fyrflie wrote:
RV Glass Solutions is a sister company of Coach Glass, arguably the largest supplier of OEM specialty vehicle glass in the US.
Just had my windshield replaced by them. 2001 Fleetwood Flair.
They were very easy to deal with and they even found a mobile installer that came to my home.
The windshields on my RV are original and they are marked with the Coach Glass brand, and it's a 1995. My windshield glass was shared on a couple of other mid-late 90s motor homes, too, with a similar cut, corners, and edge rounding.
I've quickly learned things about owning an older RV:
1. Your RV service shop knows nothing about the chassis, save for maybe some stuff about your hydraulic leveling system or the hydraulics that operate some RV's slides, but that really isn't chassis. Just because they don't service the chassis doesn't mean they don't know where you should go in the area for competent chassis service. If they are a good RV shop they will tell you where their expertise ends and where somebody else's begins and tell you who the somebody else you should go to is.
2. Manufacturers don't have replacement parts after an RV gets to be more than about 3 or 4 years old. That isn't a hard and fast number, and your mileage may vary, but house parts are all "off the shelf" for most manufacturers, so the part maker is who you have to go to to get replacements, not the RV manufacturer. Don't bother calling them unless it is warranty service. Even if it is warranty service, you are still going to have to go through an RV dealer or service center to get the work done.
3. Independent RV service shops (you know, the family owned kind) often scavenge parts from their various jobs and the work they do every day. If they are like most I've interacted with, they have spare parts from old appliance replacements, door handles, cabinet hardware and just about any other house knick-nack you can think of from years of servicing stuff and keeping around whatever was good from the job, "just in case". I got a whole Winegard batwing antenna from a local dealer that they had scavenged from an antenna upgrade job on another rig. I just needed the antenna head as the previous owner lost one half of the antenna element and the Winegard antennas are all componentized for easier service. Your big name service centers are not doing this.
Once your RV is past about 5 years old, contacting the manufacturer is probably going to get you poor results if you are looking for parts, however you'll get better results dealing with a local RV service shop and their network to find aftermarket parts.
