efelker

CCC:

Sorry you had so many irritants to correct. We haven't bought yet, but we've looked at a lot of campers and I have an opinion that says QC are two letters missing from most RV manufacturers lexicon. We even looked at Airstream and I was shocked at the quality of this $52K camper and how much their workmanship has erroded since the early 1990s. We looked at a Rialta (that's a VW commercial truck chasis with a motor home body built by Winnebago -- a mere $64K -- shoddy workmanship and really cheal lookinh veneered press board throughout. When I opened the kitchen cabinets they hadn't even vacuumed out all the saw dust from cutting.

I suspect that even with the problems you had, TM is still fairly high up on the list in terms of quality because they are not producing huge volumes and they can use teams to build slow, rather than quickly to meet the numbers quotas. I'm sure the description you gave of the show requirements is exactly what caused what happened to your TM. I've looked at lots of new TMs, and I've noticed some minor things but nothing that really sent up a red flag to say that their overall quality was pretty bad.

As important as initial quality is, I think what and how your dealers handles those problems is far more important -- and clearly one of the things that sets TM aparts. I've read a few threads here about bad dealer relationships, but I think by and large the TM dealers are proud of what they sell and will go out of their way to help. The problem is that usually we live several hours from the nearest dealer so we just suck it up and do the repaire as best we can.

I tried to hit most everything I could think of in the acceptance checklist I compiled. You've given me some additional things to add to the checklist.

Couldn't agree more with your opinion of the owners manual. Bob Strong, or Hal (forget who) sent me the electrons of the owners manual. Being a good AF maintenance officer, I wanted to ensure that I understood the "tech order" inside and out before I bought a rig and commenced my "on-the-job" training. My first impression was that it's a scanned version of a blue mimeographed guide. One of my projects (after we buy) is to write the "Ed Felker Improved Owners Manual." It will contain concise step by step instructions. It will contain digital photos to show the steps that are being described. It will be the "idiot's guide" to operating a TM. I have a son and two daughters (grown, married, and with kids of their own). They'll be borrowing both the TV & the TM -- and the guide I write will be for my mechanically challenged, "how does tab A fit in slot B", why can't a wrench be used as a hammer son-in-law. Once written, I'll share it with anyone else who might want it. I'll even offer it to the factory if they want to give it out.

And finally, I think one of the truly great things about a TM is what you see right here -- friendly people who go out of their way to answer other owner's questions and offer tips. I was sort of sold on the TM design. I sure wanted something easy to tow -- but it's the folks on this website that really sold me on the TM. I know if I have a question or problem -- someone on these pages is going to go out into their yard, sweep the two feet of snow off their winter stowed TM, pop that puppy open, just so that they can come back and tell me what they think the answer is. That's not exactly related to the factory quality that started all this -- but clearly the personal quality of the owners and their sense of TM community is an intangible quality factor you won't find many other places.

I hope you get all your issues rectified so that when you are listening to the crickets chirp (or the cicadas), under a perfect star filled sky, with those you love most -- the main thing on your mind won't be, "Hmmm, wonder why that inverter is making that noise?"

Good luck.

Ed