end of the journey???

No. but maybe a pretty big bump in the road...

While we love our rv, we also haven't been loving what's been happening lately.
Frame Failure.

yes, it can happen to you.
or us.
and it is.happening. or happened. or whatever...to us.

When we went to leave Sun Canyon Lodge, Vaughn noticed that the 5er was sitting a little lower on the truck than it used to. We pulled out, and when we got to our new site, Vaughn pulled off the bottom cover from around the pin (where the trailer hooks into the hitch in the back of the truck) to take a peek at what was causing it. We figured that it had something to do with the pin attachment, but when he got the cover off, he discovered that all 4 corners of our top front trailer frame were cracked and separating. Our supposedly big, hefty, metal frame that supports the entire camper is failing.
Our steel frame, which is the backbone of an rv, is coming apart - not just at the seams, but ripping down the tube metal itself.
it's a big deal. and no, my talented contractor hubby can't fix it (now, if it were made of wood... ;)

Finding all this prompted Vaughn to pull the entire underbelly off the toy hauler, and he found that one of the cross members to the body is detached at both sides - it's located between the first and second axles, right where the weight distribution would change.

and don't they open up quite nicely when the load is placed on the truck???

and last night when the welder came out to take a look, he found another crack we had missed, 3 to 4 inches along, in the tube steel that makes up the front cross beam, just to the right of the pin. Makes me wonder what else is there that we either missed or can't see.

Toy haulers are built kinda weird (we think - and we talked about it before we bought one) - all the weight of the tanks, kitchen, propane, slides, everything, is between the pin and the first axle - then there is no weight behind the rear axles that would help pull pressure off the pin resting on the hitch. I know it's because they are meant to haul dirt bikes or quads or whatever, but it still seems weird that they are so off-balance, and we wonder if that has something to do with frame failure in toy haulers.

oh, did we mention that this seems to actually be a pretty big deal. We know now that we are researching it. Too bad we didn't know the details before we bought the rig; which is why I've decided to blog about it - both because we like to share our trials as well as our triumphs (we lead a very real life, sorry, no storybook here), and because I would like to raise awareness for this issue - it seems to be more common than one would think.

so, what have we been doing since we discovered it all?

Trying to work with Gulf Stream, the manufacturers of our coach - we feel that they should fix the issue since it is structural. We have been emailing and calling, and John Bruhn at GS was really great until we mentioned that we thought they should foot the bill - that was last Thursday, and we haven't heard a word since - tho it was a holiday weekend, so we are hoping that he is just busy from that.

We have been in touch with the trailer manufacturer. Lippert. Seems that they have quite a reputation in this area. We'll see if they stand behind their products; they said that the frame is out of warranty but to send them some pics and if it because of something that they did, which they highly doubt, they will fix it. Sent the pics this morning, now we're waiting to hear back from them.

We filed a claim with our insurance agent this morning. We really hadn't thought of it - after all, our rig hasn't been in an accident - until I posted on rv.net about our problem and someone suggested calling our agent. I guess the adjuster will be out by Friday, so we'll know more then. I bet that Farmers has a better chance of getting the manufacturers to pay for it than we will.

And we had a qualified welder, who works on big trailers, come out last night to see if we could even move it. Good news, he says we can haul it into the shop ourselves instead of having them bring out a semi with a low-boy to load it on (sounds expensive). Bad news, he can't give us a quote to fix it until the nose cone is off. And he doesn't do that - says he's seen lots done, but he won't do it - sometimes you can reuse them, sometimes, because of the amount of glue used to hold them on, you can't get them off in good enough shape that you'd want to put them back on. They are a specialty item, expensive, and the rv needs to be in the shop to do it. Besides the welder, one of the local rv dealerships will have to be involved for disassembling and reasssembling the toy hauler front.

The welder was hunched over looking and looking at the underside of the 'upstairs'; I asked him, "so, how bad is it?" He drawled back, "weeelllll, it isn't good..."

So then I asked him what could have caused it, and he looked at me and matter-of-factly stated,"this frame is completely inadequate for the size and weight of the trailer they built on it."

So, we are stuck for now (not that we were going far in the very near future). We are kinda in limbo, waiting to hear back from everyone, and wondering what a $10k+(???) bill will do to this winter's trip (on top of the new van tranny, and the baby bill, and whatever else comes up between now and then...you know...Life.).

But, God is faithful. And we are just waiting to see how he will work through this too! We have been in worse places, but He has always seen us through, many times using what looks like a disaster to us, to bless us beyond our imagination, to strengthen our faith, to draw us closer to Him. Sometimes it's hard not to worry and fret when things don't go as we would like or as we plan, but this isn't life or death (and even if it were, we know where we are going!). The thought of parking here for the winter isn't pleasant, but I figure we would get about 5 years worth of schooling in in one winter since we would have nothing else to do! That's not such a bad thing. LOL! Parking here without hookups IS such a bad thing - and there are no hookups for a family of 12 (in the rv) here for the winter. I would rather camp at WalMart for the winter than step foot on Silos KOA soil again (and considering the circumstances, I don't feel that is pride speaking), and the only other park here has never let us in - "that's too many people for one site or rv!" - tho the tactful lady just said, "well, we are more of a 55+ park..." LOL!!! Besides, if we stayed, I'd have to buy another hair dryer to defrost the windows several times a day once it got cold! LOL!!! :)

We have some time to work things out (or wait on God to work them out!), and we'll keep you posted on how it's going with all the different people that we are working with. Oh, and I will be able to keep you posted because, unbeknownst to me, a few weeks ago my hubby ordered me some sort of booster antennae - it came yesterday and is supposed to make it so that I can go online where there is no signal. Isn't that sweet??? And here I thought he was parking in all these signal-less campgrounds to keep me off the net! ROFL!!! He took me out to dinner last night, so it isn't set up yet...

Well, I'm off to drive back to the campground so we can go swimming and kayaking - IF the kids finished their schoolwork while I was down here typing... bets??? :)