Broken Slide Rollers & Frames

Two of the frames with the rollers in the kitchen slide have broken. It gouged up our linoleum & Heartland replaced that free of charge as well as the frames containing the rollers. I have had them replaced now but wonder what caused the frames to break in the first place and what will keep the new ones from breaking. We have a 2016 Bighorn 3010 RE.

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smrkelley said:

Two of the frames with the rollers in the kitchen slide have broken. It gouged up our linoleum & Heartland replaced that free of charge as well as the frames containing the rollers. I have had them replaced now but wonder what caused the frames to break in the first place and what will keep the new ones from breaking. We have a 2016 Bighorn 3010 RE.

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The roller brackets broke because the brackets are stamped out of cheap light metal that needs to be beefed up to support the weight of the slide. I had two of mine break a week after my warranty expired and Heartland would not do a thing for me. They denied knowing about the problem when I contacted them. There were others in the forum that had the same problem and told me to call Heartland about it. Anyway, I ordered three new roller brackets and I put a tig weld pass on each inner bracket ear to hopefully beef up the bracket and keep it from breaking again. I also added a third roller assembly to the slide, as there was a spot for a third roller under the refrigerator that was never installed. The easiest part was replacing the floor that got torn. When I was done I had two days labor into it and close to $850 invested. I WORRY now every time I open the Kitchen Slide.

About a year into our 2013 3010 ownership we heard a snap while retracting the kitchen slide. Turned out to be a broken white roller.

It it took two days of off and on again hacksaw blade work to cut the frame of the roller out from under the slide.

Turns out out on my rig there are rollers hooked to the floor and the slide. The slide had moved enough that one upper and lower roller interfered with each other.

Got it out and did not attempt to put it back in......worked fine ever since. No floor damage was done.

I replaced a broken roller on my kitchen slide in the last year. With advice from this forum I used a hydraulic bottle jack and lumber cribbing outside to lift the slide within its frame one end at a time. This gave me enough clearance to get the new roller in (as I remember the old roller was missing), and add a new roller in a logical weight bearing part of the lower slide. I could take the old screws out with narrow nose vice grip pliers on the screw heads. I used hex head screws that I could get end wrenches on to secure the new rollers.

Of course, you have to disassemble the wooden trim on the lower front of the slide to access the weight bearing lower front slide lip.

I seem to remember the new J-38 roller frame being a little more solid than the old ones. I was sorely tempted to take the new roller assembly to a machine shop and have them fabricate a replacement out of hard steel instead of the thin roller frame supplied.

smrkelley said:

Two of the frames with the rollers in the kitchen slide have broken. It gouged up our linoleum & Heartland replaced that free of charge as well as the frames containing the rollers. I have had them replaced now but wonder what caused the frames to break in the first place and what will keep the new ones from breaking. We have a 2016 Bighorn 3010 RE.

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We just had the roller under our fridge slip out, caused by a broken or bent roller frame. The result was 2 diamond shaped tears in our flooring each about 4 inches wide and 7-8 inches long. Clearly poor engineering on Heartland's part, but as of now, all they are offering to cover is replacement flooring product (not including labor).

Don't we still have some factory reps here on the forum?


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kbausano said:

We just had the roller under our fridge slip out, caused by a broken or bent roller frame. The result was 2 diamond shaped tears in our flooring each about 4 inches wide and 7-8 inches long. Clearly poor engineering on Heartland's part, but as of now, all they are offering to cover is replacement flooring product (not including labor).

Don't we still have some factory reps here on the forum?


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I think their customer service and quality control is very poor. For what you pay for one of their RV you would think they would take better care of their customers. Their is a lot of RV Companies out their looking for customers and you would think Heartland would be doing more in trying to keep the customers they have now for the future.