quality gone down hill.

Road Phantom wrote:
I bought a Funfinder because I believed the rep it had for quality. The first thing we had trouble with was the dinette table. It separated from its base plate. I noticed immediately that the table top had been held to the wood base solely by staples. No Glue!. I turned the whole thing upside down and laid on a good amount of
Gorilla glue. I couldn't bring the trailer back under warranty because we were campground host in a very remote region of Big Bend National Park for four months.
It gets better. I soon noticed that a small leak coming from beneath the shower was not a little overspill from the door opening as I had originally suspected. I opened up the access panel and could not believe what I was seeing. the drain was never connected. What ever amount of water dripped down into the drain pipe was all that went into the holding tank below. The rest seeped onto the bathroom floor. The problem turned out to be the sub floor. It was not cut short enough to allow the drain to be connected. I managed to cut the floor back enough to connect the drain.
Did Cruiser, a family owned company,
get bought out by yet another corporation thereby lowering its standards for the almighty profit?

Hard to believe they make it to the consumer – has to be more than one person that’s knows things are wrong.

My Forest River Cherokee had lots of obvious goofy stuff wrong....at what point does someone say….”Ok…looks great to me....ship it!”

rtz549 wrote:

RoyB wrote:
The older JAYCOs were well known in RV Community for their quality.

When was that?

I see piece rate in action. Build x amount of units as fast as possible and go home for the day. They are running around like they are on a game show competing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXMJrRQ3SVk

Compare that to a few other factory tour vids.

Lance factory
Open Range factory
Tango factory
Dutchmen Kodiak factory

Which brand would you buy based on these videos? I know the one I definitely wouldn't.

I too have been happy with the quality of our last two Rockwoods. I think a lot of this stuff could be found and fixed by the dealer in a good per delivery inspection. I don't mean a "walk thru" but a real PDI so people should spend some time and get a good dealer, not just the one near home.

You have to first be on top of the hill to go down. Not sure that was ever the case with this market.

Sadly as long as we continue buying why should they care about quality? I have seen video of assembly line RV building. Speed above quality. Would be cheaper to slow it down and build with pride. I hear rumors the Cninese are considering entering the market. Maybe that will help. Folks spend their life savings and get junk. Sad but true

RoyB wrote:
The older JAYCOs were well known in RV Community for their quality.

When was that?

I see piece rate in action. Build x amount of units as fast as possible and go home for the day. They are running around like they are on a game show competing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXMJrRQ3SVk

I must be lucky. I'm very impressed with the quality, fit and finish of our 1-1/2 year old Forest River Windjammer. A couple very minor issues I fixed myself in about 5 minutes.

I haven't owned a late model trailer in awhile

The older JAYCOs were well known in RV Community for their quality. Then the manufacturers came up with the LITE VERSIONs you was suppose to pull with a 1/2-ton truck.

Now everyone wants to have a LITE trailer line to compete in the business I guess. The so called LITE trailers that everyone is making apparently have alot of short cuts that makes them lite. The irony is we still can't pull them safely with the 1/2-ton trucks...

There must be an end game in this somewhere...

Being the OFF-ROAD enthusiast that I am I wish we had some of the Australia Quality built-in to our available trailers. The Australia line of off-road trailers really are built to survive the back roads of their country.

Who could afford this Australia independent suspension setups they have on their Kimberly-Karavan line of OFF-ROAD trailers....

Photo from GOOGLE Images

Just saying...
Roy Ken

RV manufacturers are no different than one of the Fortune 500 companies that I retired from. When there was a high demand for their products, quality suffered. When the demand slowed, quality gained top priority. Over the years, the two, production verses quality cycled like that time and time again. Piece rate had nothing to do with it. Piece rate is not part of their wage and salary pay system.

Be thankful that's all it is - as bad as that may seem, things could be a whole lot worse. Unfortunately, poor quality is rampant in the industry. :(

You got nothing covered? I would have at the least written to the dealer and manufacturer before the end of a year to outline the issues and ask them what to do. Maybe try the resolution dept. in TL mag.? Sometimes though, it can be easier and less grief to just fix things yourself (if you can).

I won't go into what we have been through in the past, but on our current 7 month old TT, the brakes are being rebuilt (under warranty) due to grease in all 4 of them. We'll never know how this happened and it could be anywhere from the axle manufacturer to the dealer. Sadly, this is the 2nd of 3 TTs we've owned that have had this happen. How can something so important as brakes EVER have this happen?? Doesn't happen in the automotive world. Quality control in the TT industry sucks and it can happen to any brand.

goducks10 wrote:


I always get a kick out of the term Amish workers. Like they have the time to hand craft some beautiful piece of furniture. They're running to get done just like the rest are.

The Amish oughta trademark their name and get royalties. They'd be awash in cash in no time.

I like telling people who don't know about RVs that our TT is handmade by craftsmen - just like a Ferrari or old Bugatti. That always impresses. :D