Travel Lite TC Owners?

[languiduck]

I feel like I'm the only one on this forum. The search I did only came up with a couple owners who had issues with their Travel Lites. I know that every brand has it's issues and each camper is different depending on who put it together, and lots of times the only time you hear from someone is when there's a problem. So I was wondering, who else around has a TL TC and is having a great time with it? I hope there's more. It'd be nice to hear the good and bad, and share common problems and fixes with each other.

[Victory402]

Those are some disturbing photos. If I bought a new camper I think I would just go ahead and reseal everything. Does this new Rv come with a case of dicor and proflex?

[shellbackcva59]

Stars, That's one ugly situation to experience with a new camper! I bought mine at 6 months old from a couple who decided they couldn't use it. They had reduced the price to $6500, so I saved probably 40% over new. Right now I have the rear section of the roof off and am trying to get it dried out. Fortunately I was able to get it inside my new 24 x 28 building. I have a 12' wide and 9' high door, and with the camper on an old pop up trailer frame, it just fits under the door. Shouldn't be too bad a job except for the fact a local camper dealer told me you can't leave the rubber roof off too long or it will shrink! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to complete the job this week if the rubber roof glue arrives in a timely manner.

[Stars101]

Oh, see you all at the TN TC Rally in 13 days!!!!!

[Stars101]

yes, I know we should have just given up. But it was financed through our local credit union and ???? I'm not sure we had any recourse. We were pretty much scr%wed and had to deal with what we got as best we could.

We have friends that bought a very high end Cardinal 5th wheel and have had nothing but grief too. The interior ceiling fell out! Like actually just all fell down. The slides are all crooked and don't seal and then they keep eating up the carpet when they are retracted. This is after a thorough PDI and everything looked great until they brought it home for 1 month. They didn't actually even get to camp in it the first year.

So that's my lovely saga of TC ownership. First brand new camper we ever bought after 12 years of camping and this is what happened. I did the research and heard nothing but good online reviews.

We should have just stuck with our used Sunlines and never, ever bought a new camper. those Sunlines were well built.

[Stars101]

So after I saw this I called the dealer. We had originally agreed that I would take possession of TC (without the correct special ordered windows) while the dealer and Travel Lite worked to make it right. Boy, was I too trusting 🙂

Anyway, after the "Epic Leak" I called the dealer and informed him that I was NOT going to stand for this cr*p. Then I called TL and yelled at them. End result was DH and I agreed to take the leaky one back to TL in Indiana and exchange it for a new one that was built to my original specifications, except this time I told them I expected A)the special ordered windows to ACTUALLY be installed (since I paid extra for them and waited 4 months for them) and B) that the new unit be, um, LEAK FREE.

So we took 2 days out of our dream vacation (3 weeks, 21 states, 6,000 miles) and stopped in IN. What should have been a 2 hour swap took 26 hours b/c.... wait for it, the new one wasn't built correctly! Water leak from shower pan, defective propane stove, electrical issues that kept causing the fuses to blow, etc, etc. Biggest issue was from the time we loaded up in the back of the plant and drove upfront to get new keys from the office, a gap opened up in the aluminum siding where the install guy had mis-measured the siding piece and, instead of using a new piece, he just butt-joined (?) it to the other piece. It just touched, not locked in, and when we moved it opened up 1/4" wide and 18" long. This was at 5pm, so we had to spend the night there and the next day a crew came in and replaced the piece. Which meant they had to remove to pass thru window, all the cabover seams/screws, 3 pieces of siding and put a correctly measured piece in and seal everything back up again.

[Stars101]

Last one I promise LOL!



Water leaking from the SIDE of the TC. Happened on both driver's and passenger's sides back towards each window.

[Stars101]

Not sure if you can see, but the seam under the cabover is opening from the pressure of the water inside it. Also, again hard to see, but the aluminum siding "oil canned" down. It went from a space of 4+" between cabover and truck to about 2". When we loaded it I could put my entire arm between the truck and TC.

[Stars101]

[Stars101]

Water running out from under that plastic trim they use to cover the screws on the seams. That's my manual jack on the right hand side.

[Stars101]

Photo taken 5+ minutes after standing there with our mouths open in horror. It was running like this in numerous places under cabover. Also leaking out of horizontal seams on the sides of the TC (back towards the side windows). Continued to run like this for 20 minutes. just a mess.

[Stars101]

OK, want to see the first TL I purchased? This was the one the I bought May 2013, special ordered, that didn't have the special ordered windows installed when I went to pick it up 6 hours away at the closest TL dealer.



Water leaking from under cabover 5 days after purchase. We brought it home, leveled it for the week and this happened when we went to leave for Memorial Day weekend. it was packed, refrigerator was full, and dog was in the backseat.

[Stars101]

Travel Lite completely re-caulked my unit with a different sealant than they were using last year. And the new stuff looked better and adhered better. So I hope this stays dry now. Plus my DH even went over the roof seams again when we got home... It looks pretty goobered up now with all those seams of caulk, but at this point I could care less how the roof looks as long as it stays dry.

There is just no way they can stay in business if they continue to produce units like the ones they sent out in 2013-2014. I hope they have it together now b/c I like buying from a small business, but this was ridiculous. Their dealers must be cussing them up & down...

[exhaustipated]

I picked up my rig from the repair shop today after leaving it with them for the last four days. I had to have a new roof put on and also had to replace all of the decking after discovering water getting into the camper in the bedroom area of the cab-over from cracks in the Dicor sealant that overlaps the cap to the roof along the seam. Trying to find the correct ceiling tile matchup was almost impossible as Travel Lite doesn't use that particular style of textured ceiling tile anymore. As luck would have it, the repair shop found the correct match from another repair shop so it was shipped immediately to them to complete my fix-up on time. I sincerely believe now that I've got a roof that is better than before and they used a sealant that they said was a whole lot better than what was used originally from the factory. I really love my Travel Lite camper and hope that now I wont have to worry about the roof for quite a while. It has been interesting to read about other Travel Lite owners' problems with their campers and I will continuously monitor any problems to look for with mine.

[Stars101]

By the way - whoever designed the Drop & Click photo app located under "Forum Technical Help" is a flippin' GENIUS! posting these photos was so easy and stress-free. I just learned about this feature. I have never posted a photo before b/c I read so many "image not available" and "you must post it to a service like Shutterfly...", "per Moderator - please resize photo, blah, blah, blah" that I was totally intimidated to try.

Drop & Click, copy/paste - easy peasey....

[Stars101]

This is what the wires to the electric jacks looked like when they pulled the aluminum siding off to fix the front cabover. Probably got cut when it was built b/c someone just shoved the wires back through the rough-cut hole in the aluminum. It's so sharp that unless you take a moment and carefully push the wires in they will get all chewed up. But anyone who takes a second to do it correctly can certainly get the wires in place (easily) without nicking the insulation all to h#ll.

EDIT: No, I didn't allow them to tape the damage and re-install it. My DH cut the wire back enough to get into the good wire. At least they allowed enough slack this was possible.