hey there my friends so I just discovered my RV wall on one side has fallen by about 3 inches. I can see one little metal brace is broken on one side. is there a way to repair this kind of thing? somebody was helping me last summer and jacked up the side of the wall and shoved in some wooden plywood, but that didn't stop the wall from going back down.sorry for the delay but here's what it looks likehttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CXHa137URqt3tePCIDVUc8whaycYDtcX

Pictures would help us understand the problem.

For that to happen in a 2008 R Vision you have to have a failing floor assembly and / or broken outriggers. The outriggers support the floor and more importantly edge. The floor is a laminated assembly of two layers of thin plywood with foam and a square aluminum tube frame between them, glued and pressed together into a sandwich. It has a continuous piece of this aluminum tube at the edge along the sides of the floor assembly, on top the ends of the outriggers. The wall sits on top of this and is bolted down through the floor assembly through the outrigger. The wall is the same type of laminated construction.

Is it fixable? Yes, in the sense that you can rip apart everything to get to the damage and repair what’s broken. Is it worth fixing? I can’t answer that for you. What I can tell you is in 2017 I had a few things to check out and fix on my 2004 Rockwood. The sewer connections got damaged by a large bump on the highway and was hanging down, grinding away on the road. (I had flushed the tanks out and was taking it to my brothers house to store over the winter) Spring of 2018 I go pick it up so I can work on it. I took a week off from work and figured I could get it fixed in that time. I’ll spare you the details, but last year we took our first trip in our newly renovated camper. Consider your options before you have a trailer that can’t be moved until you fix it. There’s no such thing as “a little bit of damage”. Whatever you can see is just the tip of the iceberg. I’d imagine if you can see that much drop in the wall, the actual damage is much more widespread and will most likely go up into your roof. Damage to a structural support is something I wouldn’t want to try and deal with. My suggestion is to see if you can get anything for it on a trade in for a new camper.

For many years I towed often full time a 2001 or 03 R-Vision 28ft Trail Cruiser throughout western U.S. and for many miles on rough rural roads with no serious problems at all. R-Vision was built by quality Monaco Coach in those years but I still surprised nothing shook loose due to rough treatment on bad roads.I wish you good luck to solve your problem. Maybe a detailed google search will yield you a YouTube video or link to fix the problem. Often works for me.

Can it be fixed? Of course, how much money are you willing to spend?Do you have the knowledge and space to do it yourselt?If you do it yourself you will have to support the roof and remove the wall to repir the floor and then reassemble everything. Shoving in a piece of plywood is not a repair.

2008 r vision wall sinking | Good Sam Community

bondaygee
Explorer
Aug 25, 2022
that is very helpful. I'm not sure where else you would like to see. but on the inside. you can see the wall has gone down about 2 to 3 inches near the kitchen table. and would you recommend going to an RV shop for this kind of thing, or a specific welder? what do you think the repair fee would be in this kind of situation?
klutchdust
Explorer II
Aug 11, 2022
The wall needs to be held up by the frame. "If it were my trailer" I would remove the support with the bolt in it, install angle iron to go underneath and up the side of the wall an few inches, then weld new supports from the main frame to hold the angle up. Some holes through the angle and into the wall and fasten the two together. Remember to eliminate electrolysis always use a clear barrier tape in-between aluminum and steel. Now, I weld and fabricate however find a shop nearby and see what they can do.
I was in the heavy equipment industry as a career. We would repair semi trailers this way that had cracks in their main side rails, trailers that held 40k pounds and up.

Now being limited by the photos that is my best idea. More photos from further away would be helpful.
Huntindog
Explorer
Aug 11, 2022
PButler96 wrote:
Huntindog wrote:
I have had four Rvs.
A 79 Prowler, 2001 Wilderness, 2010 Sabre, and 2021 Momentum. None of them are foam core construction.
I hav a few friends that had RVs using that construction. They all had problems. They all sold them and got something that did not use foam core construction.
I have read of some that repaired theirs. I have little faith in the durability of those fixes.
I think RVs built that way should be avoided

I read some years back that the industry did a study that found that the average new towable RV owner used it 2-3 times a year for 3 years and never used it again. Some sold them, others just parked them.
That really explains why some are not built to last.

You might want to look closer at the wall construction of your 2021 Momentum, then revise your comments. The 2010 Sabre would of had laminated foam core walls also. Is your glass half full or half empty.

As far as laminated floors they can be good or bad. The biggest factor is #1 the amount of and spacing of the aluminum tubing and #2, the process used for lamination, either pinch rolling or vacuum bonding. Forest Rivers Rockwood and Flagstaff lines had the laminated floor down to a science. Close spacing on the aluminum sub frame and vacuum bonded. Even then they still had some issues especially if the buyer was of great bulk. They went to a plywood floor in 2018/19. The reason was not floor quality, but that it's simply cheaper both material and laborwise to just screw down some 5/8" plywood. There was also a big deal back around the early 2010s where a lot of manufacturers had received a bad batch of the glue used in the lamination process from a supplier which added to the bad rap.
Sorry. I was referring to the floor which is the issue on this thread. I think you knew that though. Foam cores in walls so long as they have enough tubing in them are not an issue, as the "foam" doesn't carry a load.
bondaygee
Explorer
Aug 09, 2022

Moderator edit to post pictures. I used This picture posting app to do the job. It was developed by one of our moderators to easily post properly sized pictures here.
bondaygee
Explorer
Aug 09, 2022
hi there, I didn't see a place to upload pictures so I just put them on Google drive put the link in the first posting. I'll put the link here as well too. what you all think about this situation?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CXHa137URqt3tePCIDVUc8whaycYDtcX
PButler96
Explorer
Jul 29, 2022
Huntindog wrote:
I have had four Rvs.
A 79 Prowler, 2001 Wilderness, 2010 Sabre, and 2021 Momentum. None of them are foam core construction.
I hav a few friends that had RVs using that construction. They all had problems. They all sold them and got something that did not use foam core construction.
I have read of some that repaired theirs. I have little faith in the durability of those fixes.
I think RVs built that way should be avoided

I read some years back that the industry did a study that found that the average new towable RV owner used it 2-3 times a year for 3 years and never used it again. Some sold them, others just parked them.
That really explains why some are not built to last.

You might want to look closer at the wall construction of your 2021 Momentum, then revise your comments. The 2010 Sabre would of had laminated foam core walls also. Is your glass half full or half empty.

As far as laminated floors they can be good or bad. The biggest factor is #1 the amount of and spacing of the aluminum tubing and #2, the process used for lamination, either pinch rolling or vacuum bonding. Forest Rivers Rockwood and Flagstaff lines had the laminated floor down to a science. Close spacing on the aluminum sub frame and vacuum bonded. Even then they still had some issues especially if the buyer was of great bulk. They went to a plywood floor in 2018/19. The reason was not floor quality, but that it's simply cheaper both material and laborwise to just screw down some 5/8" plywood. There was also a big deal back around the early 2010s where a lot of manufacturers had received a bad batch of the glue used in the lamination process from a supplier which added to the bad rap.
Huntindog
Explorer
Jul 28, 2022
I have had four Rvs.
A 79 Prowler, 2001 Wilderness, 2010 Sabre, and 2021 Momentum. None of them are foam core construction.
I hav a few friends that had RVs using that construction. They all had problems. They all sold them and got something that did not use foam core construction.
I have read of some that repaired theirs. I have little faith in the durability of those fixes.
I think RVs built that way should be avoided

I read some years back that the industry did a study that found that the average new towable RV owner used it 2-3 times a year for 3 years and never used it again. Some sold them, others just parked them.
That really explains why some are not built to last.
BarneyS
Explorer III
Jul 25, 2022
Gdetrailer wrote:
Snip... Foam core by it's self is not totally at fault, it is the heart of every single RV built since the 1970s.

snip....

Nah! There are many trailers, mine included, that do not have any foam in them at all except for a thin wrap. Mine is aluminum framed with normal, rolled fiberglass insulation, then a thin foam cardboard sandwich wrap, then the outer fiberglass and gel coat. Many other RV's are and were constructed in almost the same way.
I agree the foam core build is common on some of the "light" or inexpensive RV's but certainly not every single RV built since the 1970's.
Barney
Gdetrailer
Explorer III
Jul 25, 2022
Huntindog wrote:
Some have stated that this unit has a foam core construction of the wall AND floor. IOW, no studs. A lot of units, generally lite weight ones are going to this construction.Faster, cheaper and has good R values... Those are the good points. Fixability? not so much. I would never buy a unit with that construction.

Regardless of "foam core" construction, there ARE "ways" to get around the construction faults. Foam core by it's self is not totally at fault, it is the heart of every single RV built since the 1970s.

Foam core is a "sandwich" layer design which uses a thin wood layer on the bottom, 2" foam insulation and then a thicker wood layer for the floor. All layers are 100% glued together (IE bonded) under pressure. It is the layers and bonding that make for a strong floor system

My 1980s Komfort is indeed a "foam core" floor, I have indeed repaired it in several places and it wasn't hard or difficult to do..

The difference?

My Komfort is not a "lite" trailer and has 1/4 plywood on the underside and 1/2" plywood on the floor.

"Lite" trailers however, to achieve a lighter but much larger trailer will use 1/8" strand board underside and if lucky 1/4" strand board or MDF for the floor. THIS IS THE PROBLEM with "lite" trailers, not with foam core construction.

How you fix the "lite" trailer floors is the same way you repair the non lite ones like mine. But if you want the lite trailer floor to hold up, you need to upgrade the floor thickness.

Regardless of what type of trailer the OP has, the repairs are the same, one must go in cut out any bad wood, replace with heavier material, span the weakened sections to add strength.

Is it work?

You bet, not going to lie.

Does it take time?

You bet, one would have to peel back the rind on the lemon to figure out how to repair and reinforce.

Is it going to be expensive?

Maybe, if one is able to do the work by themselves it will come down to materials only and some lost personal time. If one were to hire the job out, labor costs may make repairing less worthwhile but still cheaper than throwing the rig out and buying a new rig which will do the same thing later on.

Is it worth it?

Can be, since one would take a huge bath on resale value to unload the damaged one and then buy a new one at today's crazy prices..

I am just saying not to pronounce it dead until the OP can get a better handle on what has happened..

As mentioned, pictures may help the keyboard warriors execute on helping the OP with how to go about repairing or declaring it a terminal patient on life support.. Everything else is just a hap hazard guess.
Huntindog
Explorer
Jul 25, 2022
Gdetrailer wrote:
Beatfarmer wrote:

There’s no such thing as “a little bit of damage”. Whatever you can see is just the tip of the iceberg. I’d imagine if you can see that much drop in the wall, the actual damage is much more widespread and will most likely go up into your roof. Damage to a structural support is something I wouldn’t want to try and deal with.

My suggestion is to see if you can get anything for it on a trade in for a new camper.

A little over the top dramatic, are we?

Damage can be widespread or local, no way of knowing what you have until you open up the can-o-worms.

Either damage can be fixed, it is more about how much time and money you are willing to toss in.

Chances are, OP simply needs to find and remove damaged material back to good studs in the floor and wall edges. Then it is the matter of bridging the repair areas by "sistering" new material in place and correcting the damaged metal frame part.

Takes time to do this but chances are if OP is handy with basic carpenter tools like circular saw, jig saw, nails and hammer and perhaps drill/screw gun they should be able to make at least a good enough repair to continue using the RV.

Telling one to sell or trade is pretty extreme without seeing in person and getting a good assessment of the damage.

Typical RV building techniques, the floor is built on the frame, the walls then sit on the flooring and the roof sits on the walls. A failure of the floor studs at the edges allows the walls to sag. To stop the walls from sagging you need to address the reason the floor edge failed.
Some have stated that this unit has a foam core construction of the wall AND floor. IOW, no studs. A lot of units, generally lite weight ones are going to this construction.Faster, cheaper and has good R values... Those are the good points. Fixability? not so much. I would never buy a unit with that construction.

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