NEED HELP fixing the sliding door on a 1998 330

D

David M

Active member
Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
RO Number
16492
Messages
7,393
The entrance door on Saint Max is getting tougher and tougher to slide. I tightened the rollers at the top of the door and that made it worse. I am sure the door tracks have not been cleaned since 1998. Frankly, it is a pelosi setup to begin with as it allows no PM to be conducted on the door.

Does anybody know how to remove the door cover so I can get to the tracks? I can see 4 white plastic screw hesd covers. Is there anything else I need to be aware of?

TIA.
 
If your door is like mine you will have to pull away the helm to get to the tracks, I had to unscrew the helm, break the calk seal, disconnect three wire harneses and as my friend held it up I had to redrill for new holes as the teflon blocks were broken off, made new holes and got new screws, took the tracks out cleaned them and rescrewed them back in as those screws were loose. Then after all this and putting it all back together.... the bottom track is now messed up. So, in two months I will go through this all over again... The helm removal is really difficult because of the screws that hold it in place are difficult to access, you need to be a contortionist. By the way, Home Depot has a calk that matches the helm pretty well.
 
I had a '97 330DA. I had a speaker on the leaft side of the cover that had to be taken out to get to a mounting screw. The original manufacturer is Spartech Marine. It recommends only water with a 100% cotton cloth to clean the tracks and lubricate with Armour All. You may have to replace the roller trucks as one model had plastic wheels. These get ground down over time.
 
I had the same problem with the sliding door on my 270. I tried WD-40 and some other lubricants, but they didn't seem to make much difference. Finally, I bit the bullet and paid Marine Max about $ 800 to finally fix it.

They took off the windshield, pulled up the driver side of the console took out out the broken pieces and put in new plastic slides. In doing all this, we found the culprit was a bunch of leaves that had gotten down into the track and eventually, the opening and closing with debris in the way destroyed the plastic slides.

So, regardless of how much lubricant I put down there, it was never going to fix the problem. Don't know if you have the same problem, but it's been a few years for me now and I am very glad to have a door that works properly. I think it was somewhat of a saftey hazard before as it was really hard to get it open and closed.

Good luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top