May 30 – August 11, 2022
Back to Red Bay for the remaining warranty repairs, annual engine service, and a few other errands.
How long will it take? How long will we stay?
May 30, 2022
We were pushing hard to arrive in Red Bay a day early. Even shooting for the morning of Memorial Day. Why? We’ve heard many Tiffin’s are on their way to Red Bay that day, all competing for a low number on the service waiting list and a spot in the free Allegro Campground.
We made it!!!
June 7, 2022
Today was our first day in the service bay! A week ago Shane told us it will take 1 week to 1.5 weeks to get in. He did not overpromise or underdeliver. Way to go!
June 9, 2022
Brian and Debbie stopped by for dinner and brought pizza. It was nice to see them one more time before they continued their travels the day after. We will see them on the road again sometime.
June 10, 2022
Cody finished his work this week. We are done in the general bay. A few minor things are open due to missing parts. No big deal. We are happy overall. Now we are waiting to get into what’s called the mechanical bay. This is for chassis issues.
June 13, 2022
It’s Monday, not Friday the 13th. Yet we had a scary day. Late morning, when I wanted to pull something from the freezer, I was wondering “Why does the drawer open so easily? Oh, and why are things thawing in there?” It turns out the freezer drawer was not completely shut over night. In a little panic, I emptied our two camping fridges and switched them into freezer mode. Once cold enough, we filled them up and emptied the freezer in the residential fridge. It was still warming up. No place to put all the food from the fridge. No snow to bury things in. It was 100F outside. Still in a little panic, JJ called the service bay and they said we could come over. Fortunately, we did not ruin the fridge. We did not need a new one. Perhaps it was only iced up in the rear. After leaving it unplugged for a while, it started working again. Now we have two temperature sensors in the fridge and freezer, hooked up to our weather station, which collects and stores the readings. It’s so useful that we decided to leave the sensors in there, for good.
June 16, 2022
After 3 days of nothing, I mean waiting for a mechanical bay, we finally got a call this morning. We suspected an air leak in the front air tank, had concerns about the pump for air-leveling sometimes running excessively long, and of course the issues with the soft floor in the bathroom and the kitchen.
It did not take Brandon and Landon in the mechanical bay very long to find and fix the air leak. They also told us what the problem with the floor is and assured us that the tile shop knows what to do. Very happy with today’s outcome. Now we are waiting for the tile shop. Will we get in tomorrow???
June 20, 2022
We took the factory tour this morning. Interesting. Those guys are busy!!! We got a better understanding of how our bus is built and the challenges they face these days. Also met Bob Tiffin, who founded the company 50 years ago. He is still around and helping to keep customers happy.
June 20 – 21, 2022
We had another 2 half days in a bay. This time to fix leftovers and smaller general items. Still waiting for the tile shop.
June 26, 2022
After doing some work on the truck this morning, we went out on a long drive. All the way over to Guntersville in Northeast AL. We wanted to checkout an RV Retreat, but could not get in. We explored a few places around Guntersville Lake, visited the dam, and watched a collection of barges pull into the lock. Maybe this was the best thing we could do on this extremely humid day.
June 27-28, 2022
We got called into the tile bay! This is critical to us, because these guys deal not just with tiles but flooring issues overall. Our bathroom floor is squeaky and the floor in the kitchen does not seem properly supported either. Last year we had work done on the bathroom floor and we got the impression they sort of glossed over the problems. This year is different. The tile guys understood the seriousness of the problem and reached out for help. We got to meet Jonathan Osborne, the new service manager. He is handling it appropriately. Yesterday and today they fixed the kitchen. Tomorrow, they will take the bus to the main factory, trying to address the squeaky bathroom floor. We will see….
We are dry-camping near the tile shop because we cannot bring the slides in or drive away until the glue has cured.
June 30, 2022
Three nights of boondocking outside the tile shop was enough! We got released this morning. We are happy with the repairs. We went back to our home base in the campground but after lunch we got called into a general bay. We could have used some more quiet time on a working day, but on the other hand we want to be done here and move on.. This afternoon they addressed a mysterious “water leak” on the kitchen slide and may also have found the reason why the driver side window was still leaking after 3 attempts to seal it. They ran out of time today, so we will be back in Bay 7 at 7am tomorrow morning.
Did I mention we found ourselves in the middle of peach season here in Alabama? I did not even know Alabama is famous for its peaches. I almost want to come back every year now. Rick’s Farmers Market (RFM) in Muscle Shoals is our favorite place to buy produce. The family that owns it is awesome. Very nice people and they have so much fun. While access to fresh produce is very important to us, supporting a local business feels good too.
July 3, 2022
We went to Golden, MS tonight for the fireworks. It was recommended to us by some locals. We were a little skeptical, though, because Golden is a small little town of just 185 souls. And they have fireworks for Independence Day?
And fireworks they had! 45 min nonstop. We found parking, a prime spot on the lawn, and no delay or traffic jam on the way home. This is how fireworks should be. Always!
Happy 4th of July!!!
July 5, 2022
We finished up in the general bay today. Not too happy. The driver’s chair is still crooked. Worse than before, actually. Now we are waiting until next week, when the “chair people” are back at work.
July 7, 2022
We went to Custom RV this morning with the Bus and the truck. Had an appointment to install an AirForceOne in the truck and to have the AquaHot Service done on the Bus. Andrew did a good job it seems. We could hook up the Bus to 50A service at their place and work as usual. They were done before lunch and we headed back to the campground. All seems to work very well.
July 9, 2022
Rainy Day.
July 11, 2022
Got into the cabinet shop this morning! It seems they will redo all the cabinet fronts and the sliding doors. It’ll take at least a week.
Meanwhile, we spotted another Tiffin model today:
July 14, 2022
It’s Thursday. Alan in the cabinet shop is doing a great job on our furniture. He is fixing all the little cracks that showed up when we spent time in drier climate. It remains to be seen if the cracks will come back, though. I am a little concerned about it, because it is very humid here. Some issues simply disappeared once the bus soaked up the Alabama humidity. But there is nothing we can do right now, other than “wait and see”.
Will the cabinet work be done by tomorrow? Or will we have to go back on Monday? We shall see.
July 22, 2022
It’s Friday and we got called in to the paint bay this afternoon! Happy that we did not have to wait for many weeks. We knew since yesterday that it might happen today. I started marking all the spots that had imperfections with tape. As always, the more you look the more you find. I guess I was a little over-ambitious. I think we established a new record for the amount of tape on the outside. Some people commented that they liked our design.
July 28, 2022
We are done with paint! Connor did a good job overall. Now we are waiting for the diamond shield people to come over and apply it in the front again. Connor had to take it off because we had some cracks in the fiberglass around the front camera.
August 1, 2022
Went to Girard this morning to have all the awnings adjusted and checked out. The one over the door was a little crooked and one over a window was stuck. They fixed the issues and adjusted all the awnings. Running like a charm now! We are ready for sun. Bring it on!
August 4, 2022
We got our top part of the Diamondshield applied today. In the front, where it had to be removed to fix a fiberglass crack around the front camera. Not sure why it took over a week since the front was repainted and exactly a week since we were done with the paint bay, but anyway. It’s done! And that’s what counts.
We also had a good meeting with Jonathan Osborne today, the VP of Service. He is helping us to accelerate the last repairs and agreed to extend our warranty by 12 months.
The Cummins mobile tech came over from Birmingham and changed fuel lines as part of a recall. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to bypass the DEF sensor for us (it was acting up and we are a little scared of getting stuck on the road). Tiffin is replacing the sensor for us tomorrow.
We are hoping for more progress tomorrow. We’ll be in the mechanical bay by 7am.
August 6, 2022
We’ve got a plan! It looks like we will be finishing up here in Red Bay by Tuesday or possibly Monday. We are leaving a day reserve and plan on driving out of here on Thursday.
The first night we’ll be at a KOA and then 3 Harvest Host locations (2 farms and 1 winery), before settling down in the Berkshires for a week. After that we’ll be in New Hampshire until mid-September. All planned out. All booked. We are starting to get excited. Looking forwards to visiting kids, more family, and friends!