Slide Ends

posted in: Techie Posts | 0

Did you ever notice how you can tell the expensive Motorhome because the ends of the slideouts are striped to match the rest of the body?
Look at this gorgeous Monaco Windsor. The striped slide ends add a big touch of class.

Here’s our lowly Knight as built by Monaco in 2008. The ends of the slideouts are simply painted the base silver body color. Kinda plain, doncha think?

You can see this in many motorhome brands. Tiffin paints the slide ends on Allegro Bus, but not on Allegro RED or Phaeton.
Fleetwoods’ don’t have paint on their slide ends, but their upscale cousin American Coach does.

As I like “fancy”, I started checking into what it would take to paint the ends of our slideouts. Nobody anywhere near me had a paint booth big enough. I could get it partially into my warehouse, but couldn’t extend the slides once it was in there. And paint and prep and masking an area that big is a huge project.

Someone suggested vinyl. As in find a company that does car and truck wraps and such, and see if they could do it. Phat Brothers Graphics was right around the corner from me in Oswego, Illinois, so one day I stopped by and talked to them. They came over to my shop to take a look, got some measurements, and my color codes. They would get rolls of material in each of the three colors, then cut strips and install each stripe individually.

It took about a week to get the material, and then 2 days to do the job. It’s been over 3 years now, and the stuff is still stuck tight and looks like new. Cost was under $1000. I’m real happy with this mod to our coach!