Cruisers Forum
Main Forum => Tips and Tricks => Topic started by: garmp on June 17, 2021, 12:41:39 pm
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After learning the hard way. Our 2351D has rather large drawers under the dinette seats. Great storage. We have electric bikes and the batteries and chargers are quite heavy. We keep them under one of the dinette seats. Prepping for the road, I removed the batteries & placed them in the drawer. Great fit side to side and a lot of room back & forth. hat's the start of my error. Turned the know to open the drawer, pilled the drawer open & placed the batteries in & closed the drawer. Forgetting to resecure the lock. A couple of turns down the road heard a load slamming noise. Batteries & chargers in the drawer slid back & forth & finally knocking the front of the drawer completely off.
My fault completely! Doug & Danny repaired it and reinforced the other drawer as well. Upon arriving at home I took some appliance touch-up paint that I had and painted the under side of the drawer locking knobs white. I now have a visual indicator and reminder not to let this happen again.
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I don't carry anything that heavy in my drawer, but sometimes I wouldn't get it locked right. I would drive off and just as you, I would hear the drawer slide open. That noise would set the dog to barking at it. Dog would eventually settle and then the drawer would slide shut. Dog would set off barking again. Was a very loud drive until I could get to a place I could pull over so I could go fix the drawer lock. Dog never could abide that noise!
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Try cutting a pool noodle to fit between bike batteries and door frame or front so they don't slide. Rubber sheeting on the drawer bottom should help also but can slide at times. Combo of both might be best.
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Our older 2007 with no slide-out, the dinette benches do not have drawers. Phoenix introduced drawers a few years later. The drawer-less bench seats have full top and hinged side door access. Drawers make items easy to access, but it comes at a sacrifice to "volume" storage and with concern to heavy items.....a trade-off of sorts.
For over-all weight distribution, I store my heavy maintenance stuff such as the jack, tools, 20 & 30 amp extension cords in the front-most dinette bench....all rarely needed, rarely accessed. The rearward dinette bench stores our extra bottled water and canned soda. On top of those supplies, we store our dish washing trays & racks with easy daily side door access.
PC owners with dinette bench seats with drawers, but especially without drawers, have massive extra bulk storage. Model 2100 is the exception having the furnace in the rearward bench seat.
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"Model 2100 is the exception having the furnace in the rearward bench seat."
Herr Dittmer is correct about the 2100 bench seat. However, I modified that cover with a piano hinge so we can utilize the empty space adjacent to the furnace. But only during the non-winter months.
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I am amazed at putting a heavy item under the dinette seat in drawer. After all this was a slide out unit and this heavy load can lead to all kinds of problems. Under it all is the electronics that allows the slide to go in and out as well. Never carried a heavy load in that...so never had a problem with the locks which worked fine....there are seat belts for the dinette seats and can be put out of the way under the cushion and fall down in the drawer area too.'
Heavy load needs to be in an outside compartment or in the tow car in a container to keep it secure...