I had decided to leave my car in our storage spot at Marina Village while I went to the hill country. The storage area is secured with a card access gate. The gate was being repaired when I got ready to leave. Since I was only going to be gone for 5 days, I asked the guard if I could leave my car parked in the community center parking lot and not worry one of the park hosts by making him go the storage lot, interrupt the repairs, and physically opening the gate so I could get in. She said no problem.
Saturday, while I was in the hill country, I get a call from the guard. One of the park hosts had backed into my car with his tail gate down and crunched my trunk on my car. Accidents happen. No big deal. He has insurance. I'll take care of it when I get back the next day.
So, Sunday we head back to the Marina Village. On our way back to the lake, we had to travel through Bryan/College Station. We had stopped at a red light on Highway 30 and had just taken off when we heard a loud pop. I looked in the side mirror and saw a piece of tire rubber flying off. Mr. W immediately pulled over but we had damage. Fortunately we were only going about 40mph.
Fortunately, we have Coach Net and in 108 degree heat, a roadside assistance guy came out, changed our tire and got us back on the road in about an hour and a half. Thursday (the first available appointment), we had both insurance adjusters come out. They actually got here around the same time. Both guys wrote up estimates, found all the parts that they felt would be needed, gave us a copy, and sent the repair shops an emailed copy.
Evidently, things are done a lot differently these days with repairs than it was many years ago. Both repair shops told us that we would have to make an appointment to bring the vehicle (car/trailer) in. A representative from the shop would have to inspect the damage, determine what parts to order, and THEN we could book an appointment to bring the vehicle back for the actual work to begin. This appointment to have the vehicle looked at were each a week away because that was the first available appointment for this. Each one of these initial visits lasted 5 minutes for the car and 15 minutes for the trailer. I then booked an appointment to take the car in 10 days after the 5 minute appointment and because I live in the trailer, I won't be able to book the actual repair appointment for the trailer until they receive the parts from the manufacturer. The guy told us that the earliest he would receive the parts from the manufacturer would be 2 weeks. Geez!
Did I mention that the trailer repair place is in Livingston, TX? Marina Village (the lake) is about 35/40 miles away. Mr. W and I make the trip to Livingston and as we are pulling back into Marina Village, Mr. W notices that we are having ANOTHER flat on one of our tires. He tries airing the tire up and can hear the leak. He starts rubbing his hand around the tire to see if he can feel a nail or something and something cuts his finger. It is the steel belt coming out of that tire. It is lucky for us that we had not had another blow out!
I have Goodyear Marathon tires on our 5W. It came from the factory with those tires. They are load range E/10 ply tires. They are less than 2 years old. If you have an RV, especially a larger RV, I'm sure you have heard the horror stories about RV tires. Almost all of the load range E and less RV tires are made in China. Yes, even our Goodyear Marathons. Hello??? Does anyone NOT see the problem here?
After the blowout, Mr. W had contacted Goodyear because the tires have a 6 year warranty. We had heard that Goodyear was good about standing behind the tires. They gave us a claim number and told us to send the tire back through a Goodyear dealer in our area. Our insurance guy also told us that Goodyear would probably end up paying our deductible too. We'll see. Of course, now we are going to have to file another claim on another tire and send it back. Mr. W has also decided to replace all 4 tires with the Goodyear load range G tires. Just to give you an idea, the E tires are around $130 a tire. The G tires are around $350 a tire. Big difference. I cannot believe that the insurance companies have not started putting pressure on the RV manufacturers and the tire companies to stop putting these cheap, obviously poorly made, Chinese tires on these RVs. The insurance companies are paying out the yazoo to fix these things. Of course, we are ultimately paying higher insurance rates because of the claims. I'll get off my soap box now.
You would think that would be the end of this saga, but unfortunately, it's not.
Mr. W and I started noticing a small amount of water on the floor around the island. I thought at first that it was from washing dishes, the floor mat holding water, etc. Well, it's not. Woody (our 5W) has a leak. When Mr. W started investigating that, he crawled under the trailer and noticed the underbelly was drooping quite a bit. This morning, he pushed on it and water came out. Great. We have an ice maker which I love. But, the line to the ice maker comes out of the island through the sub-floor and floor and goes to the refrigerator. This line is just a plastic tube and it is down where the slide goes in an out. Mr. W thinks the tube got a hole in it from the slide. Another repair. Woody has a bumper-to-bumper 2 year warranty from the manufacturer. That is up in November. I did buy an extended warranty through another company but this needs to be fixed through warranty work. I'm thinking my plans for the fall may be changing. At least no one has been injured and the damage could have been a lot worse.
I'll let you know what happens with Goodyear.
Wow...at least it all happened at the same time so you wouldn't be grounded separately? :/ I know, not much of a comfort.
ReplyDelete