Replacing plastic bed guide slides on a 1992 Coleman Destiny - Cedar Pop-Up trailer
I had a problem where while someone was in the front slide out bed, the support arm came out of place and the bed angled downwards. The movement bent part of the aluminum slide channel and broke most of the edge off a short plastic bed slide. Afterwards, every time you tried to slide the bed frame in and out it was really difficult. And worst of all, when you pushed it back in the frame alignment would twist a bit making it very difficult to slide the bed completely back into the storage position. To be honest, I put up with the problem for several years before finding the Coleman Pop Up Parts website and was able to order the parts that I needed. In my case, simply replacing a 6 inch long piece of plastic ended the years of frustration and worry if the bed would collapse again!
The design of the Coleman trailer bed rails has evolved throughout the design history of their trailers. For the 1992 version of trailer that I have, the bed slides consist of an aluminum channel attached to the trailer frame and a plastic (assumed machined nylon) guide slider that fits into that channel. In my case the road side plastic guide broke. Below, in the picture on the left you can see the aluminum channel and the very end of the plastic slide guide. In the picture on the right, looking from the underside of the bed, you can see the white plastic slide piece that had to be replaced.
This is a picture of the end of the plastic slide. It is held in place by two small threaded screws. The part came pre-drilled where the screws went in. Before I inserted the two screws I used an 8-32 tap to cut threads into the plastic. Tapping the screw holes first made it very easy to re-attach the part to the bed frame. I should also mention that before I reattached the plastic part I used a block of metal and a hammer to straighten out the bed frame aluminum side piece where this plastic part attached. When the bed fell down that part of the metal became bent. Sorry – I don’t have any pictures of the part that I straightened. Hammering the bend out it out did not look pretty but the part was fairly straight again. I did not try to straighten a small wow in the aluminum channel that is attached to the body of the trailer.
On the other side of the bed frame there is the same piece of plastic slide. I decided to replace it as well. The end of that piece of plastic sticks out a bit and fits into a slot when the bed is pushed all the way in and you are ready to close up the trailer. The two pre-drilled holes also aligned with the screw mounts. I tapped the two holes in the plastic first to make it easier to assemble it back together.
To repair the road side plastic slide you have to remove the bed frame from the trailer. To do that you first have to drill out and remove four rivets that hold a metal bracket located on the bottom side of the bed. In the picture below it shows four screw bolts in place of where the rivets were. The round heads face up on the side that the bed mattress fits over. The bottoms of the screw bolts are tucked away with the bracket and do not interfere with anything.
In the picture below, when the bed frame is slid forward the metal bracket strikes the front frame of the trailer and prevents the bed from pulling out any further. With the bracket removed you can slide the entire bed frame out and away from the trailer. After the slides were replaced and the bed slid back into position, I reattached the metal bracket using four small screw bolts instead of rivets.
The replacement parts that I used to repair the trailer were called
Plastic Bed Slide For Pre 1997 Bed Rails - 6 Inches × 1
You can see the machined shape of these guides.
I believe they are fabricated out of a nylon plastic material.
The parts came with two predrilled holes that were exact matches for where they
attached to the bed frame.
The entire process to change out both slides took less than a hour of tinkering. It would have taken less time but the one hurdle I first had to overcome was to figure out how to get the bed frame out. None of the website tips that I could find talked about the metal bracket part that I had to remove.
Regards
Gord Baker
The slides worked. Thank you so much for your help. The RV dealers in our city were not willing to help us because it is only a tent trailer.
Thanks again
The Millers
I love this company, quick reply on questions and challenges and follows through. So glad I found them. I have a 1992 Pop up and most RV places are not interested in helping out. Actually was referred to this by a major RV store/ dealer , it where they go to so for Colman parts!!
We have a 1994 coleman pop up camper Somehow one bed got off track and previous owner damaged the plastic guide and needed to be replaced the length I bought was enough to do both sides of the bed after cutting it in half and installing them It took about 2 days of thinking to figure out how to reinstall the bed with the plastic guides on without removing parts
Works Like New
I was very concerned I would not find the replacement part for our 1990 Coleman pop-up, especially not having the original part to compare for purchase. I found it at colemanpopupparts.com. It works as intended. The part does not come with hardware to attach so I had to purchase screws similar to those in opposite rail.
Installation of the part was simple. Installation of the bed was a little more difficult without reference of a video, but guess I know more now all the components of bed mechanics.
I will look to this distributor for any additional parts as needed.
Rail broke while camping. Got home and looked on the internet and was able to select the part with ease. Shipping was very quick and installation was very easy. The slide out is working like new.
