So, the next day we go back, intent on measuring for various upgrades we’d like to make and starting to look under the covers, behind the cabinets, under the trailer.
And I have never been more horrified looking at a new product in my life.
I could try to tell the story in the order I encountered the items, but I think it would be better to regroup the issues into similar categories. But literally every time I looked at something I found some stupid bit of construction that was totally unnecessary, sloppy or downright unsafe.
Many of these items weren’t things that were broken: that didn’t not work. They were things that 5 days, 10 days, 100 days down the road would break; would stop working; would burn up. When you were 1000 miles from home, on a hot day, 200 miles from the nearest RV dealer. If you are an RV owner – think of how many of these things may be lurking in your new RV. Its not so much that I’m trying to scare you – but to get you to take a closer look at every part of that very expensive bit of gloss that you’ll be towing or driving around the country. Maybe you’ll save yourself a day on the side of the highway or a ticket or hours or days waiting for a RV service man to find your campground.
First will be Safety – items that can result in accidents, fires, loss of life, etc.
Second will be shoddy construction – things done wrong, either by inexperienced workers or by workers being rushed on the assembly line.
Lastly – the long list of poor design decisions – probably to save time, money or both.
And there is a lot of overlap on these lists.
RVIA does WHAT?
Let me first set the stage. Most manufacturers mostly belong to the RVIA – who sets standards for construction. But these standards are NOT publicly available. You can pay significant amounts of money to get a copy, but it seems if you are an RV buyer, you have no right to see the standards unless you shell out several hundred dollars for a personal copy. Something I’m still considering whether to do. But I can’t publish them because, well copyright lawyers and the fact that RIVA really doesn’t want their “standards” public. So when you are laying on your back in the dirt, saying “Why the X#&! did they do that?” you have no right to know whether your trailer manufacturer has violated the standards or whether the RVIA stickers on your trailer mean absolutely nothing. The RVIA website is for manufacturers and suppliers not people shelling out their life savings for an RV. The “consumer RVIA site: Go RVing, contains a lot of fluff, but nothing about how your RV was constructed.
Safety
The mess in the box
I was dying to see what was inside the electrical box under the front left side of the trailer, so I crawled under and pulled the two screws. Mind you this is a galvanized, non-waterproof box like you might use to install a double gang power receptacle INSIDE your house. There were a number of very large twist nuts, some tape and a lot of wire. I gently pulled some of it out – and the first thing I saw was a blue wire wrapped around (but not connected to) a couple more blue wires terminated in a crimp connector. So, what’s a little blue wire? Only the wire going to the
breakaway switch! The NHTSA mandated safety switch that locks up the brakes if the trailer disconnects from the tow vehicle. In construction, the three wires had been put together, twisted and the switch wire, instead of twisting together with the other two, one had wrapped around the others’ insulated base. Then a crimp connector placed over the trio, but only connecting with the two. When I cut the connector off, I also found that a second wire had only half its strands in the crimp. So – no breakaway switch and only half the strands carrying power from the truck to the brakes. Maybe this is why, at the dealer, the kid hooked up his “Brake Tester” – and pressed the brake – stared for quite a while at the dial – pressed again, stared some more – then finally decided “everything was fine”. This also means NO ONE TESTS that switch! Does your switch work? NOTE – DO NOT test your switch by pulling the switch cable while your trailer is plugged into your truck, That switch ties 12V on your trailer battery to the brakes and if the truck is connected – could destroy your brake controller in the truck and overheat your brakes. If you don’t know how to test, find someone who does. Maybe I’ll cover it in a later post.
UPDATE Sept, 2017 I finally got around to looking in this same box on my daughter’s 2016 Rockwood. Now with mine, I was allowed the illusion that bad connections MAY have been the fault of a rushed factory worker. No longer am I afforded this illusion. The battery cable was also cut and twisted together with a wire nut. The most upsetting however is the Brake control wire WAS NOT IN THE CRIMP! The wire from the tow vehicle and the brake switch were crimped (and switch wire was ONLY HALF STRANDS IN THE CRIMP) but the wire going to the brakes was possibly in contact but not actually crimped!!!! That’s 2 for 2 Forest River! How many trailers are being towed without brake wires properly connected? I filed an NHTSA complaint on mine – will encourage my daughter to do the same. Think about it. Its rainy, dark, windy – someone cuts you off and your trailer tries to do an end-around your tow vehicle or slides sideways off the road. Your tow and trailer roll half a dozen times, hopefully without smashing into a tree or bridge abutment. Maybe catches fire. Do you really think an accident investigator is going to open that little box, if he can even get to it and figure out your brake wires WERE NOT CONNECTED? I urge everyone who reads this to confirm somehow their trailer brakes are actualy working. And I strongly suggest you see if your trailer has kone of these boxes and see if every connection in it is actually tight.
The mess in the back
While I was there….. The 8 Gauge battery cable went through the box. In the box it had been CUT, stripped and the two ends twisted along with a smaller wire (solar power connector?) and the largest Wire Nut I’ve ever seen was twisted onto the ends. Some electrical tape was little more than draped around the nut, I suppose in a failed attempt to make sure the nut can’t come loose. I’m pretty sure that violates the electrical code – and if it doesn’t it should. The real mystery is only 6 inches away, outside the box; the battery cable is terminated in a nice eye connector, bolted to a circuit breaker. So, why cut the cables 6 inches downstream? Why not put an eye on the solar cable and hook it to the breaker? I replaced the nut with an inline screw terminal, which I insulated with heat shrink and a layer of tape. Was this a DESIGN, or an afterthought by someone who was rushed on the assembly line? It apparently is a FLAWED DESIGN on the part of Forest River!!!
While I was there….. 5 ground wires for various sabilizer motors and lights, all stranded, were also twisted together into a wad with a wire nut. This seemed solid, so for now I left it though I have plans to redo this whole mess in the near future. There is a circuit breaker and two fuses just outside the box, exposed to the weather. I want to replace this box with a larger waterproof version with everything inside and properly terminated. So, if anything outside your trailer stops working – like stabilizers or tongue jack – there its likely one of these outside fuses or this massive ground in a wire nut.
Finally the tail-light wire also goes through this box and is crimp connected to running light wires – and the crimp FELL OFF, disconnecting the tail lights.
One could argue this one was safety or not. Our equalizer hitch was not properly adjusted by the dealer. The trailer was over 3 inches lower in front that back. The hitch head needed to be taken apart, flipped over and then adjusted properly. We didn’t have any trouble towing it home, but then we had ideal conditions (sunny day, no wind) to do so in.
Shortly after we bought the trailer, after a mild bit of rain, I was walking around
the trailer and spotted water inside both tail lights. I popped the lens off and found about a tablespoon of water inside. A quick look showed the lens wasn’t seating right on the plastic base – and the culprit was the extra screw someone installed. Extra screw – why? Because someone had used an upside down template – or something and cut holes for the wiring in the wrong place. Why not flip the lights over? Because the left one had a trailer license bracket and couldn’t be flipped. So they installed the lights but the wiring bulged the flimsey backplate – so they “fixed” it with an extra screw. Clearly this is a manufacturing defect. I purchased a pair of Bargman LED lights so now people can actually see me when its night or I hit m brakes. Warranty? What Warranty?
The mess underneath
The brake wires extend down the left side of the trailer from the electrical box to the left wheel brakes – then cross over to the right side. There must have been a shortage in tie-wraps that day because why else would only a couple wraps had been used – leaving the brake wire to dangle lower than any other part of the trailer – exposing the wire to being yanked out by road debris. A situation you’d never know until you need your brakes in an emergency and the trailer heads for the opposite lane without you or pushes your truck into a jack-knife. Two minutes and a 10 cents worth of tie-wraps on the assembly line is all it would have taken to eliminate this safety hazard. This is exactly the kind of problem that, after your trailer has rolled three times in a ditch, no one would be able to detect, thus putting blame for losing control of the trailer squarely on the driver. The image doesn’t show the lowest part of the wire, but it does show it totally unrestrained for several feet.
The And another mess underneath
I needed to run a cable from back to front for my rear view camera. That meant opening up the basement cover along the left side. I pulled the first few feet down – and I find all those cables (including the main battery cable) that left the electrical box laying on top of a piece of angle iron. Angle iron is
extruded and often has sharp edges. The trailer had been towed, maybe 400 miles and there was already obvious wear on the insulation from the iron’s rough edge. I restrained and protected the cables. Interestingly, down the whole rest of the trailer, elsewhere all wires were either properly restrained or rested on smooth cross members. Seems like someone made yet another quick cost saving move without considering quality or SAFETY(or was simply clueless to the materials they were specifying) OR someone was rushed on the assembly line and forgot to install a couple of clamps. Either way, two or three wire ties and a couple of screws, 60 more seconds, is all it would have taken to keep this fire hazard from existing.
The other mess underneath…
I wanted to see what was behind the power panel because I was thinking about swapping out the battery charger (converter they called it) for a charger/inverter. What I found was a TOTALLY SCREWED UP MESS!
There were wires going every which way. Twisted around each other – some tight, some loose. There was this gaping hole in the floor – almost 8 inches across with wires, hoses and a heater duct erupting from it. On the floor there was a ground strip and a circuit breaker with one screw each, half driven into the floor. The circuit breaker with un-insulated posts, was less than 2 inches from the heating duct, which by the way had stainless wire wrapping. Oh, and there was a heavy bundle of cables strapped to the floor OVER the top of the heater duct, closing it off almost entirely. And that hose I mentioned? It was a rubber propane line to the outside grill mount. So, none of this was, at that moment, about to cause a fire – but how many stupid, sloppy things have to exist in one place before something goes wrong and I look in my rear view mirror so see I’m being followed by a very large flaming torch? Or worse, be woken up at 2am by the smoke detector (if it works). I cleaned it up the best I could, but with wires going every which way, often strung too tight to re-route, it still is a mess. It’s just now not a mess that is going to start a fire in the near future. I’m pretty sure this kind of mess also violates the RVIA standards. And that hole, big enough for a squirrel – no a raccoon, to crawl through? My quick fix was to take several quart baggies and take some course steel wool, expand it out and fill the bags and stuff them in till the space was filled. Its likely not ant proof, but hopefully isn’t a open door to mice or something bigger. I’m trying to figure out how to better deal with the mess. I can think of a number or ways Forest River could better design this and none of them would take more than 10 more minutes on the assembly line nor cost more than a few dollars. An extra $20 of wires (longer so they could be organized) would have made it possible to be much neater and safer and maybe take less time to install.
Propane Leak – I’m getting the trailer un-winterized and I realize I left the Propane valve on, on the tank. My bad – add it to the task list. We had two 40 pound tanks. I purchased a pair of tank monitors and installed them. One tank was full, the other empty. We had been on three trips, but had not used very much propane. We spent over three weeks in the trailer without a hint of propane smell inside and our gas monitor is powered on. So, I’m quite sure there is a propane leak somewhere outside. An entire tank in about 9 months. When I took the hose off the empty tank, there was plastic “debris” inside the seal area. It wasn’t on the seal itself, but when I was first testing for leaks – I cracked the hose connection with the tank valve also open to see if there was still some pressure in the tank – and there was. That might have cleared debris on the rubber O-ring. I did check the entire system with soapy water and didn’t find anything. So chalk another one up to slop on the assembly line.