Our's does that a bit too, but not too much. Personally I was just putting it under the category of "deal with it." If someone has a suggestion I would be interested as well.
Since I am an engineer this started me thinking about the problem. I have pretty much ruled out the idea of moisture since it started within 1 month of taking delivery of the trailer. Even though Coachmen forgot to tighten all of the plumbing connections during installation, that issue was corrected 9 months ago when I crawled under all of the cabinets and tightened them.
I took some measurements of the flap and have attached some sketches of the condition. The slideout has a tapered piece of plastic that is attached to the edge.
Figures 1 thru 4 show the dimension and how it varies depending on the position of the slideout. The distance from the top of the plastic edge to the top of the floor varies from 1 1/8" to 3/4".
Figure 5 shows the flap in the newly installed condition. Figure 6 shows how the flap forms over the edge of the slideout after it has been stepped on several times with the slideout in. Figure 7 shows what happens when the slideout is extended and the gap is reduced from 1 1/8" to 3/4". The curling at the corners is probably caused by tripping over it much like throw rugs do over time.
I think I have come up with a possible fix and will provide an update after I have collected the materials and tested it.
What I am going to do is make a piece of wood that is tapered from 3/4" to 1/8" edge to edge and the length of the flap. I will cover the bottom surface of the wood with heavy felt since it will be sliding on the floor and attach it to the vinyl with velcro so it can be removed and cleaned. The felt should keep the wood from scratching the vinyl floor. The issue will be to make sure the piece of wood will not jam the slideout.
The wood piece should keep the entire front edge flat and in contact with the floor.
Here are my results with a few pics. The first picture shows the installation. The second shows the felt. The third shows the shape of the support I made circled in yellow.
There were a couple of things I ran into during the project. The first is that the flap is not trimmed parallel to the slideout and I measured it only at one end, of course the widest. My board could have been slightly narrower. The second was that the flap was not folded under evenly. There was a short section in the middle where it was folded back on itself. This added an extra thickness and caused even more curling in that area. You may want to check that even if you decide not install a support.
I made my support from an poplar 1x3 board. I used a belt sander to make the taper. I suspect you could find a piece of standard base molding that would work, just make sure it is thick enough so it can't jam under the slideout when closing it. You might have to add an additional 1/4 in. strip to build it up.
The only way I could get the curl out was to heat the curl in a 1 ft. section and stand on it for a while. Then I placed a 1 lb. bag of preheated soup beans on that section and proceeded to the next foot. I heated the beans for 1 hour at 150 deg. in my oven. After placing them on the flap I let them cool to room temp. That took several hours. after the flap was flat I went back and installed 1.5" strips of self-stick velcro every foot.
The final result is that if you step on it now it feels like solid flooring instead of sponge.
Ours has it badly. We have an”area rug” that we roll out that covers it when we open the slide. The rug is actually indoor/outdoor and is heavy enough that it flattens it out. It always curls back up without the rug on it.
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Jim
East-West 34’ Alta 2850 KRL
2023 Expedition Platinum
Linear Mode
