Thursday, December 18, 2008

Day 5 - Red Bay, AL

Thursday: Nothing bad happened.



Another foggy, drizzly day. Got to Red Bay about noon, checked into the campground adjacent to Tiffin's service center, and turned our list of problems in to the authorities. Not many motorhomes waiting for service -- the plant goes on a two-week Christmas-New Year break after tomorrow, Friday. Thus (in contrast to the last time we were here), we got in immediately and drove into Bay 15 where Charles waited to fix/advise me in re problems.



On the main problem that prompted our visit, paint blemishes, I was told that since we were a second owner, not the original owner, redoing both side walls of Tuzi would likely be my responsibility (that's bad news, but everything is relative -- see following rationale). Will probably pass on that -- could schedule it for some time in 2010, but very expensive. The tiny fiberglass cracks are only visible on close inspection. One more visible blemish, a spider-web pattern caused, probably, by a nail head or some other bump under the fiberglass, I was advised, probably shouldn't be fixed because doing so would exacerbate the other problem. And, it's not terribly visible, either, relative to sideswipe damage. I plan to keep Tuzi long enough that it's trade-in or re-sale value won't be much affected by the current paint problems. I may have to quit going to RV rallies and lining up against factory-perfect coaches. However, as Susie said, To keep Tuzigoot in prime condition, we'd have to stay home!

Charles replaced the vent cover that blew away last Sunday and took care of other fairly minor things. He got a chuckle from my tale of woe about our last four days on the road. I'm not chuckling yet, though.

Oh, I did talk to guy about stabilizer failure. He said that brand/model had had a lot of problems. I'll call the manufacturer tomorrow and see if they can give me anything more than sympathy -- like pay service call expense. Again, as second owner (original owner bought stabilizer as a dealer add-on, not original equipment), probably not much they will do.

We will have windshield replaced tomorrow (also replace the small mirror that the bird destroyed -- I somehow left that out of the list of problems I had addressed today). Will probably come back on the way home in January to have the damage caused by yesterday's sideswiping incident fixed. One of the service guys at Tiffin told me that he and some buddies have their own body shop, where they work evenings, and can fix the damage at a significant cost savings, because I have a deductible that is higher than Tiffin's charge would be for the work, and they'll charge less than Tiffin. That's sort of good news, if they do a good job.


So, we'll head south tomorrow or Saturday -- still about 800 miles to go to Cocoa, FL where we'll park Tuzi while we cruise. Maybe we'll see sunshine soon. Maybe we'll see something we want to take a picture of. So far, it's just been a cross-country slog, no sightseeing on the agenda, bad weather all the way. Gave a literary nod, though, to William Faulkner as we drove by Oxford, MS, today, followed by Elvis's hometown of Tupelo.

Had catfish today for the third time in four days, so that's good, too. Maybe grits tomorrow, though we tend to eat breakfast in.

Cheers,

Susie and Rob

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So glad no new problems to read about today!

See you soon! Jason is getting very excited.

Karen