We bought a new Forest River Rockwood 8318SS in 2004 and still have it.
There have been many issues with it (bent frame, loose water connections, stuff falling off, etc) and I have fixed them all myself. The slideout roof had inadequate sealer at the edge and leaked the first time rain hit it.
However, I don't think Rockwood is any worse than other similar brands.
The issues I see with TTs are almost always (with a few exceptions) assembly issues rather than design issues. Design issues can be fixed by changing the design and then all further units will not have that problem. Assembly issues are related to the care that the assembler takes when putting stuff together. Due to the "one-off" assembly practices that most TT manufacturers use (no jigs, no fixtures, assembler randomly shooting staples), the assembly issues are much harder to fix and appear randomly. My TT might get only 5 staples hitting the proper area, while the next TT in line might get 50 staples properly placed.
If you visit a car assembly plant, you will see very few cases where the worker actually has a direct effect on how things are assembled. They mostly guide the car along as robots and machinery assemble everything.
As long as TTs are hand assembled, these issues will occur. If I am building my own TT, I will take extreme care putting everything together. If I am building 30 TTs a day, I won't take the same amount of care (especially if I am paid to work faster). Humans can't maintain a high level of concentration for long periods of time - we aren't made like robots. So an assemby system counting on worker diligence is bound to create poorly assembled units once in a while. Much of what the assemblers do is hard to check after the fact by a QA person because its hard to check how many staples hit the spot after an appliance has been placed over the stapled area, for example.
Until the TTs are assembled like cars (unlikely due to far lower volume making it hard to spread the cost of fixtures) we will have to live with lemons now and then. It helps to be able to fix it yourself.
Steve
