Mesa, AZ - The RV Service Center Adventure

Doesn’t that sound like an adventure you’d like to have?  We've all taken our cars to the Service Center and had the Car Service Center Adventure. Wasn't that fun? Well, if you thought that was fun, have I got an adventure for you: twice as big, twice as expensive and twice as inconvenient (since you actually live in your RV at the shop.) It’s easy to take your car into the shop for service - you just find other means of transportation. But - imagine rolling your house over to the service center where they tell you that they need it for a few days, or a week or two. Now what? It’s more difficult to find alternate means of housing. This is the only one you’ve got. More about that in the future.

As I have written before, we’ve got a few problems with our RV that need to be fixed. We’ve read in several places that you’ll spend about 6 months in the shop out of the first year that you have your RV. We were talking with our neighbors here and mentioned that statistic and they agreed. They actually did spend about 6 months out of the first 12 in the shop. We’ve been lucky: we’ve taken our RV in for regular maintenance and a few small problems but certainly have not spent any 6 months in the shop.

However, we are finally getting our chance to spend some time in the shop. Back in August, our 20' main awning fell off the RV as we were traveling down the road. Luckily it was not an interstate but a smaller road. And, luckily, we were able to salvage all the parts except the awning itself which ripped as the struts came off the RV. Seems like a few of the bolts holding the awning to the RV were drilled into the side of the RV and not into any studs.

Then, as we were coming down to Mesa, our bedroom slide failed to come in one day and we struggled mightily to get it in. But now, we cannot put it out since it might not come back in again. Seems that a bracket was put in the wrong place and rubbed on some cables enough to break them.

Finally, our front windshield is sinking a bit in the two upper corners. Is this manufacturer error like the other two problems? Don’t know until we get the whole windshield off the RV. 3 major problems and we’re hoping that things come in 3’s - which would mean that our run of bad luck is over. But, truth to tell, these are inconveniences - not real problems. Real problems are much more serious. Life is much less stressful if you know the difference between these two. Don’t sweat the inconveniences. Save your sweat for the problems.

Hmm. to say that we ‘limped’ into Mesa is an understatement. However, better here than in Iowa. Here there are about 4 major dealers and repair shops within 3 miles of our resort. In Iowa - very few for all RV's and even fewer for motorhomes.

Thus, I haven’t written much lately because we’ve been spending lots of our time looking at the RV problems we have currently, thinking about options and reading online about others who have the same problems.

We’ve been to one major dealer and service shop and have another appointment this coming week. We also are trying to get into a smaller shop to see what they might say. We’ve actually looked at a ‘new to us’ RV but we might be buying some other problems that we don’t know about but would find out about soon enough. To paraphrase the old saying: Better the RV you know than the RV you don’t.

Lots of options (all of them costly) and we’re spending our time mulling them over. In fact, that seems to be the only thing we’re doing these days. Oh, yeah, laundry too.