Jayco) were at the list (i'm guessing because there are more made), but for current 2019/2020 19SM owners, how do you feel the build quality is on your campers, and what should I look closely at, when visiting a dealership?

Thanks,
Jim

[5picker]

Welcome Jim! I see it is your 1st post.

The slide seals do a good job of squeegeeing the water off the slide when it comes in but invariably we see posts here where it did dump some water on the floor after heavy downpours. Raising or lowering the R/V to dump any water pooled on the slide before retracting can help too.

Slide toppers usually address this issue as they keep the biggest part of weather off the slide.

As for whether Forest River units are better/worse than any other... they are all pretty much the same.

Most folks on ANY R/V forum come to complain rather than praise so these forums are inundated with complaints. Wade through that on any forum and you'll find plenty of good stuff too.

I've had about 6-7 different brands through the years and FR has been as good as any.
They ALL have some/going to have some issues and if you believe they don't/won't, you are only kidding yourself.

[jimk-ee]

Thank you @5picker for your response. Well it looks like I'm a new owner to FR. At the KC RV show last weekend we bought a new 19SM that we had our eye on for a while. We take delivery next Friday, and can't wait, hopefully it won't be snowing!

Thanks again,
Jim

[whjco]

I strongly recommend a slide topper. We used to have a Starcraft and leaves and debris that fell on top of the slide would then fall out into the trailer when the slide was retracted and the slide jostled by some road travel. When we bought a new RV trailer in November 2019, we had a slide topper installed and it has been a great addition for keeping water, snow and debris from settling on top of the slide and only a clean, dry slide comes back into the trailer when retracted.

[jimk-ee]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I picked up our new Grey Wolf 19SM yesterday, and I noticed it already had Solera connections.

So the question is, is there another high quality slide topper that will work with the Solera hooks already on the trailer, or is Lippert's Solera just the way to go.


TLDR:
Background about my wife and I, we just sold our 1st trailer (2005 Fleetwood Williamsburg) that we bought 13 years ago. It looked almost new when we sold it (OK a couples small holes here and there, a missing decal there but everything still operational - it still smelled and looked new), so I'm pretty anal about keeping things up.

I prefer not to buy a lower cost item if it isn't going to hold up, but I also don't need the top of the line. If I can find a well built lower cost option, that works great and competes against the high-end leader, I will buy it over the other, if I can maintain it. So that's why I think the slide topper is needed, so we can extend the life out of our trailer and less cleaning

If you own a great buy, and feel like it competes/matches against the high-end I would love to hear your thoughts. If you tried a cheaper version, and it was binding, ripping, and jamming, I would like to hear that too - it may help others who stumble across this thread.

[bikendan]

You won't have many choices, since hardly anyone makes slide toppers for rear slideouts. Probably only Dometic or Carefree.
Are you sure it's engineered for a slide topper. Previous makes of rear bed slideout trailers were not. Was a rear slide topper a factory option?

[jimk-ee]

I remember these heavy duty straw shape tubes with notches in the corner of the slider. I'm pretty sure it was marked with a Solera logo and Solera Topper text labels on them.

I don't know what options are available, the grey wolf brochure is pretty well not useful in the options being listed.

I attached a picture that was too far back with the details but shows the location of these hooks.

[dbledan]

I think the location would be an issue for a topper at least looking at the picture.

You would not be able to go higher than the clearance lights or camera to mount the topper and need to make sure that is enough drop.

The roll could block the camera and clearance lights when close to the trailer (kind of the purpose of the camera).

You will want to measure clearance to see if things fit before you buy anything.

[Charliebrn]

These are indeed mounts for a Solera slide topper. If you purchase a complete slide topper they’ll use the mounts perfectly without the need to buy any hardware kit.

That said, on my 2020 Alpha Wolf, they didn’t use the flush mount screws on those brackets, so the brackets that came with the topper wouldn’t slide on as it should. I swapped the screws in the mounts with flush mount screws and I was able to install the slide by myself in just a few hours. A great add-on and well worth the investment.

[The Racer]

We just purchased a 2020 Salem cruise lite. It came with the solera slide toper prep on the slide out. Amazon has the lowest price for what we got but check around as all sizes and colors are different prices. The hardware pack we got will force me to remove the prep brackets and install new ones, unless I want to spend another $35-40 for a prep kit. Lipport offers this prep kit which has a slide on bracket with set screws that attach to your prepped bracket. You may can order that setup with the topper from them. No one else would make that adjustment in the deal for me. I also found lipport to be very helpful with questions I had about the topper and slide out questions.

Our RV came with the Schwintek slide out. We found that water will sit on the rails and will allow water to drop off once pulled in. We also got water from the top. We ordered the topper to combat the water on top from coming in. We have made notes to wipe off the rails before pulling in.

[Charliebrn]

Odd. The topper I bought from etrailer had the right brackets from the factory to hook up to my prepped Alpha. I too had bought the hardware kit thinking I’d need it but was able to send it back and get a refund on it. Maybe they have different configurations?

[jimk-ee]

Just to follow up. I have received word back from Lippert, and they do not make it for a slide of this depth. I think the slide comes out almost 6', and the largest spring roller size that Lippert does for thiese topper covers is 48". I'm guessing it is the roller mechanism that limits this :-(. That's so sad, I kind of got excited when I saw them, but looks like I'm going to have to carry an electric blower or ladder/broom to clean this off when closing.