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poor qaulity


Martyn22

poor qaulity  

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Why are some many components that make a motor home such poor quality and don't last very long are we all such mugs to put up with it. Why are our clubs not chasing up this poor state of affairs? or is it as I suspect they don't want to annoy there advertisers :-(
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Martyn22 - 2015-07-22 11:44 AM

 

Why are some many components that make a motor home such poor quality and don't last very long are we all such mugs to put up with it. Why are our clubs not chasing up this poor state of affairs? or is it as I suspect they don't want to annoy there advertisers :-(

 

 

It may well be true that there are a lot of poor quality bits and pieces about, but I'm not sure what that has to do with our clubs.

 

When clubs test vans it's probably true that they are reluctant to criticise them too harshly - but I wouldn't expect them to complain to the manufacturers.

 

It's ' us ' who choose to buy - we always have the option of complaining to the seller, or not buying .

 

 

 

:-|

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Motorhomes are not like cars. They are built in what is little more than a cottage industry. They are complex to design and complex to build. Hence the quality is relatively low compared to other products we buy.

 

Which bits of the 'motorhome meccano set' are giving you grief?

 

Both Swift and Elldis have responded to concerns with new production techniques to address water ingress concerns. And you may be too young to remember 'Scuttlegate' which was a campaign by a highly regarded motorhome journalist to get Fiat to accept the engine bay kept flooding.

 

But the bottom line is that we continue to buy motorhomes in the hope ours will not be as bad as someone else's.

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Since our last caravan was a 1993 ABI Monza with no mains electricity and so light I could push it on my own, our new B Class Hymer looks positively over engineered!! I suppose it's all about perspective and once the rose tinted spectacles have started to fade I will no doubt find lots of cheap solutions which could and should have been done better, if more expensively.
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I agree that many of the fittings are poor or flimsy and that's why we treat motor homes with gentle respect.

 

I wouldn't rent my motor home out as I can just imagine the damage it could cause by heavy handed people

 

 

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Guest Peter James
Cars and vans produced in their millions have components like door handles tested to 40,000 closures or whatever. Motorhome manufacturers making a few hundred can't justify the cost of that sort of testing.
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Since the almost now standard practice in this country of sourcing just about everything from the incredible factory called China the quality has dropped. not because China can not build quality, they can and do but we need to allow them to make a fair profit. I spent several years importing metal and glass fencing from China. Once we had established a "fair" price that allowed both parties to make a profit the quality was as we wanted and consistent. Every year when I travel to UK/ Europe I see more Chinese product so no doubt the MH manufacturers are also on the band wagon. I suspect the problem in part is due to the manufacturers screwing down the price to a point where quality is affected. The Chinese will rarely walk away from an order, however they will reduce the butter in the cake mix to meet the lower price.
Cheers, Gary
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Weight is clearly an important factor. The woodwork in my first van, a bespoke conversion where there was no problem with weight, was all ply of a decent thickness and solid wood and it was bomb-proof. When we were changing it I was discouraged by the flimsy construction of a lot of what we looked at.

 

But, following on from what Gary said, price must be the biggest factor. In a competitive market there is pressure to save wherever you can. If you take out the basic cost which you cannot reduce then every small amount you can save goes into your profit. One of the problems with outsourcing to low-cost countries is that when a customer is faced with the choice between 2 items which apparently do the same job but at greatly different prices it is tempting to go for the cheaper, even though the quality might be less. Then the manufacturers of the good stuff give up and you are stuck with poor quality. You only have to read some of the threads on electronic bits to see the problem.

 

The bottom line is if you want a lot of van, which has a payload, and weighs less than 3.5T and doesn't cost a lot you can't expect too much quality.

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I've only ever owned UK made vans, always used never new, from the likes of Auto Sleepers, Autocruise (pre Swift) and Auto Trail and I have never had anything actually made by any of these converters fail in any van over many years.

 

The only things that fail seem to be the expensive bits supplied by others like the, lighting, heating, fridge, electronics, batteries - although that seems to have as much to do with inadequate system design and charging regimes designed by the electronics suppliers as it does the actual batteries.

 

Batteries have been the bane of my life for years and I have lost count of the new batteries I have had both under warranty and purchased!

 

Cupboard catches and handles are another source of ongoing irritaion due to poor design and poor quality built down to a price that one can only assumes happens due to converter financial pressure on their suppliers?

 

If only Toyota made motor homes!!

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malc d - 2015-07-31 11:31 AM

 

Reassuring to hear that nothing goes wrong with U.K. built vans except the lighting, heating, fridges, electronics. batteries, cupboard catches and handles that they choose to buy and fit to their products.

 

 

Yes indeed - mostly the same parts as used by all European converters.

 

But at least the woodwork and fitting and construction methods used have given me no issues whatsoever over the last 20 years - not even water ingress on the makes and models I have owned - perhaps I am the lucky one after all!

 

 

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