After A Couple Months - Part 2
We’ve been on the road for a couple months in our RV. I found it valuable to read about people’s opinions and experiences about their vandwelling lifestyle. I thought I would cover some of the good and bad experiences we’ve had.
This is covered in three parts:
The Bad
I’m going to start with the bad because I LOVE way more about our coach than I dislike. We’ve worked around most of the gripes. The rest may be fixable. I have a few tiny gripes about the Pleasure-Way XLMB. I believe this product could have been improved with a few modest tweaks.
For starters, the first time we tried to use our Winegard auto-tune antenna it was broken. I got online to read the docs and it appears our motor is either stuck or dead. The dealership for our purchase hit buttons that made it appear like the unit was working. It would flash and do random stuff and displayed random codes. We were not familiar with the product and did not realize that E03 on the screen meant it was broken.
We spoke to Pleasure-Way and it appears they may cover this under warranty. I will cover our experience with the warranty process after we go through it.
(Update: You can read about our warranty experience here and here.)
I would like for Pleasure-Way to provide a source of light on the utility side of the unit. I’ve compensated with a headlamp but this seems like a simple thing to do and an unfortunate oversight. We pull into a lot of campgrounds at night and it would have been easy to throw a couple LED lights on the drivers side near the utility bays.
The bathroom has no ventilation to the outside. Even though the exhaust vent is directly next to the bathroom door there is no way for air from outside the coach to enter into the bathroom. Thus, the fan can’t suck air out of the bathroom. A tremendous amount of water from the steam in the shower builds up on the ceiling and walls. This happens even with the exhaust fan on full blast right next to the bathroom. We’ve had to introduce an additional fan to blow air out of the bathroom into the exhaust fan. This work around prevents water from settling in the bathroom and should cut down on mold and wood rot.
On the exterior of our unit, we have cracks in the trim around the storage compartments. The cracks started around 2500 miles. I’m watching to see if they get worse. It appears the storage compartments might be pulling away from the coach slowly.
The seal on the bottom of our shower door is useless. There might as well be a half inch gap at the base of the shower door. Water pours out of the shower. This results in large puddles on the floor which unfortunately settle right on the wood frame around the door. Resting water and wood are not compatible. We soak large towels taking showers trying to keep the floors dry and our wood safe.
Our exterior door situation has been a big disappointment and its something we have to deal with every day. When we purchased the unit a plastic piece was missing from our exterior door. The piece attaches our exterior door to the interior screen door so they swing together. The dealership replaced the missing plastic piece before we left. I believe it must have been done incorrectly.
Our door has been a MAJOR pain in the ass. For starters, it requires us to FIRMLY slam it to achieve the second ratchet position in the latch. Otherwise, the door unsettles and slightly opens. The door can not be bolted in this unsecured position. The amount of force required to get our door to latch properly is unfortunate. Alex can barely get it to latch and I have to put enough force that it shakes the van. It often takes numerous attempts from inside the cabin.
Once we get the door latched properly, the screen door connection to the regular door is finicky. You can tell the dealership likely did not adjust this plastic piece correctly. Most of the time, the screen door is latched to the outer door AND to our wall. This means when we pull the outer door open from the outside we are ripping the door away from the screen.