Great Expośe on the Quality of Camper Trailers and RV’s Today

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

Or just don't buy any Elkhart type mass produced rv. Stick to the smaller off road custom builders.

 

[JaSAn]

. . . Stick to the smaller off road custom builders.

Could you direct us to a custom builders that offers: room for 4+, stand-up, inside kitchen, bathroom with shower custom trailers?

 

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

I love when folks ask me this question!

What is your tow vehicle

 

[WOODY2]

If you think the one built in Indiana are junk you should look at those built overseas and imported. On another note the poor fellow whose wife had the fire extinguisher, he still had an even larger problem than the flames,a gas leak.

 

[JaSAn]

. . . What is your tow vehicle

Ram 2500 4X4
Dodge B3 Power Wagon

I have family and friends who have spousal, mobility, and/or toy hauling requirements for any kind of camping. The kind of people who are in the market for larger campers and don't want junk.

 

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

Ram 2500 4X4
Dodge B3 Power Wagon

I have family and friends who have spousal, mobility, and/or toy hauling requirements for any kind of camping. The kind of people who are in the market for larger campers and don't want junk.

Okay call Justin at Rover Off Road in Twin Falls ID.

Home | Rover | Life Off Grid

Rover Recreational Vehicles are the pinnacle in off-grid travel. We seamlessly pair durability with comfort with a truly perfect travel experience. We’ve taken over 30 years or trailer and RV building experience to build the ultimate RV, capable of conquering even the toughest terrain.

www.roveroffroad.com

He will do custom builds for more off road capability.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

All RVs are crap. Some just smell better than others. The sooner an "RV'er" understands that, the sooner they will learn to plan accordingly, roll with the punches, and get some enjoyment out of the lifestyle.

Pretty much. We bring tools with us cause we know something will have fallen apart or off while driving down the highway. It is what it is. We've had this trailer for 4 seasons now. In the end, it does what we need it to do. As stuff breaks, we fix it.
It's a 2016 so pre-pandemic but it doesn't matter. From what I've read, anything (mass produced) since the 2008 recession is crap.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

This is the kind of stuff that makes me think about buying a used unit at a deep discount, if that happens, then gut it and build to suit my OCD and desires.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

Agreed, if you can find a decent used one. The trouble is that the interior components (like the stoves, gas fittings, etc.) are actually the "premium" quality parts of the RVs -- the RV shells themselves are objectively worse. They are poorly constructed and that makes finding a waterproof one tricky - most of the RV dealers we visited wouldn't let us inspect the roofs for "safety reasons" but we didn't look at a single used RV that didn't have signs of a leaky roof inside somewhere (And we looked at a couple of dozen during shopping, at multiple dealers).

If you think the one built in Indiana are junk you should look at those built overseas and imported. On another note the poor fellow whose wife had the fire extinguisher, he still had an even larger problem than the flames,a gas leak.

Totally true. If this hadn't caught fire when it did, we might be looking at a CO poisoning or a less Michael Bay-quality of disaster, but a disaster all the same.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

YOU can still make the same mistake going DIY and miss not fully tightening a fitting.

This is true. But, when it's my wife, son, dog, and cat on the line, I'm inclined to double, triple, and quadruple check my fittings using soapy water. It strikes me that the folks in Indiana are not given that kind of time for care. Mistakes happen, of course, but when they happen with regularity due to poor corporate ethics pushing these inferior-quality, unsafe, and subpar products onto thousands of customers, I see it as a much bigger problem than the occasional and rare DIY-er who does it wrong in a rig they are only using for themselves.

 

[calicamper]

Could you direct us to a custom builders that offers: room for 4+, stand-up, inside kitchen, bathroom with shower custom trailers?

LoL
Don’t exist the family rigs are largely ignored by all RV makers. Even ROA knows this issue and spends lots of time trying to find modifications to it Chinese ordered stuff so they can use show room stuff for family trips.?.

 

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

I hear you on ROA as you would think they would have more family rigs being un breedersville Utah. But sleeps 4+ and off road don't really go hand in hand. Owner only has one kid and everyone else is like 12 years old ?

Rover Off Road will build you a rig that sleeps 4+

 

[Treefarmer]

Could you direct us to a custom builders that offers: room for 4+, stand-up, inside kitchen, bathroom with shower custom trailers?

You have a number of choices depending on how much you want to spend, how "off road" you really need to be, and how much building you want to do yourself. Rover in Idaho was mentioned above. A similar trailer is built by RKS Off Road. They are still taking orders through dealers but don't seem to be thriving. Even bigger production trailers like the new Palomino Pause or even the large Ember trailers may work for you. Step down the quality ladder a little and a Black Series HQ21 might work for you. If you want to do the build out yourself, you can buy off road "capable" cargo trailers in large sizes and do the work yourself. We are in the early stages of a custom build with Kingdom Camping. It will be Kingdom's first larger, four wheel, off road trailer. When the time comes, we'll post here about the design and build so you'll be able to see if that is an option for you. Finally, you can get a lot of larger, family floorplan friendly trailers pretty far off road before you're going to destroy them. People drag the big Outdoors RVs into some crazy spots. They are also good cold weather trailers. No matter what, be ready, wiling and able to do RV maintenance or seek out the best RV techs nationwide and pay them to make things work right/better for you.

 

[Treefarmer]

I just replied the other day to another thread about a person wanting to go Full Time, and even since then, I have had experiences that fully validate what has been shared here. Don't get me wrong, I love the lifestyle, but I think the best advice is what @Treefarmer said about being willing to roll with the punches and expect crap.

Case in point: I had previously posted here on Expo about my RV's stove not working right when the heater was on (this thread). Before I could address that issue, we learned that the stove wasn't installed correctly. And the way we found that out was our trailer caught on fire yesterday and nearly ended in disaster; my wife was on the ball with the extinguisher thankfully, because another 30 seconds would have meant a pretty horrible end to this story. The cause of the fire is the hose that connects the stovetop to the propane system was not installed properly and appears to have a leak that we did not previously detect. When we started the burner, that leak caught fire and wouldn't go out till we hit it with the extinguisher. The RV is only 7-8 weeks old - we just got it at the end of August, and it has less than 2,000 kms on it. I've called the sales person, who told us to contact the service desk, who then bumped us to insurance, who feels this should be a warranty issue and is going back to the dealership for us, so it's a bit of a ride, but the fact of the matter is this was nearly a fatal experience that should not have happened to begin with. I understand, however, that our experience isn't exactly unique.

All this could have been addressed (or at least mitigated) with ticketed gasfitters doing the installations. Or, y'know, people who at least remember to put the yellow teflon tape on the brass fitting, or whatever the current best practice is. We are, similarly, having challenges with our electrical -- one of the outlets only works when there are two things plugged in; if you want to use only the top or bottom receptacle, the entire outlet won't provide power, but if the outlet has two things plugged in, both things work fine. So that's another example of having someone who doesn't know what they are doing installing critical components like electrical and gas.

As it stands now, this was nearly a deathtrap for me and my family, and the only thing that is likely to satisfy me is if someone comes out and goes through the whole propane and electrical system to ensure this can't happen again at any other connection. I'm not expecting that I will get that result at this stage, so my plan B is to do all this stuff myself - I know enough from having built my own rigs over the years that I can make this trailer safe for sure - but that tanks the value of this trailer substantially, and a guy shouldn't have to do that on a brand new product they just paid tens of thousands of dollars for.

We have been living and travelling fulltime in a 2012 New Horizons 5th wheel for over ten years. New Horizons is considered one of the best custom RV builders in the US (and the prices for them show that). We've had the trailer try to catch fire twice. Once was due to faulty wiring at a brake light and the other was when the absorption refrigerator failed and the amonia started to leak in the vicinity of the pilot light. The former was the manufacturers fault. The latter is a matter of opinion since the refrigerator was nine years old (We are exclusively a 12v refrigerator family now!). Since we live in the trailer 365 days a year (no family guest rooms or hotels for us) you could say we almost burned up in a house fire twice. Or you could say we were on the scene, prepared, and saved our house from burning down twice. We're custom building our next trailer now. Even though it will be new, we'll be more "on alert" over the first year in the new trailer just because we won't know yet where the flaws or weaknesses will be. Once you've lived in a trailer for a while, you tend to work out all the bugs, upgrade to better systems when the current ones fail, and know exactly what the limitations and quirks of the trailer are. In many ways, that makes for safer travels.

 

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

Great advise from Tree Farmer as usual. I would have suggested Kindom as well but since you mentioned the you were wanting a toyhauler type rig with ramp door for wheelchair assess I assume that the Rover might better fit you.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

We have been living and travelling fulltime in a 2012 New Horizons 5th wheel for over ten years. New Horizons is considered one of the best custom RV builders in the US (and the prices for them show that). We've had the trailer try to catch fire twice. Once was due to faulty wiring at a brake light and the other was when the absorption refrigerator failed and the amonia started to leak in the vicinity of the pilot light. The former was the manufacturers fault. The latter is a matter of opinion since the refrigerator was nine years old (We are exclusively a 12v refrigerator family now!). Since we live in the trailer 365 days a year (no family guest rooms or hotels for us) you could say we almost burned up in a house fire twice. Or you could say we were on the scene, prepared, and saved our house from burning down twice. We're custom building our next trailer now. Even though it will be new, we'll be more "on alert" over the first year in the new trailer just because we won't know yet where the flaws or weaknesses will be. Once you've lived in a trailer for a while, you tend to work out all the bugs, upgrade to better systems when the current ones fail, and know exactly what the limitations and quirks of the trailer are. In many ways, that makes for safer travels.

That makes a lot of sense - glad you folks managed to take care of this twice! And, I think, you are spot on that people buying an RV ought to be prepared for stuff like this. I just got off the phone with my dealer, and they advised that I call another dealer locally who will cover the repairs to my unit under Warranty. That dealer is booked solid until January or February (They won't even let me book right now - I have to call back January 6th!) which means 2-3 months minimum without heat or cooking inside. If I wanted that experience, I would have saved $30k and stuck with my tent!

The way I see it, there's only a few ways forward for my situation:

1) They fix it.
2) We hash it out in court.
3) Forget any formal response from the manufacturer/dealer, and just accept that I need to gut-and-refurbish everything myself.

I'll keep you all posted. But the takeaway is -- I don't think my experience is unusual so anyone planning on buying an RV best go in with both eyes open. To illusrate from a 30-second google of "RV Fires":

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/denver-whittier-neighborhood-rv-explosion-fire/ (Note at the bottom of that article - there were 30 other RV Fires -- just in Denver!)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-legacy-rv-explosion-1.5543441

Fire destroys 3 RVs at Mabel Lake campground, 1 occupant did not survive - Vernon News

UPDATE: 3:55 p.m. RCMP confirm that the occupant of an RV involved a fire at Mabel Lake on Sunday died the following day.

www.castanet.net

RV fully engulfed with flames in Osoyoos, eastbound lane damaged | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source

“We are most fortunate that the vegetation was not as dry as last year. Firefighters were able to prevent the fire from spreading with a quick attack.”

infotel.ca