I watched the Fed Ex truck arrive at 3pm on Friday. Three boxes came off. Yupp, all he had was my stuff from Girard awning. It was obviously too late to start with the installation but they did unpack the boxes this time around to make sure the contents are what was ordered for me. They did, after all, expect and were promised delivery by Friday a week ago. I can't blame Duncan for the delay but it sure is frustrating to have to sit here and wait and wait. Waiting is not in my nature.
I discussed the whole matter of the repainting for the awning. I should probably just post my letter to the newmar users on yahoo as they were instrumental in getting my headlights corrected:
I'm going stir crazy!
I came here in the middle of May to have some things in our coach changed and upgraded and I'm still here. Kaufman, Spartan, Duncan, Spartan and now Duncan again - all because some schedule or part was wrong or missing. The weekends are the worst as the world shuts down around here. On Sundays the roll up the sidewalks and hide. Yes, I'm frustrated.
I came up with this brilliant idea to remove our manual door awning to have a Girard installed instead. It was supposed to be a two day job. First it takes time to get such a thing and then it arrives damaged and in the wrong color. Today is Friday and I'm still not sure if the thing is here yet. It was scheduled for last Friday. I'm just not used to all this waiting around and I'm out of things to go and see and do.
Removing the awning involved closing up some holes where the old awning was mounted. That led to a discovery of small little cracks in my dark blue paint on the side. I'd never seen those before but there they were. Jim Deavers was quite familiar with those buggers. He does about a coach a month where the sides are removed and new ones installed. These cracks are about an 1/8 of an inch long and are scattered all over the place but are visible only on dark backgrounds. Jim tells me that this is a problem in the fiberglass on pre-2004 rigs. So, after they had sanded and primed the area of the holes, I asked to extend the area to paint over the funny cracks. They did that but not all the way down to the fiber. It all looked well until the paint was applied. The cracks are still there. After clear coating one can even feel them. I have this marvelous paint job which really only came with the London Aire back in 2000. It has at least 5 coats of clearcoat with wet sanding in between. A really classy job. Trying to match that is quite a job and the reason I have to hang in here till next week when the clearcoat is sufficiently hard to sand and buff. Besides the awning is not yet here.
The job also created a problem with the diamond shield being under the awning arms. We didn't realize that white is white when newly painted but white is not white when under a diamond shield film for a while. White is tough to cover as UV yellows the film no matter what they say. What I'm leading into here is that Jim will redo the film just to have the front look right and as a reward for telling him about the info I had from you guys about how to fix the headlight problem. Jim had the wiring tested and there was only a 3/4 drop. Just to humor me he followed directions and put in the relays and heavier wire. The difference was so phenomenal that he came running in here to tell me about it. As a reward for learning something valuable, I get the diamond shield for free. (Actually I think he takes too much pride inhis shop to let anything but a perfect job out of here.)I like it when people appreciate learning something new and admit to not yet know everything. I think that is a mark of a true professional.
But back to the topic of the small cracks. Have any of you seen these on your rigs? While I was at Spartan there was a 1999 London Aire next to me looking like it just came out of the paint shop. I asked the owner how he had kept the rig so immaculate all these years. 'Oh,Newmar repainted it last August', was his reply. 'There were some cracks in the paint', he said. I left it at that but now I have learned something new. I have cracks too and wonder if its the same kind. I was simply amazed that this fellow had gotten Newmar to repaint his rig after so many years. How did he do that? He said he simply showed them what was happening and they decided to redo the job. Jim tells me that the cracks will come back though if the underlying fiber isn't changed out.
Anyway, I just wanted to air some of my frustrations and I feel better already.
Fred
PS Now to think of something else to do.
from a Saturday email to the newmar group:
We went to Chicago today. Half way there it started to rain pretty hard but we continued on as the temperature kept dropping to around 60 degrees in Chicago. My knees don't like that. In a way the trip was a real bummer. Traffic was horrendous as we got near the city. At each toll booth there was a good 20 minute delay to pay 50 cents or whatever the fee was at each stop. I would have turned around but you can't get off the sky way even if you want to. We finally got into the city and the traffic there was just as bad - total gridlock. I don't know if its always this bad or if we just hit a bad time but I don't want any part of this mess. We couldn't park anywhere except to pay $2/.5hr. I stopped at 3motel/hotels in town and all where booked full. The fourth was a rundown Holiday Inn near the Lake Shore drive and the Sears tower. They had 5 rooms available at $310/day but would give me an AARP discount down to $298 or $289 whatever it was (plus $30 for overnight parking). Even the clerk behind the counter had a hard time keeping a straight face but it came right out of her computer and she explained that the rates are so high because everything is booked out because of a large convention at McCormic Place (American Dietary Assoc). It just didn't make any sense to stay in Chicago when you can't even park except at exorbitant rates. So we turned around and left. Traffic wasn't as bad leaving the place. So now we are at a nice Holiday Inn off I-80 and in the morning we'll look around and go to the Indiana Dunes State park to take a look. Maybe we'll hit Auburn, IN and the Duesenberg in the afternoon. My awning came in at Duncan at 3pm on Friday. A`bit late to install it which is why we are still waiting. Some clearcoat sanding will keep us in Elkhart till Tuesday and then back to FL next week.
Fred
We are sitting nicely here at the Holiday Inn:
Hilton Garden Inn Chesterton,
501 Gateway N., Chesterton, Indiana, USA 46304
Tel: +1-219-983-9500 Fax: +1-219-983-9600
http://hiltongardeninn.hilton.com/en/gi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=CHICTGI&WT.srch=1
We'll see where we wind up tomorrow.
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