Apr 27 2009
Motor Home for Sale
The Lemon Motor Home - Lots of Misery, Damn Little Recreation
By Donald Ladew
Executive Summary By : Mashuri
motor home for sale
It’s a problem of multiple manufacturers being responsible for what is finally delivered to the customer. With a motor home this is not the case.
Here’s a possible list of major components built and separately warranted by different manufacturers:
- Engine – Cummins Diesel
- Transmission – Allison/GM
- Chassis – Freightliner
- Coach –Fleetwood (and many others)
Various components of the finished product have their own warranties. The transmission connects to the Engine. The hipbone is connected to the thighbone, the thighbone is connected to the leg bone, and the leg bone is connected to the anklebone, so goes the old song.
Who steps forward? In an ethical world, a world where honesty is the rule, mechanics and manufacturer’s representatives of the various components would figure it out and the maker of the malfunctioning part would step forward. Responsibility among the various manufacturers is as foreign as political integrity in Washington D.C.
Motor homes are susceptible to the same problems experienced in automobiles and also problems that are uniquely found in motor homes. Like the modern automobile, motor homes make use of computers to control the various vehicle systems. The difference is that a motor home is a combination truck, (chassis and diesel engine), residence (has many of the qualities of a home such as rooms, showers, appliances, walls, decorative elements, etc.) and it’s a lot like a bus. It’s big!
The possibility for really unpleasant problems abound.
The manufacturer does the right business thing. They innovate; they put their creative people to work developing neat things to catch the buyer’s interest. Now, with the latest innovation in hand, the designers meet the production people. A good example in the motor home world is the “slide out”. A slide out is essentially a electro-mechanical method whereby a room in the RV is made bigger by extending it out from the side of the vehicle. In the motor home we see all of the electrical and electronic problems plus the mechanical. Remember the motor home is a vehicle trying to be a house. Motor homes frequently have problems with leaks, especially around and in the slide out.
When you drive an motor home all over the country, over roads in various states of disrepair, you are creating a kind of continuous earthquake effect on the vehicle, on your portable house. We see the results in lemon motor homes all the time. The following is a list of typical problems from RV Owners. In one year an owner reported the following problems with his 32-foot class C deluxe 5th wheel RV:
- Electrical outlets pop out of the wall
- Panels bowed for the same reason
- The slideouts have pulled the paneling away from the face wall when the slideout is pulled in, because ragged sheet metal edges of the slideout have dug into the panel due to mismatched surfaces
- The center slider section of the screen door will not stay in, due to poor quality control of the space in the center of the door.
- The shower cracked, the roof leaked, the canopy broke,
- Electrical problems and on and on…
One aspect of lemon law is how many days the vehicle must remain at the shop for repairs during the warranty period. Thirty days is the standard in the statute for a lemon vehicle. Here’s the key language. It defines a lemon as:
Vehicles that continue to have a defect(s) that substantially impairs the use, value, or safety of the vehicle after a reasonable number of attempts to repair the vehicle – 4 attempts in California for non-safety related issues - or after the vehicle has been out of service for a particular number of days. Substantial is from the viewpoint of the owner, not the manufacturer.
Bailing water out of your vehicle after every rain shower is not considered the best use of the vehicle. This might also be thought to decrease the value of the vehicle. Although after your experiences with your lemon RV, you may want to buy an M1A1 Abrams tank and pay a visit to the manufacturer.
check out my other guide on Clas A Toy Hauler, Small Toy Hauler
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