Forest City, IA - The Adventure Continues

When Tom and Cathy bought their RV, they knew that they needed some work done and had made an appointment for this service work for the last day of the rally. When they got to the dealer yesterday, oops, the part had arrived in the shop but had not been painted so it was not ready for them. Shucks. So they found a spot in a local park, hooked up their electricity and waited. Our neighbors, who had gone in for service work on Wednesday had also found that the part they needed had not yet come in but that they could get it installed on Friday. Were we surprised at these two instances of not getting service when it was expected? Nope. And, so their adventures continued.

Little did we know that ours was to continue also. Yesterday was the last day of the rally and we had planned to leave for home today. But first, we met with Cathy and Tom at a local restaurant, Sally’s, on the main street in downtown Forest City for breakfast. We love to try the small mom and pop restaurants rather than the big chains and so do Cathy and Tom. We then found the Winnebago factory store where we needed to pick up some parts that we had ordered.

Winnebago does parts very well. Every RV that Winnebago manufactures has a serial number and a list of parts that belong in that vehicle. If you want to know what the name of a part is in your vehicle, go on line and look it up. If you want to order a part, they need only know your serial number and they can find the part just for your RV. Neat. Also - many parts in our RV have a sticker on them (where it can’t be seen) that identifies the part with a number. For instance, I can look at a cupboard door and find out the part number and order it should I need it. Pretty neat.

Now some history. Last October when we traded in and got this RV, they were cleaning it up for us and power washed the battery compartment where the slide motors are. Let me repeat this: THEY POWER WASHED THE BATTERIES AND THE SLIDE MOTORS. What ever were they thinking? Well, obviously, they were NOT thinking. Can you guess the rest of the story? I’ll bet you can. They replaced two of the slide motors but since this ‘soaking bath’ we have had intermittent trouble with the third one, the one they did not replace.

Today was one of the times. We are ready to rock and roll down the highway back to Altoona when I pressed the button for the large slide to come in. 4” later, it stopped. Wouldn’t go in, wouldn’t go out. Dead in the water. Gary has dealt with this before so he went out, detached the wires, reattached the wires. We tried again. No go. He detached and reattached again. No go. One last time, the slide came in. Whew. And, we drove about 3 blocks to the Winnebago customer service area, pulled into one of the spaces, hooked up and are waiting til Tuesday when they said they’d be able to look at it. The RV on the far left has been here in this scenic campground since mid-June. The one to his right has been here often enough to claim this spot as his. There are actually about 6 RV’s in back of us in another ‘campground’.

I suppose, if we’re going to have trouble with our slides, this is the place to have it. 3 blocks from Winnebago Customer Service. Here’s our ‘campsite’. Note all the other rigs here. Probably not a good advertisement for Winnebago. However, I doubt that there’s an RV out there that hasn’t made it into service at one time or another.

Now, we only hope that the slide motor fails when the tech looks at it.