Sliding Door Noise Suppression

Our van's sliding door was making a lot of creaking and groaning noises when the body would experience torsion, like turning on a hill, going over a curb, etc.  I tried a lot of different lubrication ideas for all the door's contact points, and the combination of the following has knocked down the noise about 90%.

I used white lithium grease for most of the contact points, sprayed into a rag and wiped on with q-tips.

These mechanisms are sometimes referred to as 'pin cups'. I used white lithium grease on both the male and female parts.

Many people on the internet say that greasing this peg is very helpful for noise suppression. I did it, and it helped.

I used silicone spray on the surface of this rubber bumper.

And more lithium grease here.

16-October-2020

Stabilizing the Window on the Sliding Door

Many Revel owners have noticed that there is excessive rattling and instability in the large window in the sliding door.  This is primarily because the stabilization ribs for the door have been removed by Winnebago to make room for the window, leaving the window attached ONLY to the thin metal skin on the door. The red lines, below, show where the support ribs were.

In order to improve this, I followed examples from Facebook Revel members Ralph Hill and Jason Vigil to create structural ribs that connect the window to the structural supports in the door.  This is an illustrated guide for doing that.

• Time: 3 hours
• Cost: $25
• Tools: Philips screwdriver, hacksaw, drill
• Materials: Angle aluminum (see below), silicone glue, 10 wood screws

Remove the plastic end caps from the window blind frame and remove screws behind them.

You may need to use an offset screwdriver to access the lower right corner.

Remove the screws from the four inner corners of the window blind.

Remove the 4 screws holding the grey plastic panel to the door frame.

I bought 2 pieces of angle aluminum shown below.

I measured approximate lengths of 26.5" and 25.5" for the front and rear ribs, and cut the aluminum to fit. After repeated placements and adjustments, I was able to cut each of the grooves shown here with a simple hacksaw.

The angular cut shown below is to accommodate the grey plastic panel when it is reinstalled.

Repeatedly making small cuts and testing the fitment resulted in a tight, solid fit.

I used a black marker to determine where the screws would attach to the window, and drilled them out with a hand drill. I used 5 screws per window.

Yielding this as the final product. Time for installation.

Following others' suggestions, I applied a bead of silicone glue between the window frame and the aluminum support.

After mating the aluminum support to the window frame, I put 5 screws in each support, giving the final result here.

Note that the tolerances are fairly small. There was some concern about mating steel and aluminum, resulting in Galvanic corrosion. However, my neighbor happens to be a metallurgist, and he told me, "If you're dealing with mild steel (not stainless steel), then it's no problem. Aluminum and mild steel are very close on the Galvanic scale."

Jul-1-2020

Replacing Noisy Heater Fans

Early Revels (2018 and 2019) had noisy heater fans, very whiny and piercing, waking you up at night and making it sound like you're in a machine room. After reading in the Facebook group that Ralph Hill had replaced his fans with some higher quality & inexpensive aftermarket fans, I bought a box of the fans for about $18. They do not move quite as much air as the originals (about 15% less, I think), but they are nearly silent, and still push plenty of air.

At the recent California Revel Rally, Ralph Hill generously offered to replace the fans while Jim Lincoln and I watched & learned. These photos are incomplete and omit a few things, but they illustrate the major steps involved. Note: this is a kneepad job, so wear some!

Part 1: Dinette Fans

With the dinette seat and cover removed, you see the items in the following picture. You'll need to remove the 4 items shown with red X, including the central wooden brace that adds rigidity to the box.

The most dangerous part of the job is removing the orange power cable from the back of the inverter. It's got a lot of current going through it, so take care not to have any metal around, and insulate it with tape as soon as it's disconnected.

Remove the wooden brace to access the black box below it.

Opening the black box is a little tricky. First, remove the grills over the fan intake. The grills are held in place with plastic 'screws', and you pull them out using a prybar, like the teflon tools from a car trim removal kit. You can replace them with the metal screws that accompany the new fans, or you can re-insert the plastic screws that you removed.

The black box is a clamshell with a top and bottom half. To open it, you should use a flathead screwdriver to push in plastic tabs on the ends. When the tabs are pressed in, they release the top half of the plastic clamshell.

With the clamshell now opened, you can slide out the old fans and replace them with the new ones. Be sure to find the arrows on the fan showing airflow direction, and insert them with the correct orientation. Then you need to rewire the fans so that they have power going to them (sorry, no photos for this). 

Finally, you need to reverse your steps and put everything back together. Be sure to test your system before you reassemble, though!

Part 2: Garage Fans

The rear garage fans are easier to replace. To do this, you need to pull out the refrigerator by taking off its door, then removing 4 screws around the edge of the refrigerator, shown below with red circles. Slide the refrigerator to the Revel's garage and out of your way for a few minutes. 

This will expose an identical black box 'clamshell' that we saw under the dinette seat. Once again, remove the fan grills, press the tabs on the box to open it, and replace & rewire the fans as before.  Test it before you declare victory, then reverse your steps and reassemble the pieces.

Enjoy your new, quiet fans - - so much better than before, well worth $18! 

Many thanks to Ralph Hill and Jim Lincoln for sharing their time and expertise.

Fixing the Window Rattle in the Sliding Door

Ralph Hill, a member of the Revel Facebook group, has developed a fix for the rattling window in the sliding door. He wrote up all the details, and I'm posting it here with his kind permission.

For me, the noise in the sliding door is mostly rattling. I found three issues:

1. The body panel the window is mounted in is not stiff enough—the window tends to flop in and out.
2. The grey interior trim piece slaps agains the metal of the door at the edges. Mostly at the front, bottom and back. The top is not much of a problem, probably because the structure for the door is closer to the window at the top.
3. The grey interior trim piece slaps against the frame for the window interior screen, mostly at the top.

The window is mounted to the skin of the door, not the frame. There are two stiffeners supporting this part of the skin that must be removed to install the window. After the window is installed the mass to be supported is increased because the window is heavier than the piece of skin that is cut out. At the same time, stiffeners are removed making the panel less stiff. This is made worse by the grey interior trim. It is attached only to the window and not to the door directly. Thus, even more mass is supported by the skin.

To stiffen the mounting of the window, I made four brackets, one for each corner of the window. These brackets connect the window to the the structure of the door. They are made from some scraps of softwood that I had. Each piece is approximately 1” x 3/4” x 7 1/2”. (This size is not necessarily the best—it is what I had lying around). I cut a thin groove in the end of the brackets with a hack saw. The structural metal of the door fits into the groove. The brackets are shaped to clear the grey plastic trim and are attached to the wooden frame around the window with screws and silicone adhesive. The brackets do not touch the skin.

There are flat metal corner brackets that attach to the wooden frame around the window. These did not have every screw hole populated. I added a screw in every hole I felt I could safely add a screw. I pre-drilled the wood because it is brittle and I did not want to risk cracking it. I hope that by adding more screws I made things l little stiffer and stronger.

To stop the gray plastic trim from slapping the metal I decided that it had to be screwed to the frame of the door. I could not find a way to do this across the top, but I could on the three other edges. I glued small pieces of 1/4” plywood to the metal frame with epoxy gel. Then I transferred the locations of the wood to the gray plastic trim using reference marks on tape attached to the door. I pre-drilled the grey plastic trim. Then I mounted the grey plastic trim and used #6 x 3/8” pan head screws to screw through the grey plastic trim and into the plywood pieces. I predrilled the plywood to reduce the risk of splitting it.

Screwing the grey plastic trim in this way does two things:

1. It makes it impossible for the trim to slap against the metal.
2. It attaches the trim to the frame of the door helping it stiffen the window. Thus, the trim is part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

Across the top, where I could not screw the grey plastic trim to anything, I placed a strip of 3/16” thick grey foam weather stripping against the structural metal. The grey plastic trim might be able to slap against this foam, but that will not make much noise. (This weather stripping can be seen in both the second and third photo).

I added 3/8” grey foam weather stripping to the back of the grey plastic trim across the top and bottom of the window opening, and 3/16” thick grey foam weather stripping on the sides. This is to try to press the trim out against the frame for the window covering. This was not quite enough, on the top I had to add a small piece of 3/16” on top of the 3/8” in the middle. Finally, I put a small piece of anti-rattle felt on the grey plastic trim piece where it touches the top middle of the frame for the window covering. 

Overall, the structure is much stiffer. When you slam the door closed the window does not flop around. It hardly moves. I have to do a serious test on some crappy gravel roads. Once that test is passed, I will add some insulation (probably Thinsulate) between the grey plastic trim and the door skin.

Window Rattle!

The window on the sliding door of the first 2018 Revels is notorious for irritating rattles. Winnebago apparently has a fix for this, and is shipping new vehicles with that fix, but since mine is one of the earliest ones, I needed to take matters into my own hands.

The primary, most irritating rattle is due to this silver flexible magnet. It is a little loose in the privacy screen (top and bottom), and chatters as you roll down the road. I used my fingers to pull the magnet out of the channel - - it remained anchored on each end, and I didn't mess with that.

Without doing much research, I used this stuff, and cut a small hole on the application tip so I could get a small stream of glue coming out. 

I just filled the channel up with the glue, and didn't worry too much about overflow - - it cleaned up very easily. I can confirm that it killed the rattle DEAD.