Manufacturers - How Do You Answer This
This is one aspect of why I am leery of an aluminum framed camper, not to mention a newer, expensive camper. Of course the extremely poor quality craftsmanship could be duplicated in a wood-framed cam...
Forum Discussion
The quality of RV's is generally unacceptable to me. As someone pointed out, RV's today are like cars in the 70's. Manufacturers gave the same BS excuses we get from RV companies.When Japanese cars came in and didn't need any warranty work, American consumers bought them and left the Big Three nearly bankrupt. Faced with this competition, Ford first, then GM, and maybe eventually Chrysler learned to make defect-free vehicles.
RV makers are not all equal. Some, like Dutchmen (now absorbed into Keystone) are horrid. The Kodiak TT we just traded (it was 9 months old) had a weld fail in the slide (Dutchmen just did a spot weld instead of a proper one). All of the plumbing had to be replaced, and the list of problems went on and on. We just bought a Heartland Bighorn. I expect it will have a few problems too, but Heartland's management has already been in email contact with me and I have the cell phone number of the regional sales manager. So I am pretty sure they are confident I won't have problems.
The key issue is lack of quality control. QC isn't just done by inspectors. It has to be a way of life for all workers. People said that American workers couldn't do the meticulous work that the Japanese do (and the Germans don't). Well, Toyota and Honda built plants here and turned out cars as perfect as the ones from Asia.
Maybe the sloppy, lazy workers from Detroit moved to Indiana. There is no excuse for such bad workmanship. Now, many RV manufacturers are also to blame. They spec marginal parts for their products. It is pretty common for TT and FW manufacturers to spec frames, axles, and other parts to 90+% of their capacity. They put 5,000 lb axles that will be loaded to 4,900 lbs. Tires. Don't start me about them.
There are a couple of pretty good reason for the substandard components: The big one is cost. People don't want to pay for premium parts. The second is that people want to use lighter tow vehicles to pull bigger and bigger trailers. The best way to cut weight (and cost) is to use lighter duty components inside and out. My Kodiak had cheap, paper-thin walls covered by equally cheap fake wood (vinyl) "veneer". Counters are junky press board, etc., etc. The plumbing fixtures are minimal quality, light duty "RV" items. We all know.
Since most of us need our RV's to last at least a decade, the marginal quality materials combined with horrid assembly pretty much guarantee we will have trouble sooner or later.
RV makers are not all equal. Some, like Dutchmen (now absorbed into Keystone) are horrid. The Kodiak TT we just traded (it was 9 months old) had a weld fail in the slide (Dutchmen just did a spot weld instead of a proper one). All of the plumbing had to be replaced, and the list of problems went on and on. We just bought a Heartland Bighorn. I expect it will have a few problems too, but Heartland's management has already been in email contact with me and I have the cell phone number of the regional sales manager. So I am pretty sure they are confident I won't have problems.
The key issue is lack of quality control. QC isn't just done by inspectors. It has to be a way of life for all workers. People said that American workers couldn't do the meticulous work that the Japanese do (and the Germans don't). Well, Toyota and Honda built plants here and turned out cars as perfect as the ones from Asia.
Maybe the sloppy, lazy workers from Detroit moved to Indiana. There is no excuse for such bad workmanship. Now, many RV manufacturers are also to blame. They spec marginal parts for their products. It is pretty common for TT and FW manufacturers to spec frames, axles, and other parts to 90+% of their capacity. They put 5,000 lb axles that will be loaded to 4,900 lbs. Tires. Don't start me about them.
There are a couple of pretty good reason for the substandard components: The big one is cost. People don't want to pay for premium parts. The second is that people want to use lighter tow vehicles to pull bigger and bigger trailers. The best way to cut weight (and cost) is to use lighter duty components inside and out. My Kodiak had cheap, paper-thin walls covered by equally cheap fake wood (vinyl) "veneer". Counters are junky press board, etc., etc. The plumbing fixtures are minimal quality, light duty "RV" items. We all know.
Since most of us need our RV's to last at least a decade, the marginal quality materials combined with horrid assembly pretty much guarantee we will have trouble sooner or later.
