At the Winnebago Service Center…

It only took 3 hours or so to travel from Savage, MN to Forest City, IA but since I had an appointment for service with a place to park the RV with all the services, I wasn’t too worried about what time I arrived. One thing that was a bit strange was that at the Savage RV park I couldn’t find my umbilical electrical cord connecting the RV to the car as I was preparing to leave. Hmmm, where did I put that? I just couldn’t find it, and I couldn’t remember from the previous week whether I’d unhooked it and put it away, or where I might have put it. Usually I just toss it into the car’s trunk, but nope, not there. I wasn’t even sure if I’d put it away when I’d detached the car or just left it dangling there on the RV plugged in. Or put it on top of the electrical power tower next to my RV.

Ok, so I’ll just drive for 3 hours without brake lights on my towed car. Not too worried about it as I felt I’d just stowed the umbilical somewhere strange in the RV and that I’d find it later. And also, my RV has the brake lights up high on the back of the RV, so people following me would see them even if the car didn’t have any brake lights. Well, anyway, off I went heading due south.

Most of the countryside along the route looked liked this. At least until I turned off the freeway and onto a 2 lane road heading to Forest City.

One of several small towns the road passes through after I left the freeway. Or it may be Forest City. Not sure.

Soon I passed through what I knew was Forest City, as specified by the GPS. Noticed that there’s what appears to be a large RV park just off the main road, and a golf course. Looking good. Might need to stay at the park later. Passed through the downhill side of town with it’s small businesses here and there, and just beyond is the big Winnebago sign. Big industrial area but with the look of having been here a while.

And in this next picture the parking area for people arriving for service at Winnebago. Most everyone has an appointment and while we don’t have assigned spaces here in this lot (one of two), those of us with appointments have first choice of spots. I arrived early so there were plenty of back in spaces. Looks like they’re expanding because directly behind me in this next picture was a big lot where they’re putting in new spaces. But it was all muddy when I was there so I wouldn’t want to park there. Where I’m parking it’s nice and dry, graveled and level. I had to wait for this guy to get parked so I could pull in.

This building is the Visitor Center (VC). The actual service department building is across the street. There’s parking for RVs there too, in a more RV park like setting. All these spots near the VC have 50 amp WES. And there’s a strong Wifi signal…no password needed. Very fast too.

Didn’t take much to get backed in and level. Ground is nice and hard.After getting the RV set up it was still early so I spent some time driving around town a bit. It was Sunday and my appointment wasn’t until Monday and no need to check in with anyone. I did have a parking permit I’d printed out and I stuck that in the RV’s window. Not much of interest in Forest City. Sort of your typical mid-west factory town past it’s glory days. There is a very nice Mexican restaurant in the downtown core I spotted, decided to eat there while I’m in town. The downtown core is up the hill a ways from the main road I’d traveled on to get to Winne.

Next morning, drove over to the service department and checked in, went over my check list of what I wanted worked on with the tech, and then walked back to the VC after browsing the factory store. Here’s some pics of the staging area outside the repair center. Those parked over on the far left are overnight sites for RVs that have to stay an extra long time for complex repairs. There’s even more spaces behind those RVs.

There’s a bunch of them in that area, and beyond. All here for service. Over there across the street is the VC, you can see how close it is to the service center. I’m scheduled for 3 days here based on the work I’d listed in my original request for service, I’m allowed to arrive the day before, and to stay the day after, so 5 days allowed and parking on their property is free of course while you’re getting service. Their shop rate is $125/hr and outrageous amounts for parts so they won’t lose any money. And they try to return your RV every afternoon at 3:30 pm so you don’t have to rent a room.It was early May and although the weather was a bit coolish in the mornings, it eventually warmed up to shirtsleeve weather during mid-day. Here’s the service building where there’s a big lounge and a factory outlet store where I had a great time buying those odds & ends for the RV. Things like the little plastic button on the latch of my pantry sliding shelf, drawer brackets, etc.. I have a broken actuator cable on my LR couch and I priced it out here. They want $82 for it. Nope. But I did spring for a new accordion folder to replace mine since it was falling apart – $22. Yikes. Everything was overpriced of course, but sometimes it’s worth finding something you really need or just want. It’s often difficult when on the road full time to find things for the RV, and difficult to find some things online. Here at the factory store, they had all the typical Winnebago stuff.  While they were working on my RV, and after I had browsed the store, making note of things they had, I walked back over to the Visitors Center. And inside the visitors center there’s this antique 1967 Winnie. Either it’s been restored, or it’s been a display model for decades, it’s in very nice condition.   The number on it is the unit number, not the year.

Next to that Class A was this nice little 1959 Trailer. Also in very good condition. Can’t get more ’50’s than pink tabletops and counter tops. So that was a bit interesting. There’s also a theater with a short video I watched and a store to buy paraphernalia but I didn’t indulge. I really wanted to take a tour of the service department but that particular tour wasn’t running for some reason. So I could only interface with the service tech who came out periodically while I was waiting in the service department lounge area. That was boring so I’d just drive my car around the area for sightseeing occasionally. During one of those random trips I did explore the city RV park. Nice. Lots of shade, WES, back in sites, 50 amp, but NO WIFI. So you have to use your phone for getting online.

And back in my space after the first work day. The tech groused about my not being available earlier…they’d tried to call while I was just driving around town and it went directly to voice mail. That’s when I discovered my phone wasn’t attaching to any local network…like Verizon or AT&T, both of which were there in town. At this point I didn’t know if it was the Tracfone network, or my phone. I brought the RV in for a service on the generator, I’d not done anything to it since I bought the RV back in Feb. ’16, other then run it trying to get up to the 2 hours per month as spec’ed by Onan. It was a hundred hours below the recommended run time. So it really needed a service, at least to give me a fixed date to work from.

Then I’d brought it in for heat pump service, also for maintenance of the mechanisms and seals of the living room and bedroom slides. Plus the bedroom slide would occasionally creep in around 4″ on the bottom of the slide when it was extended. And I had a broken solenoid.

So what they did that 1st day was to just clean the evaporator and condenser of the heat pump, but recommended against the other stuff I wanted done as too expensive and time consuming. I agreed that $3000 was a bit much. I’ll have to take my chances. But that first night back at my space, the A/C ran while I was in bed and I could hardly hear it. So they did do something to make it quieter and more efficient. Yea!

And they also just cleaned, by wiping with a clean dry cloth, the slide walls. No lubricant was used, and no soap or water either. I was very surprised that was all it took to get the rubber on the LR slide to behave. It had been curling under before this cleaning and squeaking often. After that service, nice and quiet and no longer curls under, lays nice and flat on the sidewall as it’s retracted or extended. The tech told me that all the slide rubbers need! No fancy, expensive, detrimental rubber lube or restoration products needed. Just clean them. If there’s something really dirty on the sidewalls, then just use Dawn liquid in hot water, rinse and let them dry before retracting. Huh. Common sense.

The 2nd day, they did the generator service and the tech found a mouse nest stuffed inside the air filter housing! Even though it had run very well whenever I’d started it for the 2 hours per month recommended, or those 8 hours I ran it while waiting for someone in a parking lot a couple weeks after buying the RV. But that was cleaned out and didn’t do any damage, so I got a new air filter, oil filter, fuel filter, oil and topped off antifreeze. And with the other 400 hour service all performed it should hopefully give me lots of years of service with just regular maintenance. Glad I got it done while I was here.

And the hydraulic tech (never got to meet him) replaced the solenoid that I’d broken the release handle, and then replaced TWO other solenoids I was told were the cause of the BR slide slipping in occasionally.

Had them check the caulking on the roof (pronounced ‘good’ by the tech), removed and installed some aftermarket Jamb nuts for me on the rear wheels (turned out they didn’t know what torque to apply to them – 40ft-lbs I found out a couple weeks later), and tested the dash floor heat (which they pronounced within spec as far as air flow – bad design IMO). At the end of the 2nd day, the tech told me I was all done a day early, mainly because they talked me out of doing the heat pump service like replacing the squirrel cage fan and motor caps, which required the heat pump be removed from it’s cubby hole. They just cleaned things they could reach and replaced some aged out duct tape. They did inspect the venting behind the end cap as best they could and didn’t find anything wrong.

So being impressed with the quietness of the heat pump after they worked on it that 1st day, and the slide rubbers behaving, I was pretty pleased and paid $1700 for the work. I didn’t care for the ‘closer’ guy in the tiny office they have to explain the charges when you’re presented with the multi-page bill that looks like it was arranged and printed using software from the early ’90s had created it. I’m guessing they’ve had numerous screaming customers yelling about the bill so the closer is likely necessary to keep the office staff comfortable. Still, I wouldn’t be yelling for a while.

Now, here’s what I did after I paid. Drove the RV back to the VC and parked, and since I’d already paid for non-refundable tickets to the C&W show just up the street, Tree Town Music Festival which happened to be running the week end after my Winnebago service appointment, I asked to be allowed to stay at the Winnie VC that 4th and 5th nights…which was granted.

I’m a bit embarrassed that I’d paid $525 for RV parking at the concert. Really over the top. I use to be a C&W fan, and the line up included some of my favorite names in country music from years ago, but really, that’s way too much money just for parking my RV and with just electric and water provided. Especially when I discovered I could have just parked at the Forest City RV park for $15/night and driven to the concert at my leisure, saving $525. But I was feeling flush back in March and dropped $650 for 4 nights parking and tickets for the festival within walking distance of the stage…I thought…turned out they did their best to make it seem my spot was nearly on top of the stage, when the reality was I was 1/4 mile from it. And all that money was NON-REFUNDABLE. I should have known better.

But we’ll get to more about that next time. Thanks for reading!