[Jack Houpe]

We finished the rear slide repair and hopefully made some improvements over the original design. Do all Newell coach of this era have rivets around the rear slide? I think early on our coach has had some major work done to that area perhaps at the factory but our rear slide is surrounded by rivets I've replaced most of them around the slide when I did the rivet repair to the panels between the front and rear slides. Water has been entering the coach from between the outside panel and the frame that it is attached and from under the seal track where it was not adhered to for years and then going back to the the hole in the shore power box and draining out. Someone tried to fix this with a lot of silicon rubber and did nothing more than make a mess.  In the pictures you will see where I used a die grinder to cut a slot out of the opening on the bottom front and rear of the slide, I know this is not pretty but water has to be able to exit that opening and I hope this will do it. We re-attached the seal track to the frame with 3m 5200 then took a wire wheel and cleaned all the old sealant from opening and re-sealed it with 5200. Cleaning the old glue out of the track was a pain in the neck then we reinstalled the old seal using 6000 shoe goo, I had that stuff all over my arms and hands. 

While we were at it the coach came with a few small holes in the top of the slide from the slide locks being out of time so I did the repair the same way we did the front slide. Bondo is a wonderful thing.   Notice what I found in one of the holes, some one used a plastic plug with putty.