Falling slide out floor - Arctic Wolf 295QSL8

[B.J. Porter]

RV: 2019 Arctic Wolf 298QSL8 5th Wheel
Problem Slide: Dinette (passenger side)

So we were sitting around our dinette and there was a sort of bang! and the floor dropped. You could see it moved down about an inch from the inside. I'm a big guy, and we're full-timing, so it sees probably more wear than it was designed for.

The slide actually goes in and out fine, and the floor pops back up into place when it comes in. We're sick of not using the dinette on that side, so yesterday we looked a lot more closely.

We initially thought the particle board subfloor dropped, when I looked at all the screw heads that had retreated deep below the surface of the bottom of the floor. So I replaced a few of them and put in a broad washer on it to expand the holding area, and added more screws. Didn't fix it.

So we took the fascia off and saw that what looks to be a metal support beam that is dipping in the middle with the whole floor. In the attached pictures you can see the end, where it should be, and the middle, where it's dipping.








There isn't much there to attach to that we can see, though it's only down an inch or so.

There doesn't appear to be any rot, though we got some water in there during the tail end of a hurricane in FL, this happened before that. And there's no sign of rot.


The area was repaired after a blowout (by Camping World, who was the only dealer within 100 miles who could get the parts from Forest River) and we saw some sub-excellent work on the repairs. e.g. the flashing seal job wasn't excellent.

From reading other threads on here, what I suspect happened is that this floor section is held up by barely adequate screws through the base frame on the slide wall, and two+ years of my portly backsides sitting on that spot ripped them out.

I think I may be able to fix this without replacing the floor and destroying the wall by:
1) Jacking up the floor until it's back where it's supposed to be.
2) Running longer screws from the underneath back up into the bottom frame of the slide wall.

I'm looking for thoughts, and information on this. Specifically:

1) Has anyone else fixed something like this on a FR slideout, and will my approach work?
2) Does anyone have a good picture or idea of what the slide wall bottom looks like so I know what I'm screwing into?
3) Any clue how long the screws need to be to get the holding I need?

Thanks in advance. Here are a couple more pictures:

 

[B.J. Porter]

By way of followup, I cut back some wall-board and did some exploring.

There is NO bottom brace on the slideout wall. The bottom running across is nothing but styrofoam insulation, nothing to screw into.

The entire floor was held up by some small triangular tabbing pieces attached to that exposed bar on the floor from a few vertical studs, on only one side of the stud. Those tabs ripped out of the metal floor bar.

So I need to basically remove the bottom 8" or so of wallboard across the slider, then jack the floor up to where it's supposed to be. Then I'll go to each stud and put some stout right-angle brackets on both sides of the stud, past the broken pots, and screw them together.

Should be stronger than originally built when I finish, but I will need to find a way to pretty up the damage to the walls. Shelf-paper wainscotting, here we come...

 

[B.J. Porter]

In case anyone's curious, here's the additional followup and the repair we did. So far, I have not fallen through the floor, so I'm going to mark it "fixed."

Here's a closeup of the break. This was actually a single, not-great quality weld that attached the ONLY stud in the slide to the floor. Yes, the 8' span of the floor was supported by similar welds at the corner, and this one single weld to a 1.5" x 1.5" metal stud.

Note they didn't bother to weld the other side. It was one weld only. I do not know if this is production standard or it was a mistake during the build.

What I needed to fix this was to raise up the sagging floor and re-attach it on to the stud.

Re-welding it was out of the question, because of many factors including the damage to the ripped up metal and that I didn't have access to a welder or much welding skill.

Instead, I decided to put some angle irons in there and screw them into the studs and beams.

But I didn't like that much either, since it seemed a recipe to strip/tear those out, too and maybe weaken the stud and floor beam.

So I went one step farther. I got some JB Weld, a steel-reinforced epoxy compound aimed at bonding metal pieces in high strength (and heat) applications. I used this stuff once to repair the transmission cooler on my sailboat's engine when it sprung a seawater leak halfway between Tahiti and New Zealand, about 1,000 miles from land. This wasn't a torsion or shearing load repair there, but the product impressed me and literally kept us afloat.

It's supposed to have a bond strength of around 5,000 psi, so I figure it will hopefully take much of the load off the screws so they don't rip out, or keep it from ripping if it does.

So I got some 1.5" angle irons from Lowe's, a tube of JB Weld, and some 3/4" self drilling screws. I cleaned and sanded the touching surfaces, then applied JB Weld to each angle iron and screwed them in place.

Now I've got 12 screws and about 9 square inches of JB Weld holding it in places. I also prophylactically added angle irons and JB weld to the two corners of the slide, just in case there was some stress or fatigue added to the single little weld holding those.

Hopefully, it's enough.

That right-hand bracket didn't quite go in flush, since the torn weld was still there. I didn't remove it, just bent it out of the way. If you look closely, you can see the uncured JB Weld in places, the shiny gray stuff between the angle irons and the posts.