I'm in my 50's, retired and the wife and I love to travel and camp...the more remote and scenic, the better. Tenting out of the back of our Tundra was fun and allowed access to places RVs and camp trailers couldn't go, but I got to where I want to "rough it", but just not that rough. Then we see the off road tear drop campers. BINGO! Compact little bad-ass camp trailers that can go just about anywhere. After a month reviewing Youtube videos, we came across the No Bo 10.6 with the toy hauler rear door and loved the design. Bought it brand new a week ago and on the way home with it stopped in north Georgia and camped at a state park in 20-30 degree weather. Used a Mr Heater and slept very warm. Got it home and the wife was excited to start outfitting it with gear. That is when we noticed problems. The front is framed with 3/4 X 1- 1/2" fir strips and pressed cardboard walls and shelves. The material is the same as the cardboard you get for the backs of cheap bookshelves at Walmart. (At least with Walmart, I know what I'm getting) Everything is fastened with staples and the workmanship is horrible. Most of the staples miss the framing member, so there are literally rows of staples sticking thru the pressboard 1/2" away from the frame member. Walls are pulling apart and the shelves are bowed and warped and not even secured to the framing members. They even ran a screw into the on board 30 gal water tank when they screwed the slide out rail to the floor. The membrane roof has bubbles in it where it is delaminating and there are places on the roof where they didn't run sealant and water has gotten into the walls. What few outlets it has are poorly mounted...crooked and you can see where the hole was cut too big and they mounted it anyway, so when I plug into an outlet and pull out the cord, the box comes out of the wall with it. The design is great, but the quality is garbage. The dealership is good and wants to help, but this is beyond dealership repair and Forest River has been rediculous to deal with. They call all these problems "cosmetic" and immediately turn into the "victim" where I'm just being a nit-picky customer. After a week of back and forth, finally got the dealership to urge Forest River to make warranty repairs. Had the camper 3 days before sending it off and now told it could be 2 months or more to get it back.
So, for anyone interested in a No Bo camper, they are great in design and look really sharp on the outside, but are not very good quality wise. I ran the numbers, and for around $1500 and a week of labor, I can pull out the front framing and redo it with better wood and fasteners and use a thin plywood vs pressboard and then buy a good sealant and go over the roof seams and missed areas and repair the water tank. I bought it for just over 13K, so with my own repairs, I can be in a decent camper for around 15K. I hate that I have to do all of this on a brand new camper, but there are no real options. Manufacturing warranty work still leaves me with some very low quality materials.
The design is great. I can't stand up in it, but the trade off for low profile and low center of gravity is worth it for the type of camping we do. The front has a slide out compartment that extends out and has a 2 burner stove, Dometic ice chest (which is awesome and retails for $900. I wouldn't spend that much for it, but it came with the camper and I love it) and a lock box at the back of the slide, which is accessible from the inside, a nice feature. Quick and easy to use and frees up the back end where most tear drops dedicate the rear for a galley. I dont cook that much and really like having the back to be open. I put a stabilizer on and my 2018 Tundra pulls like its not even there. The camper is nimble and being narrower than the truck, it corners well and when going on switchbacks, it doesn't go into the other lane as longer and wider trailers do. Its pretty basic and simple and we got it to have a relatively safe and comfortable place to sleep only, versus having one designed to actually live out of. I was hoping it would do well on slightly off-road excursions...such as out in the desert or going up the not-so-well maintained mountain roads. The frame is made by Lippert and is very thin...maybe 14 gauge at best. I'd say it is about as thin and cheap as it can be without bending and breaking, and I sure wouldn't take it on anything too rough...maybe a desert road where you run into a little wash out here and there. I google checked Lippert, and of course found quite a few complaints on their frames. While checking this out, I then see that the torsion axles used on this camper were recalled right after it was made. Can't find out if I have the bad axle or not, but it pretty much goes with rest of everything... It does have about 18" of clearance, so that's nice.
It seems like all the real nice off road trailers of this design are made in Australia and run $30k-$40k and are pretty hard to get in the US, so we are pretty much limited to the cheap mass produced units of low quality...and even the newer Airstreams are getting a lot of complaints on quality, so I guess that is just way things are across the board in the US. If you google Forest River, the first thing that pops up are customer complaints. LOTS of them. So research better than I did before buying, or just know you need to spend some extra time and money to make things right yourself.
I have about 30 pics of problems, but attached 3 here so you can see that they dont take the time to use a hole saw, pipes and wires look to have penetrations hacked out with an axe, the one framing member broke at a knot and was still used even though the end was short, jagged and not attached to anything. The pic of the wall shows gaps where the framing members on the end of a wall dont even attach to anything, the whole wall is flapping and pulling lose. If you buy one of these, just expect to do some work to get it right and I'm making sure to carry a couple pieces of angle iron and and some Tek5 self tapping screws in case I have to band-aid a broken weld on the frame. Saw a video where a similar camper had the frame break, if you look closely at the frame, you can see where it won't take much stress to cause a failure.
