738 Forest River Cedar Creek trailers have a slide switch wired without overcurrent protection

Forest River, Inc. has recalled 738 Cedar Creek trailers from the 2026 and 2027 model years after finding that the slide switch may have been installed without proper overcurrent protection. The filing, reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Oct. 16, 2026 as campaign 26V681000, says an unprotected slide switch can overheat the wire and raise the risk of a fire. Dealers will reroute the wiring for free.

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A switch that moves the walls

A slide switch is the control that extends and retracts a trailer’s slide-out room, the section of living space that pushes outward once the rig is parked. It runs on the trailer’s 12-volt system, and the recall concerns how that circuit was wired at the factory. Forest River’s defect statement, as published in the agency record, reads: “The slide switch may have been installed without proper overcurrent protection.”

The consequence statement follows directly. Overcurrent protection, typically a fuse or breaker, is what stops a wire from carrying more current than it can safely handle, and the filing says that without it the wire can overheat. The agency classes the component under electrical wiring, fuses and circuit breakers. As with most recall filings, the language describes a risk of fire rather than a reported fire, and the record reviewed here lists no injuries or incidents.

The campaign data is carried in the NHTSA record for 26V681000, which shows 738 potentially affected units split across two entries that differ only by model year, one for 2026 and one for 2027. The same row appears in the federal recall dataset published by the Department of Transportation, where the figure is listed as potentially affected: 738.

The fix and the paperwork

The remedy is narrow and mechanical. Per the filing, dealers will reroute the 12V slide switch wiring at no cost to owners. There is no replacement part listed and no instruction to stop using the trailer in the record reviewed here, so the repair as filed is a wiring correction rather than a component swap. Because the defect is described as a switch that may have been installed without the right protection, a dealer visit also serves as the check of whether a given trailer is actually affected. The filing covers every Cedar Creek in the two model years it names, which is why the count is stated as potentially affected rather than confirmed defective.

Owner letters are expected to be mailed on Dec. 15, 2026, and Forest River has assigned the campaign its own recall number, 20-2105. Owners who want to ask a question before the letter arrives can call the manufacturer at 1-260-593-4000, the number printed in the record. Under the rules summarized in 49 CFR Part 577, the notice has to describe the defect and the risk and say that the repair will be performed without charge, so an owner holding a letter can check it against those elements.

Trailer owners who would rather not wait for December can check a specific unit with the agency’s recall search by vehicle identification number. The agency notes that a result may omit very new recalls whose affected serial numbers have not been loaded yet, so a clean result in the first weeks after a filing is not a final answer.

Cedar Creek has been here before

This is not Cedar Creek’s first appearance in the federal recall database. In 2024, Forest River filed campaign 24V395 covering 41,353 Cedar Creek fifth wheels (model years 2004 through 2024) and Puma travel fifth wheels (2006 through 2024). That defect was different: the charge wire in the 7-way trailer connector may have been routed to the wrong side of the breaker in the battery compartment, so a pulled-out connector cord could short-circuit.

The 2024 Part 573 report for 24V395, submitted June 4, 2024, put the remedy in similar terms to the new one: dealers move the wire to the protected side of the breaker, with parts and labor free to owners, and owners who already paid for a repair within the scope may be eligible for a refund.

The two campaigns differ in size, 41,353 units against 738, and in mechanism, but both come down to where a wire sits relative to the device meant to protect it. Both also end with the same kind of repair: a dealer relocates or reroutes wiring rather than replacing a manufactured part. The earlier campaign reached more than 41,000 trailers across two decades of model years, while the new one is confined to the 2026 and 2027 years, which points to a recent production-line issue and not to a long-standing design.

For the 738 trailers in the new campaign, the open questions are practical ones. The filing does not say how many of the units remain unsold at dealers or how many are already in owners’ driveways, and it does not say when the wiring error was introduced on the production line. It also gives no date for the end of the repair program, only the date the first letters are expected to go out.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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