I immediately had that feeling... you know the one, where you feel like you've been kicked in the soft fuzzy parts? I started doing a little inspecting, and found this:
I immediately called my dealer... who for now shall remain nameless. They told me (basically) to bring it in for service. I explained the situation to them... We are leaving Friday for Memorial day camping trip, be gone about 5 days, believe that this will be an extensive repair, yada, yada. Asked if I could bring it down to them to just LOOK AT, and they said, "sure." (This is after 12:00 on Saturday, so service was closed.) I asked DW to make the trip down with me, to be the voice of reason... I was NOT a happy camper, to say the least.
I got down there, called out the sales rep (also a long-time friend.) He commenced telling me, "you've got to maintain the seams, caulk the roof, windows, doors, etc." I quickly told him, "let's concentrate on the problems at hand, not on what NEEDS to be done in the future. I also asked him to have the owner come out and take a look...
I wanted some advice on what to do (in the short term), and also wanted to know that they will stand behind me (with the manufacturer) on this. They are the dealer, and from the looks of this problem it is NOT from lack of maintenance, it clearly looks like the corner molding has NEVER covered, from the factory, and they covered it with silicone caulk instead of an appropriate-width molding.
For what it is worth, here is the other side of the camper, same location. It is basically EXACTLY THE SAME, except it has no water damage... yet.
Note the hole in the silicone, and it was very soft and pliable (because there is nothing there except silicone.) I started poking around, cleaning out the caulk to recaulk it, and you can see what I found:
Anyway, thanks for looking at the pictures... if you are still interested, here is about a 3-minute video of the problems, damages, and a narrative explaining what the dealer told me.
[flash=]http://s869.photobucket.com/albums/ab25 ... D00015.flv[/flash]
Here is my opinion and a summary of the problems:
1) This is not good... water damage on a 2 year old coach is a bad deal. The wall is soft for about 18 inches down the radius towards the bottom front of the camper. The softness extends about 3-4 inches in from the edge of the wall. It is obviously rotten.
2) I don't believe that what I have here is right... it looks like shoddy workmanship from the factory, and the moulding is NOT wide enough. If the moulding were 1" or more wide, it may be okay, but as you can see from the photos, it is only about 1/2" wide.
3) My warranty is out. (1 year manufacturer's warranty.)
4) My dealer no longer sells Keystone products. He was a victim of the economic crisis, lost floor plan financing, and as a result had to completely redo his floor plan, and as a result, his inventory. Now, he only sells Forest River products.
5) As a result of #4, I believe that the dealer will have a HARD time convincing Keystone to make this good. I have tried contacting Keystone customer (no) service in the past, with bad results.
I asked the owner for his help, to help me try to make this a warranty and/or manufacturer's defect issue. He said he will try, but doubts he can get very far with them. The parts manager, who also looked at this, and shook his head (with a "that ain't right", thrown in), gave me a tube of silicone to patch it until after our trip for Memorial day.
At this point, I am so disgusted that I would trade, if I wouldn't take a bath on it.
I'm planning to blog this entire experience, add lots of photos, and hopefully get Keystone to make it right.
What ya'll think?
to be able to offer a 5 year structural warranty on their RVs 