trailor qaulity
In the grand scheme of things, where does the Keystone Springdale fit in the "quality level". Good, bad, or otherwise, Considering one. Thanks Ziffell
Forum Discussion
It seems to me that the real issue is not so much build quality as quality control. Testing and inspection appear to be hit or miss across the industry. Based on my very limited experience and lots of reading here and elsewhere, it appears that the engineering and material handling technology is pretty good across the board. There are lots of different ways to build a trailer and each way has its fans and haters. However, there are a lot of happy customers for all of them.
My trailer is a very good case in point. The Kodiak has a floor plan I love and the construction is lightweight and sturdy (aluminum, foam, some luan ,fiberglass). Our trailer developed more than four serious leaks in the water supply (PEX) pipes. One leak was so serious the dealer had to cut the belly pan (was rubber) to let out hundreds of gallons. They finally had to replace all of the PEX. The problem was poor crimps on the fittings. The quality of the pipe and fittings was fine. Apparently a bad crimper at the factory failed to make good connection.
I spoke to the head of quality control at the Kodiak factory. He opened up the screen with my trailer's inspection reports. He said that the plumbing was pressure tested. He was surprised it failed. Obviously, the pressure test was inadequate to uncover a problem that occurred the first time city water went into the trailer. The dealer found and fixed the first leak in the pre-delivery inspection. The other leaks occured a few days later. There were other problems too, but they were minor and cosmetic in nature (bad cabinet gluing, broken handle on the TV antenna). All of the problems would have been discovered in a good inspection program.
This is exactly like computer software. No matter how good the engineering and coding, without really good testing bugs will emerge in the product. Detroit learned this lesson from Japan where quality is an obsession. Indiana needs to visit Detroit.
I wondered how this shoddy Quality Assurance (QA) could continue. After all, the manufacturer has to pay the dealer to fix all warranty issues. It turns out that the RV industry has a practice of paying dealers nowhere near the real cost of fixing warranty problems. This is the big reason why it is hard to find any dealer to fix your TT if he didn't sell it to you. Warranty repairs is a money loser for dealers, and a pretty small expense for manufacturers. My dealer's service manager told me that replacing the belly pan for my trailer took his technicians 2 1/2 days to do. They had to drill out hundreds of rivets, remove the pan, then reattach the new one. The factory only allowed 3 hours for this job. If the dealer had been fairly compensated, the work on my trailer (new plumbing and belly pan) would have sucked all of the profit out of the sale.
If low quality removes the profit for a trailer, there is an incentive to at least, look into adding better QA. QA isn't free. It takes time and people. As long as the cost of fixing QA misses is cheaper than discovering issues in the factory, the quality of RV's will continue to be poor.
It seems to me that every brand name TT is engineered well and has good quality components. If each TT were carefully inspected and issues fixed before sending to the dealer, we would all be a lot happier. Moreover, if the manufacturers compensated dealers fairly for warranty work, we would be able to go to any dealer that sells our brand and get fixes when needed instead of traveling to the dealer who made the sale.
End of rant.
My trailer is a very good case in point. The Kodiak has a floor plan I love and the construction is lightweight and sturdy (aluminum, foam, some luan ,fiberglass). Our trailer developed more than four serious leaks in the water supply (PEX) pipes. One leak was so serious the dealer had to cut the belly pan (was rubber) to let out hundreds of gallons. They finally had to replace all of the PEX. The problem was poor crimps on the fittings. The quality of the pipe and fittings was fine. Apparently a bad crimper at the factory failed to make good connection.
I spoke to the head of quality control at the Kodiak factory. He opened up the screen with my trailer's inspection reports. He said that the plumbing was pressure tested. He was surprised it failed. Obviously, the pressure test was inadequate to uncover a problem that occurred the first time city water went into the trailer. The dealer found and fixed the first leak in the pre-delivery inspection. The other leaks occured a few days later. There were other problems too, but they were minor and cosmetic in nature (bad cabinet gluing, broken handle on the TV antenna). All of the problems would have been discovered in a good inspection program.
This is exactly like computer software. No matter how good the engineering and coding, without really good testing bugs will emerge in the product. Detroit learned this lesson from Japan where quality is an obsession. Indiana needs to visit Detroit.
I wondered how this shoddy Quality Assurance (QA) could continue. After all, the manufacturer has to pay the dealer to fix all warranty issues. It turns out that the RV industry has a practice of paying dealers nowhere near the real cost of fixing warranty problems. This is the big reason why it is hard to find any dealer to fix your TT if he didn't sell it to you. Warranty repairs is a money loser for dealers, and a pretty small expense for manufacturers. My dealer's service manager told me that replacing the belly pan for my trailer took his technicians 2 1/2 days to do. They had to drill out hundreds of rivets, remove the pan, then reattach the new one. The factory only allowed 3 hours for this job. If the dealer had been fairly compensated, the work on my trailer (new plumbing and belly pan) would have sucked all of the profit out of the sale.
If low quality removes the profit for a trailer, there is an incentive to at least, look into adding better QA. QA isn't free. It takes time and people. As long as the cost of fixing QA misses is cheaper than discovering issues in the factory, the quality of RV's will continue to be poor.
It seems to me that every brand name TT is engineered well and has good quality components. If each TT were carefully inspected and issues fixed before sending to the dealer, we would all be a lot happier. Moreover, if the manufacturers compensated dealers fairly for warranty work, we would be able to go to any dealer that sells our brand and get fixes when needed instead of traveling to the dealer who made the sale.
End of rant.
