I wanted to follow up with a post about our experience with Elite R&R in Harrisburg, OR and our 2005 Monaco Dynasty. We had a list of needed repairs and learned of a few more while there. During our time there, we met all three techs/owners; Marty, Eric, and Mark. All three were professional, friendly, and knowledgeable. We arrived early the first day and spent some time with Marty going over our repair list. We had known issues with three of our four slides. The PS main slide was making metallic clunking sounds, not closing all the way (we would have to push it in the last inch or so), and leaving black plastic specks on the living room carpet, and a black roller mark on the kitchen tile. The DS main slide was leaving white shavings behind on the rear corner, and had a torn seal. And finally, the bedroom PS slide would creep in intermittently. We also had a leak in the flexible drain connection in the kitchen, a disintegrating thermal sleeve on the Aqua Hot exhaust pipe, and wanted to have the rooftop A/C's serviced.
Marty inspected the areas of concern and made some repair recommendations. When we came back at the end of the first day, a good majority of the work had been completed. We were able to take the coach “home” that night and brought it back the next day so they could continue the work. We stayed at a nice County park (Armitage) about 20 minutes away. Elite graciously has an electrical hook up for customers to use; but we decided to stay at the campground instead.
Marty explained that some of the plastic rollers that are part of the chain in the PS slide were broken. The floor roller toward the opposite end had been previously adjusted with too much pressure causing the markings on the floor and consequently causing the bolts to break which had the roller askew and dragging instead of rolling. After readjusting the roller, we noticed the slide wasn't sitting square in the frame (one side was lower than the other – easily seen when closed), and one side extended out ¾” more than the other. After investigating, they found that the adjustment set bolts were never put in place at the time of the initial factory installation, allowing the slide to drop on the one side. Marty concluded that the extreme pressure he originally saw on the floor roller was someone’s earlier attempt to address the symptom without addressing the cause. Elite addressed the cause of the problem by loosening the existing mounting/adjustment bolts, jacking up the slide, reinstalling the mounting bolts, and installing the "missing" set bolts to pin the slide mechanism in position (not a simple job). This corrected the slide alignment issues and the slide works great now.
They installed the new seal on the DS slide and explained to us the flakes we were seeing were filon material from the bottom of the slide. So we opted to have the stainless steel skis installed on the bottom of the slide as a precautionary measure in hopes of alleviating a future problem.
Marty replaced the flexible drain hose and connectors in the kitchen; they had started to break loose from the fittings and had had a subpar repair job done on it in the past (prior to us owning the coach).
They serviced all three A/C units and replaced one of the covers, which had been cracked a few months prior in an unfortunate flying umbrella incident. They replaced the full length of AquaHot thermo sleeving and inspected the pipe for damage.
Marty asked us if we had noticed a hesitation with the bedside slide. My wife had been noticing this for a while, and I had noticed grease under the gears under the bed. Marty said the gears of the motor were ready to give up the ghost, and that the motor should be replaced. We had him order a new motor.
The bedroom cabinet side slide’s creeping-in issue was a bad solenoid. Since the solenoids should be replaced in pairs, two were ordered.
The motor and solenoids would arrive the middle of the following week, which was ok for us since our plans in Oregon were open ended. We returned to Elite for a short appointment the following week for the motor and solenoid install.
So far, so good, with the repairs. We really felt the team at Elite lived up to their mission of quality work. We also felt our experience with them was very interactive; they answered all our questions and freely shared their knowledge of Monaco coaches with us. Marty, Eric, and Marc worked very quickly and knew what they were doing. We would highly recommend them and wouldn't hesitate to go back.
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