OK, Here's the Thing....

It is Wednesday and we still sit here in Forest City, Iowa at the Winnebago factory. Last night we had to go to the local Super 8 motel to sleep, and we will be there again tonight.

The work is getting finished on the 2 slide out sections of our Tour motorhome. As we assumed, there was a lot of mold up in the top of the slide outs between the roof and the inside ceiling of the slides. Service technicians here had to rip off the roof, insulation, plywood barrier and the ceiling on the inside. Now they will rebuild it all. We are hoping (can we say praying here?) that this will all go as planned and be covered by the comprehensive clause on our insurance.

Why the insurance you may ask? Well, we were in Palm Springs when we got hit with a very, very strong windstorm. The winds were so strong we feared being blown over, so we pulled in both slide outs for the rest of the night. The next day we saw that the awnings over the slides had been damaged. We got out of Palm Springs that very day before any more wind could wreak havoc. So, this should qualify under the comprehensive coverage because the damage was done during this windstorm.

We went to our local dealer and they repaired what they saw as damage. OK...we thought...that's taken care of. Then in April, we saw that one of the tension rods wasn't working correctly on the driver side slide awning. We went to a local service repair in Virginia (Winnebago authorized dealer) and had that replaced. OK...we thought....that's taken care of.

A while after that was when we began to smell that musty, moldy odor in the overhead cupboards over our bed. It got so bad we couldn't put anything in them. By this time we were down in Homestead, Florida. We called Winnebago factory to see about an appointment to have this all checked out. We were set to go into Disney World in early June and wanted an appointment for around the 6th of July. We couldn't get one until Aug. 3.

After service techs looked into everything here it was determined that during the windstorm the rails that hold the awning system to the coach were lifted ever so slightly by the heavy wind and got bent enough that some of the screws holding it were ripped out. We couldn't see this even if we'd looked. Why the service techs at the 2 previous dealerships didn't see it or look for it, I can't say. Apparently, water seeped under the slide roof through those tiny screw holes and that caused all the damage.

So, we are waiting for everything to be completed and hopefully be out of here by the weekend. They had to completely remove the slide units and that is why we had to go to the motel.

In spite of this big problem, we feel lucky compared to some of the people getting work done here. Wow, some of them have terrible things wrong with their motorhomes. I won't complain about our motorhome anymore. Well, maybe a little bit. :)

We've gotten to know this tiny town of Forest City real well. I won't mind getting out of here as soon as possible, though. Enough is enough.

Stay tuned until next time......so long for now!