From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Who makes a SHORT Class-A with a QUEEN?
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 13:18:05 EDT
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel

GBinNC wrote:

> 
> I recently read an article somewhere (perhaps a letter in an RV
> magazine) about this bed and some serious problems with it. Seems one
> or more of the four corner "tracks" (on which the bed rides up and
> down) broke apart and jammed the mechanism with the bed part of the
> way down, rendering the entire motorhome virtually useless until
> repaired (because the owners couldn't get from one area to another).
> If my memory is correct, they had it repaired several times and it
> kept breaking loose, once even crashing down on its own while they
> were driving down the road.

A neighbor in a campground we stayed at recently had one of these. 
They were full-timers and had been for about a year.  He was really
enthusiastic about it.  I looked it over fairly closely, being the
engineer that I am.  Looked pretty nifty to me.  A fairly heavy rack
ran from ceiling to about knee level on each corner.  A pinion
attached to a shaft mated to each rack.  It appeared that the two
shafts (one on each end of the bed) were geared together to travel
in sync.  The motion was very smooth and the bed rested almost flush
with the ceiling when retracted.  The hardware looked pretty rugged
for the application.  My only concern would be if someone somehow
managed to travel with the bed not retracted.  I could imagine the
body flexing enough to allow the pinions to disengage from the racks
and the bed fall or cock.  Would not be a problem with the bed
retracted since the top of the racks are mounted to the wall at the
roof juncture where things should be the most rigid.  I did not ask
if it had a manual crank for the event the motor failed.  If not,
that might be another concern.

> Another drawback is that when the bed is in the "down" position it
> completely covers the "sitting" area in the MH at a height of about
> three. So either everybody goes to bed at the same time or everybody
> stays up. Can't use the bed and the chairs at the same time.

I'm not sure how big a problem that might be.  This MH was a medium
sized (don't have these nominal footage sizes down pat yet.) Class A
and this was the only bed.  That implies that anyone not going to
bed would be a guest and that would be odd :-)  The tradeoff is that
you have a very large living area without the complication of a
popout AND you don't have to make the bed every day to recover the
use of the seats.  That would be most important to someone like me
who likes to rise, splash some cold water on the face, crank up and
go.  Seems to me that anyone who accepts the complication and risk
of failure of a popout would find this setup very appealing.

John