We are preparing for our first trip out. Part of that was taking our 2011 Casita SD to have the
brakes checked and the wheel bearings packed/replaced. In the past I've taken it to my local horse trailer dealer, but as he was booked solid until June, I went to a RV dealer. And I'm glad I did. Much as I love my horse folk-I'm a horseman to my bones-campers aren't horse trailers.
The RV tech did the whole brake thing, replaced bearing races, packed wheel bearings, etc, and then the tech said oh, I have to show you this. While he'd been working on the camper, he found that a brake cable had rubbed against the tire to the point where the insulation was gone and the wires exposed. I asked him does this happen often? and he said, no, to him, it looked as if it'd had been installed at the factory that way. He repaired it and I'm happy. To me, stopping is way more important than going.
But as much as I love my Casita, still, over the years, I've found little things the factory did to cut corners and save labor. Using rivets instead of bolts (because rivet installation needs only one person, rather than two), holes drilled for the rivets being crooked or in one case, the wrong diameter! as if the guy building it had dropped a drill bit and just grabbed another without checking the size, or the water pump being held to the bulkhead with two pissant screws rather than four as it should have been. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of QA/QC at the Rice factory. This brake cable is just another indication that as good a camper as the Casita is, still.........it's only as good as the yob doing the installation/build.
I'm too old these days to go shopping for another camper. We've fixed ours up, learned a LOT on how to repair/replace/ (it helps that my husband is an engineer) and are happy with the Casita. But as I mentioned, they all seem to come with...errors.
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