If you drive a van with a side door that slides, you might be happy to learn a simple trick that makes it much easier to close your van sliding door.
We’ve owned our Ram ProMaster® window van for more than a year. During this time, we often had to try multiple times to slam the van sliding door in order to lock it. If it’s not all the way closed, it won’t lock. We never put any thought into it. It’s just the way it was.
When I was by myself, I’d obviously be the one to slam it shut. And it often took me several tries. But anytime my husband was around, I’d yield to him knowing that he’d have a better chance of being able to close and lock it with fewer tries than me.
We love our Pleasure-Way Promaster Lexor Class B RV and its large side door. In fact it was one of the selling points of this RV. When the van sliding door is open, our tiny kitchen has a wide open view. Sometimes this view is the ocean, sometimes it’s a campsite, and sometimes it’s just the next vehicle in the parking lot. But regardless of the view, when this big door is pushed back to expose the kitchen, it makes the whole interior of the van feel more spacious as it opens up to the surroundings.
And so for the past year we went about enjoying our weekend adventures getting in and our of our RV, often trying multiple times to slam-close the van sliding door.
And then one day we were watching a fellow YouTuber with a similar van sliding door. That’s when we learned the secret.
It’s much easier to close the van sliding door when one of the other doors or windows is open. It takes the air pressure off the interior and makes it much easier to close the van sliding door.
That’s it. That’s the secret to making it easy to close the van sliding door!
Duh! As soon as we learned this, it made perfect sense! Check out this 24-second clip within our video to see a demonstration of how to take the pressure off the van sliding door:
Although we had a fairly thorough how-to walk-through when we picked up our new RV at the dealership, we didn’t learn this tip. I haven’t read the owner’s manual for our chassis cab, so I don’t know whether or not it mentions this helpful tip.
It’s common to have so much thought chatter going on that we miss the obvious. Our perception is limited. Our attention is elsewhere. Sometimes we think we’re going about things the right way, and then one day we find out there’s a better way. It’s a good reminder that we need to remain open minded at all times. There might be a better way.
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