For all the problems, big and small, that I have read about and personally experienced the common thread seems to be little or no validation testing by the OEM (Entegra for the purpose of our discussions.) Talking to their factory folks and engineers they are very quick to blame the failures on the suppliers of the devices but I see little or no evidence that Entegra did any validation testing of the integration of the device in their vehicle. Some of the things I've fixed I feel like I'm the first engineer to look at the part or actually analyze it in operation much less drive it around the block.
Entegra executives should be forced to full time in one of their RV's for at least a week or two a year BEFORE they put them into production.
Case in point: Windshield wiper failure. Rubber hose that delivers fluid to the wet arm squirter was cut and leaking. Looking at the installation and routing of the hose it was intuitively obvious that the hose would abraid itself on the arm as it oscillated.
Curiously the recommendation was to replace the entire arm because of a simple cut in the hose because the "arm is not serviceable". The supplier of the wiper arm would not tell me how to disassemble the arm to replace the rubber hose and CS backed them. 10 minutes on the bench and the arm is completely apart, hose replaced and the spring adjusted for more tension to keep the blade fully seated against the windshield and the squirter nozzled "resized" (drilled larger) to deliver enough fluid to do some good. Tested with the washer bottle/pump in my car and ready to go back on the coach where it works flawlessly now. Anyone driving that coach should have picked up on both problems before I was forced to deal with them with little or no help.
Note: wiper arm supplier changed in 14 I believe so the orginal supplier is not helpful at all anymore. Hopefully the new ones work better and there was a significant cost savings. More-so hopefully someone tried driving in the rain with them before they started installing them on new coaches.
Just my hopelessly cynical opinion...LOL. I do like my coach but it is very frustrating to constantly re-engineer things that do just not work.
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2013 ANTHEM RBQ
AL and Sally and Ava and Ivy
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