dleslie125
Southern Ontario/Palmetto FL in Winter
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Joined: 03/21/2003
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raydf_1 wrote:We must have gotten extremely lucky with our purchase, but our new 2009 Fleetwood Pulse 24A came with nearly zero defects from the factory (except for a loose connection in the shower and some mixed-up cables in the video selector box, which were both quickly fixed by the dealer.)
dleslie125 wrote:
...The point is that what you are directing attention to here absolutely requires it. Too many manufacturers have gone way beyond when it comes to the sealing of seams. They do a crappy job slapping the RV together and then expect us to find the problems and fix them...
Ray, I've received flack for saying this in other threads. IMO what you see when you take delivery usually shows few flaws (not always, but usually). It is when you start using the MH that they start to crop up. So, given them time. If you are lucky, you won't find many more. If you are unlucky, they will appear. The problem over the past 5 or 6 years of rapid growth is that the risk of getting something with problems has been too high IMO.
Some examples. With our Winnie Journey while travelling a sliding door jumped off its track. Turned out no stop on it and whenever it would be opened it could slide off the track. The door frame had to be partially removed to get it back on. Floor tiles slowly started coming up. Turns out a wall was shifting (according to Winnie) and they replaced tiles in the bath area 3 times as they did not want to get into gutting the walls and rebuilding. When we dumped it they were coming up again. I read on these forums that one owner found some of the bolts that hold the generator in place were missing. I crawled under ours and found all four missing. They'd been put on too tight and broke off. The rear mud guard tore off. That took a while to happen. One day the booth table simply fell down. The screw used to hold the leg in was so short it was unreal. Dealer put in another of the same. It fell out. I put in a longer one. And on and on. Not debugged when we dumped it - and the next owner got rid of it within a year as well.
With the Ambassador some of the same. One day I noticed a bit of daylight in the rear roadside slide. Turned out only half the slide mechanism had been installed at the factory. The dealer noticed all the speaker retention rings starting to crack. Turns out screws were put in too tight. Same with some of the dash artificial wood. Got a phone call from the dealer one day. He asked me to look in the basement and see if any pink fluid was visible. I found a drop. He said a batch of slide motors were shipped without a gasket. It had to be replaced. Fortunately not as many as with the Journey and we did get it debugged in a year.
Now, with our Jayco, it is smaller, far less complex (and far cheaper) and thus fewer problems. But hardly any were visible when we took delivery -but a dozen have popped up. A nice feature with the Jayco is a 2 year warranty. We decided to avoid the long stays at the dealer and the first fixes were done in one day at the factory in May and on the way back to FLA shortly, they will do a second batch - will take 2 days since painting has to be done (a 6 inch square and six feet of caulking).
BTW, one of our Four Winds owners on the Jayco forum found all types of problems that took a while to appear. One is water and mold in the ceiling from leaks. So, IMO when you buy a MH you take your chances and keep your fingers crossed.
So, hopefully you won't encounter many (or any) problems and have to spend a lot of time getting them fixed.
Don, Bev & Phil
07 Jayco 32SS on Kodiak May 07 Yahoo Kodiak Group
06 HR Amb 40PLQ ISC 330/950 9/05-5/07
04 Winnie Jrny 39W CAT C7 7/04-9/05)
00 Triple E Commander 5/03-5/04
Toad - 07 Tahoe LTZ 12/06 -
04 Colorado Z71 04- 06
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Semi Retired Grandpa
Corvallis, Oregon,USA
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Joined: 09/03/2004
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Illusion wrote:We know this won't help our situation...just a way of venting.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HKxpkHWf7M)
Very entertaining, however.
As a senior, I've owned a number of RV's over the years (going back over 40 years). In 2005 sold an Itasca class A we'd owned - and stored outside in fairly rainy Oregon - for 18 years w/o ever doing exterior caulking. Never experienced a leak of any kind. Finally built an RV garage in 2005 and our new unit is always stored inside - still have never caulked the seams, however, and have driven it over 28000 miles, often in very inclement weather, again w/o a leak. I do sympathize. I've probably carried things beyond a reasonable limit - but Four Winds seems to have gone to the other extreme! Caulking every 6 months? Ridiculous!
Gary & Liesel
Cocoa, our Chocolate Lab companion
2005 Winnebago 31C
2004 Honda Element Toad
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