Newbee2 the adventure continues
Welcome to the on going adventures, some will enjoy, others will lament “not again” [emoji3]. First, I am typing this on my iPhone so make no warranty that my autocorrection will not render this post unreadable.
We picked up our Ventana 4369 on Nov 5 at the factory (FPU/CPU). Our beloved Newbee the first, a 2016 Ventana 3725 (the last of her model to come off the line) was traded to Transwest in Frederick Co. Side note if you want a well loved 3725, contact Grant Russell there.
I continue to believe Factory Pick Up (FPU) is the way to go. Even with weeks of QA these coaches, in my opinion, have issues that only the Newmar factory can fix. There are fewer than I have read on other boards but Newmar does not build a perfect coach. Not a slam, just a fact.
Most of the issues we found during FPU were minor. However some were significant and were caused more from the hurry up off the production line and QA having a set time to look at the coach.
During QA they found a leak in the belly pan. According to our tech at FPU the belly pan was removed, all insulation was replaced, the whole belly pan was replaced/undercoated, and rechecked for possible intrusion.
I think this short changed the time available for QA to check other areas. Why do I say this? Because at FPU I asked our tech to verify all slide revels were within spec, and... all three slides were way out of spec. The tech adjusted them back to spec, but the coach should have never left QA in this condition. If it had shipped to a dealer like this, we would have been in for months of warranty work only ending in taking her back to the factory be be fixed right.
A shout out for Jonas (our team lead) and Perry our tech. These two have a standard that no coach leaves their FPU unless the owners consider the coach to be perfect. Like I said, the other issues were mostly minor, until on Friday we had some nits we wanted taken care of. Then it happened... three auto locks on our baggage doors would intermittently not work. So on day 5 of our FPU, Perry jumped in and replaced all three offending actuators. On a day that should have seen FPU winding down, Perry attacked our new found problems like it was the first day of an FPU.
Once we got the slides aligned I asked Perry if we could re-water test her to make sure we did not introduce a leak. Sure enough, Perry had made the alignments correctly and no leaks at the slides. But in true Perry fashion, he scoured the coach to make sure there were no leaks. And, the driver window and the escape door had minor leaks that QA missed. He repaired the leaks and instead of just calling it good, put the coach in the water bay to recheck that the things he did corrected the leaks. This time success. Then, because the rain bay left hard water all over our new coach, they rewashed the coach using soft water to make sure we did not have any baked on hard water spots.
And Jonas, what a treasure at Newmar. He has bent over backward to make our coach “perfect”. And although polite, on the rare instance that something wasn’t perfect, but couldn’t be corrected to perfect, you always got an honest and logical explanation.
So there is a short version of a 5 day FPU. It’s Friday and we start our adventure back home tomorrow. We are very happy we picked a 4369 and are learning why it is the best selling floor plan on the Dutch Star and the Ventana. Not that all of the other floor plans are not great in their own way, just that we are beginning to understand the wisdom of the majority.
So, be safe out there and we will post more “adventures” in the future to at best increase your knowledge, and at the least provide some entertainment as you travel on your own adventures.
Mark and Louene Hetrick
Newbee2, 2019 Ventana 4369, heading back to God’s country (South Dakota)
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