Taking delivery of our new 3124KB and first trip

[Skyjim73]

OK, we’ve completed our first real camping trip with the new 3124KB, a run to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. General observations, which most of you experienced owners likely would consider old news:

The anticipated fuel economy benefits are clearly real! Towing with my V-10 gas hog, from Victorville, CA, to North Las Vegas in very hot conditions, a run which includes the Baker Grade, a fairly grueling climb to a 4000 foot pass in 100 degree plus heat, I was astounded to register a hand-calculated (triple-checked, once by the DW because I frankly did not believe my own numbers...) 16.28 mpg. This with a tow vehicle that struggles to ever crack 17 mpg over any distance without a trailer. Partly it was because I was on a heavily patrolled segment of I-15, so cruised at a quasi-legal 62 mph indicated, slower than I would prefer, but clearly in the fuel economy sweet spot. Higher speeds gave poorer economy, as always, but I never got below 12 mpg even when dicing with semis at 70+ on grades in Nevada and Utah. This with a tow vehicle which never cracked 9 mpg pulling my old hard side 22 footer over the same route.

As regards quality issues, we had to abort taking delivery the first time around in May – there were multiple things wrong or incomplete – some of the incompletes were stuff that stemmed from our unit being one of the first off the Nebraska line with multiple custom and other options. Some stuff like the cassette toilet wasn’t in the production flow at the new factory yet. The compressor fridge was in, but only ran on AC power – not on 12 volt. Custom RV tried to take on the task of completing several items to get it in shape for a trip deadline we had, but when I had multiple ground fault trips in the trailer as soon as I plugged it in at my house – which would not reset, and popped the breaker in my garage circuit, which has had no trouble with my 1996 Prowler for the past 18 years – I was simply done. I’m pretty good with DC systems and their troubleshooting, but have no desire to begin a new ownership experience with a suspect AC system right out of the box. In addition, there were gouged interior pieces, missing trim strips over some of the stapled seam lines inside, the running lights were not working on the front shell, and despite some valiant band-aids by Custom before i left the yard, I now had the feeling that the more we looked, the more issues we were going to find. I was simply done, had no time, and had to regretfully tell Custom to come get the trailer. Much of this was basic stuff which should never have made it out of the factory IMHO. I felt almost physically ill – had I made a huge mistake?

Fast forward to early June and I was ready to go down for delivery version 2.0. This time everything was in place, no AC or DC system weirdness, all the appliances and lights worked OK, and Custom had welded on the brackets for my Andersen No-Sway hitch and done the mods to the battery rails to fit my desired 260 AH batteries. Solar panels were on the roof, the MPPT charge controller was doing its thing, and the 4 AWG charge wiring had been run from the upgraded Progressive Dynamics converter section that had been installed in Nebraska forward to a marine cutoff switch and a main DC breaker mounted on the tongue. We folded things down, and as I was securing the travel latches, one of the aft latch hooks on the upper shell literally came off in my hand. All four bolts appeared to have corroded and failed! While those were being replaced, I quickly gave the others a visual and pull test but the other three seemed ok, so I hitched up and off we went on our maiden voyage…

When we arrived at the North Rim, setup was done slowly and carefully, and it was not until after we were done that I noticed that one of the four gold irridited bolts holding the forward right link arm for the rear shell to the bottom torsion bar was missing. Sort of like finding that the framers forgot to nail a joist in your house to the hangar, right? A quick check revealed two others that were loosened and in danger of leaving, one adjacent to the departed bolt, another on the aft arm on the same side of the aft shell. Both had the lockwashers in place so I can only conclude that they were not properly torqued at the factory. Went around snugging all of them up, and called Custom requesting replacements and a factory recommend torque spec. But honestly at that point I wondered if anybody has actually engineered this thing and bothered to do anything other than consult a standard torque table - which would, I think, result in an overtorque likely to crush the rectangular arm section if i understand the construction. I could be wrong there, but you can be certain that before we hit the road for trip number two, there will be blue lock-tite on all of those bolts!

I have not done any serious searches of fixes to a lot of things we noticed on this first trip that I knew would be irritants to me, but figured I'd live with as part of the tradeoff for the low profile. The seal installation in several places like the door area seems haphazard (there is a gaping gap at the bottom aft door corner that needs some attention to detail IMO), as does the placement of the velcro dots for the forward insulating flaps while in transit. The hasps they use for the bathroom walls seem a crude and cheap approach, and the plastic trim almost designed to fail. Nothing about that setup will prevent those wall panels from "walking" as you experienced folks know. Gotta be a better way. I've got an old buddy who is a mechanisms designer for spacecraft at JPL - I'm going to have him over, ply him with some beers, and challenge him to come up with something clever. He will, but his first several ideas will be hopelessly unbuildable. But maybe after lots of beers and arguments we'll figure out some elegant and robust modifications. Maybe not, but it's worth a try, and the process will be fun

Funpilot, I have no idea if my windows leak, because we had no real weather. I'm REALLY happy with the performance of the compressor fridge, but I screwed up when I placed the trailer in our camp site - should have been about 15 feet farther forward in the pullthrough, and i would have gotten a lot more sun - I'm not yet used to considering the solar panels when placing the rig. Had to run the generator an hour or so each day to keep the batteries nice and happy.

More comment in a second post - this is getting awfully long! But we are off and running, and we can't wait to get out again and learn more (after I locktite those bolts). Lots I already want to change, but while I am very unhappy with the detail work I see from TM, I still like the bones.