Got Dust?
I picked up my 23A at the end of September and have put around 4,000 miles since I purchased it.
New heavy duty Bilstein shocks all around with a Bilstein steering stabilizer stopped the little "wandering" problem I had. Experimenting with tire air pressure helped the ride comfort lever too. Keeping as much weight forward as possible also helps. The gas tank, gray and black tanks are all behind the rear axel and that takes weight off of the front end and promotes the wandering. There's no reason to haul around the contents of the gray and black tank so I empty them as often as I can.
My biggest problem is collecting dust in the house section from driving on gravel roads. I'm not talking about a little dust. I talking about "OMG, doesn't this guy every clean the dust out of his motor home?" kind of dust with one drive down a gravel road.
CA and Thor did a good job of sealing the outside of the unit. I've looked the whole unit over and have only had to add a small amount of sealant on the roof and tail light area. Where someone dropped the ball was sealing the underside of the unit. If dust is coming in, then I'm loosing my A/C and heated air through these holes too. So I've spent a lot of time under my unit sealing things up with expanding foam. The area on the inside of the rear wheel wells had a very large gap between the floor and side walls on both sides. To do the job right, I should have removed the rear tires and then crawled into the wheel wells to do my sealing. Instead of that, I used a small piece of wood paneling as a paddle to hold some expanding foam on and then reached in from the outside and spread/pushed the foam into the gaps. It's not a pretty job, but only I and my tire shop will know about it. Also there are holes in the bottom of the unit were gas and electric lines run through and these areas needed some additional foam to seal the holes. The area around the steps was not sealed, and calking was used to seal that area. I'm working on the shower now. I don't want to take the shower apart to seal things correctly, and I'm sure there is no insulation under the shower pan considering how cold the shower floor is, but a lot of dust comes in between the fiberglass sides and the floor pan. I think I will apply some caulk where the fiberglass side panels meet the floor pan and use some short shank screws to tighten the side walls to the floor pan. To do all of this, I need to take the stool out of the bathroom. I'm really looking forward to that! One can only wonder what I'll find there. I also want to put a raised floor in front of the toilet as it sits pretty high.
I'll admit I'm rather anal about this, and I'm not some kind of clean freak either. I'd like to think I'm more interested in fixing something that should have been done at the factory, and when/if I ever sell this thing, the new buyer will get a better unit. Since I purchased my former rental, I spend a lot of time on this and other forums trying to learn from others; what problems they have and how they fixed them. I've come to the conclusion that I did the right thing in buying my first RV from CA. Reading the problems buyers have had with their "factory new" motorhomes, people who've spent 3 times what I spent and still have major issues with their new motorhome, only confirms that my decision was the right one.
