Break/fix

We’ve had our coach for a few months now. And we have been living in it for the most part. We have taken the Castaway out for a few trial runs, one weekend trip and one overnight trip. Later this week, we take the Castaway out for a much longer run.

This is all part of the breaking in period.

We expect things to go wrong with the coach. We expect to keep a list of things that have gone wrong and to get them fixed.

What has been our experience so far with the Newmar Dutch Star? Excellent.

Here is what we have found so far that needs to be addressed under warranty.

Exterior

• Paint flaw on the driver’s side fuel tank cover
• Missed silicone sealant under the passenger’s side mirror

Interior

• Slight gap in a small section of tile grout (roughly half an inch)
• Lift of a section of fabric trim on entrance door to master bedroom (about 10 inches of trim needs to be glued back into place)
• Tile cracked under one of the recliners on full wall slideout

And that is it so far.

We did have to repair a kitchen latch. We were a bit forceful in testing out a storage bin for one of the kitchen drawers and managed to break the upper latch mechanism. We ordered the part and I installed it last night. Easy fix.

We will be heading down to Nappanee in the spring to have the coach serviced and to make a change.

We decided that we missed something when we built the coach and Newmar is going to help us out for a small amount of money. What did we miss? Windows in our bedroom slideout. The bedroom slideout on the passenger’s side of the coach is currently windowless. Why? Well, it had something to do with the style of bed that we ordered. We ordered a bed that inclines and retracts. No one had told us that this feature would drop the two windows in the bedroom.

We’ve decided that the two windows are important to us and Newmar will fit them back into our coach. The bed won’t incline and retract which is fine. That part we won’t miss. We are missing the windows.

It will take roughly 12 hours of labour to install the windows so we will need to be at the factory for a couple of days. By then we will be close to the one year anniversary for the coach and we may as well get it serviced and deal with any warranty items at the same time.

I received the estimate from Newmar a few days back for installing the windows. I will sign off on the estimate and we will book a date to get the job done next year. I will also bring along any warranty items that need to be addressed although the list so far is pretty small. Hopefully the list stays that way.