JCat wrote:
Thanks scott excellent write up, you hit it right on the head.
The cracks or crazing as you define them seem smaller than the ones on your pic, but its hard to be sure as there is no scale in the pic.
I called a lot of paint companies and fiberglass manufacurers today and it is the fiberglass that is cracked, thru the full body paint, and into the clear coat.
So you either grind it down, patch the cracks you can see, wait for more to pop up over time, or replace the entire sidewalls with new fiberglass.
Both options are not cheap.
JCat,
You're certainly welcome Sir. This is an extremely bad situation for many RV owners out there. The amount of money it takes to correct it is astronomical. 99.99% of the owners simply will not do it. And, once it starts, it's like a disease, there's no stopping it.
Scott
JCat wrote:
My friend who is not a memeber of the forum asked me to post this for him.
He has a 11 yer old class A, good brand(I don't want to talk bad about the brand) who is still in business, and he has these small cracks in the gelcoat, mostly where the darker colors are located.
The cracks are about 1/8 inch and can only be seen when u are close up to the RV.
He has talked to 2 repair places in CA and one said that the fiberglass was not fully cured whaen the paint was applied and out gassing occured as it cured and this caused the paint to crack which caused the gelcoat to crack.
Another paint place said the manufacturer of the RV used cheap fiberglass and that it has cracked and caused the paint to crack.
One estimate was $22K to grind off the gelcoat, repair the bad fiberglass, repaint and reclear the RV.
Seems like a lot of money and it seems like the manufacturer should be paying since they screwed it up either way.
Anyone seen this and if yes how was it fxed and at what cost ?
JCat,
If I'm not mistaken, in the picture below, is what you're talking about. Many have referred to it as "Crazing" in the fiberglass. And, you don't have to be "bashful" about naming the manufacture of the coach in question. That picture represents one side of an '07 Country Coach. And, I might add, the ENTIRE coach looked like that, not just the darker schemes. And, that "crazing", if that's what the real technical term actually is, is common on many brands/models.
When the wife and I were looking for a coach, about a little over two years ago, I learned all about it real quick. We looked at several years of Itasca Meridians that had it. We looked at Monacos that had it. Two of the three Country Coaches, had it. And yes, in many, it is more it is more prevalent on the darker colors of a "Full Body Paint unit". It's out there, way more than people care to admit.
Now, in the research I did, I found out that some of the crazing actually happened DURING the warranty period. When that happened, for the most part, the unit was taken back to the factory and, the coach was literally stripped of all the walls and re walled, with new and better fiberglass sheets. You see, according to the experts, that crazing is in the fiberglass, not the paint.
Folks have paid almost what your buddy was quoted, to have a complete sand down, so called sealer, and re-paint, only to have the exact same condition re-appear, within two years, looking almost exactly like it did before the repaint. It didn't take long for that kind of news to travel the industry.
Folks that have it, unfortunately, have no recourse in the correction unless they feel like spending the money to do what the factory does and that's a complete re-skin. Talk about some serious money.
Now, I don't know about other manufactures but, Winne and Itasca started the option of "Full body Paint" around '03, plus or minus. And YES, it is PAINT, NOT GELCOAT.
If any of you ever watched the program "Ultimate Factories", you'd have seen the Winnebago Vectra built, almost from the first nut and bolt, to the point of drive out of the factory exit. And, that was with a full body paint job. Talk about a serious, painstaking, tedious job, full body paint has multiple steps involved.
And, so, to have the fiberglass, under the paint, do this to your nice, "High cost" option of full body paint, was to say the least, a bit disheartening. Again, if you were one of the "lucky" ones (if you could call that luck, to have your coach do that to you after what you paid for it)and, it was still under warranty, then you got it repaired.
But, basically unless you're very well off, and, really, REALLY like the coach and crazing is present and, you want the job done right and permanently, to afford the factory fix, you're going to have to live with it. And, there's many, many out there, of may brands and models, that have it. Once that coach is out of warranty, the manufacturer is out of the picture.
We just kept looking for the make/model/year full body paint, that simply did not have it. Our coach, an '04 Itasca Horizon, has only a tiny, amount of it, on the front roof cap, in a crevasse, that's about 6" long. Other than that, it's free of it.
We almost made a couple of 1000 mile trips to look at coaches. But, some phone calls to the dealers and, I told them to go out and physically look close at the ones they had in the ads. I told them about the crazing and I did NOT WANT ANYTHING that even looked like it. Well, they called back and said yep, it's there. So, that saved me and the wife a lot of aggravation of a long drive and expense for nothing.
So, sorry for the long rant/novel but, in my opinion, for what ever it's worth, the condition of "Crazing" was not being described accurately. To many, while being unsightly, it means very little. Besides, what are ya gonna do?
Scott
