Thor Challenger Owners Unite!

[sbleiweiss]

New question about the step threads covering the entry steps (inside). Ours came brown. One is torn and when we ask Thor about replacements they say they no longer have brown and can only send black. That would mean we look a little getto like or replace all three. First, for anyone with newer Challengers, are yours black? And does anyone have a source of the brown ones from someone else besides Thor? Thanks.

[ctpres]

Home Depot. Search for "Square Nose Stair Tread Cover." Four or five different colors.

[fluffybunny]

Hey everyone. I have been lurking on this thread for a while and made a couple of posts but I wanted to catch everyone up with where I am and give some input on issues, problems, and mods we have done. My wife and I have lived full time in our 2017 37KT since October 2017 so 8 months as of this post. We have owned it a little over a year. Currently we are sitting in the Thor service center parking lot after spending all week here getting things fixed. We contacted thor in March and due to there schedule and our schedule we couldn't get here until now. We are here actually after our 1 year warranty expired but because I contacted them before they extended it to cover this repair. Below is our list we sent to Thor.

1. Bathroom door is a tight fit. It has scraped the wood on the door, and the door jam.
2. The wire run underneath the big slide has broken. The plastic wire chase has broken off in places and caused the wires to hang down. I have to hold the wires up when closing the slide so it doesn't get pinched. (picture 3)
3. Electric Side of the hot water heater has not worked since we purchased the coach.
4. Trim around bed frame has fallen off. and bed support is coming apart picture 4
5. Shower leaks
6. Light in bedroom is dangling from ceiling
7. Minor leak from front passenger slide when driving in heavy rain and after washing RV. Appears to be on the side of the slide closest to the front of the coach.
8. Wind draft from front passenger slide when open.-front side of passenger slide near the side of the chair
9. Sliding door in bathroom, bottom door guide has fallen off of wall. picture 6
10. Every baggage door latch has issues, have to slam latch in order to release catch-also to note, 2nd door passenger side opened while driving. screws inside were loose. also front drivers side started to delaminate repaired with jb weld and rivets.
11. Large window in kitchen night shade blind has lost its spring. so it just falls down to the floor when released.
12. brace under drawers in pantry are falling off, has fallen off on 2 drawers. picture 7
13. Kitchen TV no longer works HDMI cable has never worked. Dealer at PDI gave us a wireless transmitter to fix but would like to get HDMI cable fixed if possible, we can't get reliable audio out of the TV with the wireless transmitter.
14. Battery charging slow on generator, possible converter? It wont go into bulk charge mode.
15. City water selector valve leaks. primarily when on city water but also sometimes on normal.
16. Cabinets falling off above recliners

Also attached are a couple of pictures showing some of the issues.

Everything on my list was fixed. I'll cover the fixes on some of the issues so if you have problems in the future you can reference thors repairs.

1. Thor removed the wood trim and anchored the door jam better to the wall next to it then reattached the wood trim.
2. They took off all of the wire guide that was there, some of it was broken, and added a longer piece. They snap together like puzzle parts so you can make it longer. According to the tech he used basically 1 and a half standard lengths to extend it. Now the plastic wire guide will not fall off the floor of the slide like it did before.
3. water heater replaced. The actual fix though was probably a loose wire in the breaker box.
4. They reattached the bed support with screws. It was previously just glued. Also put on new trim around the bed.
5. shower was recaulked
6. light was reattached
7&8 I didn't get a picture of this before but the slide sweeper was not touching the side of the slide. This being our first RV I honestly never knew that would cause a problem, so they fixed that with a longer slide sweep. That will probably fix our draft as well from number 8.
9 reattached guide with larger screws
10. The fix for this is just lube. The tech recommended PB Blaster but WD 40 will work as well.
11. Replaced the entire shade. We also contacted slow rise about this and they sent us a spring. We "forgot" to mention the spring to thor and they just replaced the whole thing. So we have an extra part to replace it with if we have a problem in the future. That was pure laziness that we didn't fix it with the spring. It is a pain to take that shade down.
12. They fixed this by basically putting in more braces. So originally there was just 1 brace running side to side. the tech added 3.
13. They replaced the kitchen TV but after talking with the tech we decided to not make the tech rerun a HDMI cable. We had many other issues and the wire job alone would have taken probably 3-4 hours, so we chose to have our other fixes done.
14. The stock WFCO 9855 charger sucks. It does not have a bulk charge mode no mater what WFCO says (that is my opinion not Thors)
15. They replaced the anderson kant leak valve because it leaks.
16. They reattached this by jacking up the cabinet with a bottle jack then adding more screws to hold it in place. There were originally 2 screws in each cabinet section. This is now held up by screws every 3 inches.

They also found a couple of leaks that I didn't know about. First the drivers side slide was leaking at the top. The slide sweep was too long so it would not flip back and forth. It was always in. This allowed water to leak in. We never really saw it leak, they said it appeared to drain down the holes for wires behind the slides. They did not see any evidence of damage but said it could have caused problems later. The 2nd leak was along the back window. The tech said 90% of the time the back window will leak if there is a ladder on the back. Basically when they screw in the ladder it will break the seal on the window, which is what it was it my case. They resealed it and its better than new.

We also went to the thor factory tour where they make the diesels and high end gas. That was very interesting. Did you know that the fridges go in through the passenger window? I didn't.

After getting all of these items completed, living in the coach, and seeing the factory I wanted to say something about the quality. Its pretty good in this thread but reading around on the internet you will see that a lot of people have problems with the quality of Thors. Personally I do not I am very happy with mine. We have 12,000 miles on our unit in right around a year. Things are going to come loose, things are going to fall off, things are going to break. Your driving your house down the road. Now that said there are some things the factory can do to help. Many parts on the interior are attached with brad nails and staples. Most of the drawers are assembled with staples, and a fair bit of the cabinetry supports are assembled with staples. IMO if that was changed for screws that would help a lot with some of the cabinetry falling apart like with what I have had. I mentioned that to the person on our tour and he said he would for sure pass that up the chain. I get it may take more time to assemble, and weigh more, and cost more, but things falling apart sucks.

I will say also going to the Thor factory service center was so worth it. We got everything on our list fixed and more that we didn't even know about. My tech was in production for 19 years before moving over to service a few years ago. Every tech in this shop knows what they are doing, and they know the products. They also know what problems to look for. I have had some work done at other shops and it would take months to get done what I got done in a week, which being full time that just wouldn't work. Thors shop rate is $100 an hour if your not under warranty which is one of the cheapest I've seen. I do not know how appointments work for pay work vs warranty.

This post is getting rather long so sometime in the next couple of days I will show you a few other projects we have worked on while we have had the RV.

[MeSteve]

Good morning,

Looking over the schematics, it says there are a pair of WiFi power wires (Gray/White) sent up to the roof via the left side/roof wiring harness. Has anyone seen these on their coach, whether intentionally or stumbled across them? I also have the orange Sat prep coax behind the fireplace, but haven't traced it anywhere.

I would tend to assume both of those, as well as the TV antenna coax are run pretty close together, but...

Alternatively, has anyone seen this harness somewhere near the front of the coach that I could try to pick up the wires at?

Contacting Thor CS didn't pan out too well. Normally they are able to answer my question, but this time he just said I would need to take it to a dealer to find the wire.

[KC]

Has anyone replaced there dash radio wit something better? Was it easy? Any special tools?

Thanks

KC

[MeSteve]

Originally Posted by KC

Has anyone replaced there dash radio wit something better? Was it easy? Any special tools?

Thanks

KC

In mine at least, it looks to be a standard double DIN so any double DIN radio will be an easy swap. As far as tools, that depends on the radio in there now. The Axxera I have had 2 hooks required to pull it, but I’m sure you could circumvent pretty easy by taking off the dash cover by the 4 screws holding it on. That’ll make wiring so much easier anyways.

[KC]

Our Generator stopped working on Sunday. I had turned it on at home to run both AC while we loaded the RV. I then drove for about 1 hour. During that drive the Generator stopped working. I had a flashing red light. After I was at RV park I was able to start the generator but it stopped with in a few mins. After we parked I opened the compartment and pulled the access cover off of the generator so it could cool down. I did do maintenance on the generator 2 months ago. Any thoughts.

KC

[RayDK]

Originally Posted by KC

Our Generator stopped working on Sunday. I had turned it on at home to run both AC while we loaded the RV. I then drove for about 1 hour. During that drive the Generator stopped working. I had a flashing red light. After I was at RV park I was able to start the generator but it stopped with in a few mins. After we parked I opened the compartment and pulled the access cover off of the generator so it could cool down. I did do maintenance on the generator 2 months ago. Any thoughts.

KC

Check the oil level. It might be that simple. I had an engine and generator oil change on a previous MH that did the same thing. Checking the oil level I found it was low. The repair shop didn't fill it up correctly. Put in a little more and it worked fine.

[Hit_the_Rhod]

Oil level, coolant level, both to top, main fuel tank above 1/3rd tank. Possibly the three most common reason generators quit while running, and then won't restart. Start with the simple stuff first!

[sbleiweiss]

Agree about oil level. Can also be caused by overheating, as you apparently know. Fuel pump is also a sometimes cause, but your facts don't sound like that.

[ctpres]

Originally Posted by KC

I had a flashing red light.
KC

Check manual for details on flashing light. The blinking sequence is code - for example 1 blink pause and 5 blinks then repeat 1-5 is under frequency. Troubleshooting section is quite helpful.

[SteveW123]

Has anyone mounted a toad rock guard to their Challenger? I don’t see a good way to mount one. Any help would be appreciated. We have a 2018 Challenger LX

[logalinipoo]

I found the orange sat wire running up behind my fridge. But I never found the end of it.

[logalinipoo]

I second checking the light sequence. I just replaced the fuel filter because it would die whenever it was under large load for a few miniutes. Like both ac's and other useage.