16TBS sofa bed

[livinthegoodlife]

Since no one seems to know anything about the support at the head of the sofa beds in the 16TBS, including me who has the sofa bed in the 16TBS, I have been contemplating all day on what the problem could possibly be.  After pulling up RV sofa beds and watching videos, it dawned on me that maybe the back support pillows may be used for the support at the head of the mattress. When the bed is pulled out, there is nowhere for the back support pillows to go. If they are put on the floor under the head of the mattress that may just work. It just seems logical to me after watching the videos. When we get a change in the weather, I am going to go out and see if this is the case. 

[daplumbr]

Looking forward to your report. We've given up on LL and our dealer regarding the sofa in our 16TBS. I wish they made a jack-knife sofa in that length because it would be useful, compared to the very poor design of the fold-out sofa-bed. It's hard not to go off on a rant about the sofa bed because it's so frustrating to have a manufacture and dealer that doesn't care about the problem. But, rather than rant further, I put all my hopes and future happiness on your investigations of using the pillows to prop up the mattress.  (No pressure). 

[livinthegoodlife]

Merlin,  we had given up also, but for the price that we paid I just can't seem to let it go. I have a few ideas yet and will report on them if and when I get the answers. I agree about the jack knife sofa. The sofa bed is one failure of LivinLite and they should recall them and replace with something usable.

[livinthegoodlife]

Merlin,
I have great news!! I spoke to Don at LivinLite today. The pillows do NOT support the mattress. It seems that the aluminum supports that they sent to us should have worked, but the mattress that they sent to us must have been too thick? I really don't think that was the issue though, but have to go by what he said. Since when we had supports put on we could no longer fold the sofa bed back into place, so took them off and threw them away and gave up the idea of using the sofa bed. But, I couldn't let things go as it bothered me that we had spent so much money on this unit.

Don told me that the sofa beds were made to fit another kind of slide with a flat floor, but with the LivinLite slide the floor was a bit different and had to be modified. Since we have one of the first TBS' with this sofa, they are trying to work with us.  I told him that there have been others with newer models on forums that have had the same problems.  He told me that there was a customer out in California that had the same problem as ours and they custom made a jackknife for their unit.  They had to build a base to fit on the floor to accommodate the jackknife sofa. As the sofa bed that we have now is attached to the back wall, I was afraid that the sofabed would eventually come out as the first one that they had already replaced.  I told him that I thought that the jacknife was more comfortable and asked him if that was an option for us.  He said that he would put an order for the smaller jacknife in for us.  Our warranty is up at the end of March, so I wanted to get this taken care of before that.  He was very compliant with this.  He is going to contact the dealer that is closest to us, which is about 45 minutes from here. I told him that we have a foot of snow on the ground right now and can not get our unit out at this time.  He said it will take awhile to have this custom made and not to worry.  I would strongly urge you to call Don at LivinLite and voice your concern also. You may lose the use of the sofa bed tables, but I find them cumbersome and a pain when traveling as they swing out and hit the cabinets. We always take ours off and store them when in motion.

[daplumbr]

Thanks! Great info and more than we've heard about the problem from anyone else. I'd love to have a jackknife sofa that works. The one one in the 16DBS is very comfortable, but I know the space in the 16TBS is shorter so it would be a different sofa anyway. I'll see if I can figure out how to contact Don. 

[daplumbr]

And report back on comfort, utility, and what they have to do in the way of additional base support. (I wonder why they couldn't have built an additional base support for the sofa bed?)  


Also, see my question to you in Messages.