Refrigerator fell across moho out of its slot

Americanrascal · 03-30-2016, 06:11 PM

I offer this as a "be aware" and "keep your eye on it" offering for 2016 Adventurer owners.

We picked up our new 2016 Adventurer from the dealer about 9 days before this happened. Last Monday we were returning the rig to the dealer after our first short trip of about 450 miles for some repairs on a few serious issues (roof leak, engine codes, broken slide and others) that arose on that first outing. We left early Monday morning and drove interstate all the way through moderate traffic but relatively good road to get it to the shop at the dealership about 150 miles from home. As we exited the interstate and turned left we heard a rather substantial "CLUNK" somewhere mid-ship in the rig. Both of us looked and saw nothing wrong and just figured it was a cabinet door shifting or bump we hit as we observed nothing visually wrong. We drove another 500 yards to the next intersection and turned left from a dead stop at a light. As I straightened out the wheel after the turn we heard this huge crash,my wife was sitting in the passenger seat turned to see the Whirlpool double french door residential refrigerator had fallen out of its slot on the rear of the drivers side forward slide. The fridge crashed into the microwave across the coach at about a 45 degree angle.

Thankfully we were pulling into the dealership/service center when this occurred.

There was damage to the refrigerator which seemed to be primarily on the lower freezer door which appears to be twisted and warped (???) from the fall. Interestingly the wife had locked the doors so they would not slide before we left home. The lock also obviously failed. When it hit the microwave it marred metal on the microwave steel exterior door.

Thankfully we had emptied the fridge before taking it to the dealership.I couldn't have imagined the mess had it been full of food!

Dealer reps came out and were shocked as they said they had never seen this before (and they are a large dealer). The service manager and I observed the decorative wood face-plate had ripped from the wall over the fridge. But the mounting brackets at the top rear had very easily just pulled right out of the wall.

I'm not an engineer but the wood screws and bracing brackets to secure the refrigerator to the wall at the top of the fridge behind the appliance seem very weak for the mass and weight involved- especially with the forces of turning in a rig of this size.

My driving is old man conservative style and I take my speeds and corners very gracefully, so I know I did nothing to contribute to an abnormal force .

In addition to leaving this with the dealer to manage I have also reported this to Winnebago. Other than"we'll get back to you " I haven't heard anything from anyone in 3 days and that may be a bit early in all fairness?

I've been RV'ing in Class A's (owned 3) a Class C, a fiver, 2 TT's and a TC for over 35 years and have never had anything approaching this occur. We're thankful no one was in the kitchen area of the rig when this occurred. Had they been in or walking by that area it would have likely resulted in serious injury. We're fairly well disciplined about sitting still and being strapped in while in motion. Needless to say the DW and I are somewhat puckered about this.

I am not sure how this is all going to develop or turn out but I wanted to give 38Q Adventurer and other owners with a similar set up with a residential fridge a heads-up.

Anyone had a similar experience with these large residential refrigerators?

Be Careful

Dr4Film · 03-30-2016, 06:22 PM

So much for the "excellent" quality control measures while the coach is on the Winnebago assembly line.

Does this possibly mean a Winnebago Recall is somewhere in their future?

Dr4Film ----- Richard

Cover Dog · 03-30-2016, 06:29 PM

We ordered our 38Q in January and will pick it up April 21 in Iowa. Thanks for the heads up, hope this was an isolated incident. Winnebago should make this right at no expense to you.

TomandGloria · 03-30-2016, 06:36 PM

Holy cow I am sorry to hear about your misfortune with your new Winnie. Every time I start thinking about trading I read about the numerous QC issues by nearly all the manufactor's and I think maybe i just need to hang on to mine.

Hope it is made right quickly so you and the DW can enjoy it.

scbwr · 03-30-2016, 07:05 PM

At the minimum, I would want a new refrigerator and microwave, and the repair job should restore the motorhome to new condition, as well as provide new warranties for the fridge and microwave. That type of stuff shouldn't happen. They ought to give you a large rebate for your inconvenience and for being lucky not to be seriously hurt.

WILDEBILL308 · 03-30-2016, 07:14 PM

Thats a new one. I hope you took plenty of pictuers showing the damage and failed ankers.
Bill

jerboy · 03-30-2016, 07:17 PM

Absolutely no excuse for this stuff!! We all know the guys at Forest City monitor this forum. Come on folks, lets hear from you!!

bobmac · 03-30-2016, 08:10 PM

Likely an omission in properly securing the fridge on the assembly line - human error. Given that this has not previously reported in the forums here, I would hope that the investigation points to a "one of " error. I would certainly insist on having the appliances replace and properly installed. Good luck,

Mich F · 03-30-2016, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobmac

Likely an omission in securing the fridge on the assembly line - human error.

The OP says the mounting brackets pulled out of the wall.

jerboy · 03-30-2016, 08:33 PM

a few serious issues (roof leak, engine codes, broken slide and others)

Human error???? This coach was a mess from the GET GO.

At the very least it should be completely replaced, assuming the OP even wants a Winnebago now!!!!

smlranger · 03-30-2016, 08:46 PM

Sad commentary on even basic quality of construction for any manufacturer. If it was my new coach, I would be suspicious of what other critical things were missed.

And these are the folks who think they can start building Country Coaches again

.

The call that the owner should be getting from someone with authority at Winnebago should be something like 'we are sorry, there are no excuses, and what can we do for you?'.

Americanrascal · 03-30-2016, 09:43 PM

We have been pleased with Winnebago products in the past and we hope this all gets squared away as this is (and we hope can be) our dream coach. We had a 2014 31KE Sunstar we bought new and traded to acquire this unit. For all practical purposes I would put the 2014 Sunstar in the "flawless" category. That's why I wanted so much to have a Winnebago this time when we traded up.

To offer a bit more info- I could see where the screws had penetrated through bracing bracket into the wall at the top rear of the tipped over fridge and observed where they pulled out of the wall. The small size of those holes and what appeared to be narrow wood screws rattled me. When I looked behind the fridge after it had fallen away I would have thought I'd have seen some substantial bolting set up. All I saw were the holes where the screws had been set through the bracket. So unless someone moved the fridge between the factory and the dealership (somewhat doubtful)then the screws were definitely installed as intended in the factory as the holes were they were set were clear and simply stripped out of whatever they were anchored to.

While we are very worried about the system securing the fridge to the wall, the other issues- slide failure, leak and engine code-are also driving us nuts. I want to be fair and give the Winnebago folks and Camping World a chance to figure this out and make it all right.

We really hope they do- and we hope we get some confirmation of that very soon.

But those of you that have this set up please be careful- henceforth we will be much more alert for something like this to occur with the anchoring of the appliances and fixtures. We're both rattled by this experience- and how bad it could have been had one of us been moving around when it happened. More good reason to stay seated and strapped in at all times in the rig!

TonyDi · 03-30-2016, 09:55 PM

Wow you sure had a lot go wrong right from the start. A leaking roof and a broken slide are not minor issues. I hope Winnebago is going to go over the whole MH with a fine tooth comb, and make it right for you.

Good luck and let us know how this turns out.

dezrtracr · 03-31-2016, 01:45 AM

You mentioned that you also had a broken slide. I assume that you have the new PowerGear in-wall slide now sold by Lippert. Can you describe the problem you are having with the slide?

Americanrascal · 03-31-2016, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dezrtracr

You mentioned that you also had a broken slide. I assume that you have the new PowerGear in-wall slide now sold by Lippert. Can you describe the problem you are having with the slide?

We had the unit a week before the short trip. Having been aware of the sensitivity of slides I am fanatical about proper set up for slide operations. I make sure the rig is dead on level and ALWAYS hold operating buttons until the slide is either fully extended or retracted to avoid getting motors out of sequence.

After we picked the new rig up at the dealers, where we had gone through a thorough PDI, we leveled the unit at home and extended all slides. They all worked perfectly. During the week before the travel we extended and retracted the slides 3 times- all worked well.

We traveled about 250 miles south for a 4 day jaunt, extended and retracted at the CG (had to retract 2X at the CG to protect the slide toppers for severe storms in the area that were threatening hail and high winds) No problems. We decided to head home Sunday morning . All seemed well loading and retracting the slides up to this time. Each time we used the locking mechanism.

About 70 miles later I glanced out the drivers left mirror and noticed the front of the drivers side Powerglide had crept out about 3 inches. I managed to get into a rest area and leveled the unit and went through a full open retract exercise- no luck. Still a 2-3 inch gap. During the operation we noticed it didn't quite operate as it had in the past- notably the slight elevation movement at the end of the retraction did not seem to occur in the forward part of the slide.

We also noticed that the decorative dust cover plate, which sits on the end of the arm to cover the mechanism, over the forward extension arm did not seem to be seating or retracting properly in its vertical position. It was canted at an angle instead of being perfectly vertical and initially would not fully retract, then later went too far inboard.

We pulled the manual out and read the drill on how to manualy retract the slide using the override sequence. We did so and tried to align the unit as prescribed in the process and managed to reduce the the forward seating over extension down to about 1 inch, but the dust cover area was canted even worse.

At this point we just wanted to get the rig home and back to the dealer as this was over my head and we just wanted to get the system secure enough to get to the dealer. The slide forward edge remained about 1 inch out the rest of the trip home. Once we arrived home, I decided to remove the dust cover over the forward slide arm as I was concerned that any movement would bend and damage the decorative dust cover assembly.
(4 small nuts held it in place). We immediately observed that the top two bolts of 4 major connecting bolts that connected the vertical arm to the slide bracket on the face plate at the end of the arm were protruding. Clearly this was improper. We moved the slide out one more time and found that the face plate was not acting with rigid movement as the rear and did not set properly. There was a lot of play present where the rear arm face remained rigid. It was clear these bolts were not supposed to move. I attempted to tighten the bolts them but found they were stripped and they just spun in their setting- protruding about 1/2 inch beyond flush as they should have been. I could not tell if they had simply been left loose in the factory thus damaging the threads through normal vehicle movement, or if some force had pressed them and stripped them from their securing nuts. If that was so it had to have been some significant force and it seems the gearing would have been damaged before these heavy bolts would have stripped?

This all was far beyond my mechanical capabilities and wanted the service folks to observe exactly what I found so I left it alone and decided to proceed to the dealers Monday morning. We left it as we found it with the exception of the dust cover which we kept off so it would not be damaged due to the irregular movement of the slide.

The rear slide arm seemed to work perfectly through the entire period.

Ernie Ekberg · 03-31-2016, 06:22 AM

when I take out an absorption unit and replace with residential, I make sure that the bottom is anchored to the floor. Never had one move

smlranger · 03-31-2016, 06:50 AM

Based on my past experiences with both the Winnebago factory and Camping World, if it was my coach I would not let Camping World attempt to fix the fridge and slide issues. I would firmly insist that Winnebago bear the cost of getting the coach back to the factory for the repairs. They should readily agree to do that.... send a driver to get it and bring it back to you when they are done.

Duner · 03-31-2016, 01:22 PM

Americanrascal,
I suggest you take pictures of physical damage anytime you experience a problem. It may be too late in this case to get good pictures, but in the future the pictures will make it much easier to make a case with Customer Service via emails. Also posting pictures on this forum will help you get better feedback.

Good luck,
Bill

Americanrascal · 03-31-2016, 01:35 PM

I do have pics of the slide end bolts and the dealer took pics (wish I could have) of the fridge tipped over.

But I agree I should always take detailed pics of these situations.

oakcreekeric · 03-31-2016, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by americanrasc

I want to be fair and give the Winnebago folks and Camping World a chance to figure this out and make it all right.

This just sent a shiver down my back...

I don't mean to be insensitive... but I would HIGHLY recommend you remove this coach from the hands of Camping World... There are WAY too many stories of them screwing things up WORSE than when the RV went in for repairs..

I would strongly suggest, as smlranger did, you should immediately have this coach sent to Forest City for them to repair...

Good Luck !!