Will insurance cover cracks in front cap?

lakeside013104 wrote:
Brother's 2007 Holiday Rambler Aluma-Lite has 1/8" wide crack starting at top of cap where it joins roof then runs down the front for about 44". The other side of the cap has the same start point for a crack, but this one runs down the front for only 18".

Dealer says original manufacture of unit is out of business so any repairs will be paid for by owner. Dealer says he can repair for $4,000, but will not guarantee that crack will not reappear.

Search on line shows others with this issue have had insurance cover cost of repairs about three out of the ten issues we found.

DB says he has trailer insurance and he does not recall hitting anything.

Inspection of cracks show NO obvious impact damage.

What say you all with experience on this issue?

I will pass info on to DB.

Lakeside

I have the same model trailer and my front cap cracked within 8 months of me buying it and at that time the cap was about 20mo old from the date of manufacture. Mine was replaced under warranty at that time (2008). Another member here (wohtex) went thru the same thing here back in 2010 and we traded several e-mails at that time. I never heard the final outcome, but he evidently no longer has that trailer, but his insurance (State Farm) paid $2700 for the repair back then and it appears the repair is really a bear since the cap is IIRC ABS which is a real bear to repair properly so be careful who and how you have someone attempt to repair. As you found out those caps are no longer made and there is no spares anywhere. I think if mine ever has that problem again, I might just have the front redone with a sheet of filon or fiberglass. However since that cap is just a covering I'm not sure what sort of bracing or mods would be needed to change the cap to a simple sheet of filon or fiberglass.

When I had my issue Monaco indicated that those caps are exceptionally sensitive to the torquing of the retaining screws along the roof edge along with the expansion of such a large and wierd molded cap.

Good luck and please let me know the final outcome and if possible could you have your brother take some pics of the front of his trailer with the cap removed so we can get some documentation of what that area looks like with the cap removed. I didn't and neither did wohtex get a chance to do that so this might be of great help to others in the future. I'm particularly interested in the bracing there and/or how easy it might be to add bracing and use an alternate material for the front.

P.S. HERE is somemore info on wohtex's repair that I missed in my initial post.

Larry