Body Work…Due to Accident August 2018

During a trip to Randle, Washington, on US 12, in the foothills of the Cascade’s mountainous section, I was coming down a hill on a narrow section of this 2 lane highway when I saw a sign that says Indian Creek. And I can see that it’s a rather narrow bridge. Slowing down in anticipation but because of the hill not as slow as I wanted, I’m just arriving at the entrance to the bridge when this semi comes around the blind corner just past the bridge heading in the opposite direction at too high a speed and slightly inside my side of the road. Tires on the yellow line. Naturally, I dodge a bit to the right and BANG a very loud noise. I’m going around 45 MPH and he disappears around the corner so quickly I couldn’t get a look at his plate number. After I cross the bridge there’s really no where to pull over, but I slow down even further looking for somewhere to stop and call the sheriff. Over a mile later, I did pull over and find my phone isn’t getting a signal. OK, never mind, anyway it’s too late to call the cops because it’s doubtful they could find the guy. Also he didn’t hit me, he drove me into the guard rail so not sure they would have bothered.

When I arrived at the RV park in Randell, I took some pictures of the damage…the damage only along the passenger side. Apparently, the RV was scraped along the entire side by the bridge’s guard rail while I was trying to dodge the semi.

See the scratch? It’s both in the middle of the doors and another scratch down near the bottom. Goes all the way from the front to the rear. And then we get back to the worst of the damage and likely what caused the big bang I heard…on the battery compartment door. The scratch is a bit deeper and the water heater vent grill is toast. That’ll have to be replaced for sure. The door is bent enough that it’s noticeable, the door latch surround is bent so much it will have to be replaced, but luckily I can still operate the door and it stays latched when closed.
And there’s some damage on the rear part of the body. At least the nice louvered grill pieces weren’t damaged. The plastic vortex device will need to be replaced but I have spares so not a problem. And here’s the door with the most damage opened. Side view showing the slight bend. On the other side you can see a deeper bend in the metal going the other way. So a compound bend. Which would make it difficult for a body shop to fix if they took it all apart…which is why they’d probably do what I did and order an undamaged replacement door from a salvage yard.
Not to badly damaged on the inside.And the grill…part of the water heater door. At least the door is still in good condition and the small bends it did have I was able to straighten myself. The grill is loose in the door, just held in place by bent metal tabs. Easy to remove and replace.Doesn’t look very good, particularly on this door. I debated not bothering with an insurance claim but this door bothered me enough that I figured, well, I pay for the insurance and haven’t had a claim in years, and I don’t want to live with this damage to my house, so…
Kind of crunched the door latch too, actually bent it enough that it appears to be a throw way but it still works.

Called Progressive Ins. and they had an estimator meet me. The estimate came to $4830. Several months later (because I never happened upon a shop that I wanted to do the work) I accepted a check for that amount in order to close the claim. I’ve known people who actually believe that it’s dishonest or unethical to accept the payment check and then never get it repaired, but no it’s not. Don’t be silly.

Now that I’m down south in warm weather it’s time to try to get it repaired, but only because I think it’s unsightly. I know that if I took it to a body shop that they will most likely call salvage yards and get an old one off a rig like mine so I’ve found a salvage yard on my own where they want $650 for the one door and the grill. I’ll have to think on that.

Well, I thought about it and decided to buy. I did try to contact 3 other salvage yards and they either never answered my emails, or never answered their phones, or both, or if they did bother to answer they didn’t have the door. Sigh.

With shipping costs, the entire amount for the door, grill, and shipping came to $800. When I got it, it was the wrong color. I had mistakenly assumed that since I’d started my email to them mentioning their stock number of an exact matching RV they had in their yard, and providing pictures of my door showing the color of mine, that I’d get the basement door off of that unit they featured on their web site. Not so. They sent me the door off a blueish RV. My mistake not specifying color. That doesn’t usually work as salvage yards will sometimes just refuse to match your color, I learned that decades ago. But sometimes you can talk them into matching your color and if I’d known, I would have attempted that. See, the paint fades over time and using the door off the same color RV that is the same age as yours presumably has faded about as much. A better match to the rest of your RV than a freshly painted door. That’s why I should have tried harder to match my RVs color with the replacement door. Well, ’nuff said about that. Over and done with now. With shipping at $125, it was not worth trying to send it back and then getting the right color shipped back.

When I received the door of the wrong color, I was in Pahrump and got a quote from a local body shop on how much they wanted to paint it. They quoted $1,000. Wow. But it happened to be coldish in Pahrump at the time with forecasts of more of the same, I wanted to warm up, getting the door installed wasn’t an emergency, so I headed down to Yuma. Yuma sits right on the border with Mexico, there’s a Mexican town that caters to the dental, medical, and prescription needs of Yumans within a couple miles of where I was staying and the village has a paint shop. Took the new door down to the shop and they quoted $200 to repaint it. I didn’t bring a sample of the paint color so they asked me to take the RV to their recommended paint store in Yuma to match the paint so I had to drive the RV there for them to do that. Kind of a hassle but ya gotta do what ya gotta do…amiright? The reason is that Dupont never revealed their paint color formula for RVs to the body shop industry and there’s no cross in the paint formula books. So the paint store has to match it by eye. The paint cost $102 for a pint! So add another $102 plus $200 to the $825 and we have $1127. Took the paint and door back to Mexico and they painted it for me. The door is small enough that I could put it in the back seat of the car…but if I’d wanted, I could have driven the RV over to the shop. It would have been a really tight squeeze at the border though and I’d have had to go to San Luis I think. Crossing at Los Algodones isn’t built for trucks or buses. One thing about border towns in Mexico, you can drive right in and don’t need to sign in your car, don’t need a visa, and you don’t need Mexican insurance, but you’ll have to have cash or a CC with a balance if you get in an accident. You get 200 KM (125 miles) into the country and you have to have all those things though. And to get back into the US, you need your passport. I made the mistake of coming back to pick up the door on a Saturday and the return line at the border took 2 hours to cross when on a weekday it would have been 45 minutes. Weekends are the worst for traffic.

After spending that much on the door, grill, paint, and painting, I wasn’t to keen on hiring someone to install the door. So since I was back in Pahrump working on the heat pump and had the rear fender off anyway (giving better access to trim pieces) I decided that it was the time to install it.

See that trim piece above the hinge there on the right? That’s an extruded aluminum trim piece that runs the entire length of the RV from the rear of the RV all the way forward to the door. There are only 2 long pieces. Those are held by flat head screws that come up from a steep angle from behind. The screws attach the trim piece and the lip it has at the top holds it on a steel mounting rail that is screwed to the frame.

I needed to use a small 1/4″ ratchet if the Phillips flathead screws holding the trim were tight, than once I got the screws started I could use a wobbler on a hand tool. Because of the angle and having to access them from behind makes the removal of so many screws a bit tedious and because there is a screw about every foot along it’s length I decided to cut the trim piece just past the damaged door instead of trying to remove all that trim. Having a bench to sit on made it fairly easy to remove the screws I had to remove but I decided that cutting the trim piece would make things go much faster. That way would only have 12 feet of trim to remove, not 30 feet.

Here’s a shot of the end of the trim piece after it’s plastic end cap was removed and with the rear fender removed. You can see that taking the heat pump door off (the undamaged door next to the damaged door) gives more access but that’s really not necessary. But it does need to be open to access 3 of the screws that hold the trim, and to do that there are four screws holding the heat pump’s door closed and they are accessed after opening the battery compartment door (the door I’m planning on replacing with the new one) and two more underneath the rig near the rear of the RV screwed into a chassis bracket.

After removing the trim’s plastic end cap at the rear of the RV, then the door (which didn’t really need to be removed just opened…I mistakenly removed it), I removed the 4 foot section on the left of the damaged door. It’s on there pretty tight so I had to wiggle and use a flat bar to pry it off once all the screws were out.

Here’s a shot of the steel mounting rail I’m trying to access by removing the trim. Note the hinge on the left of the door…the screws holding the door face outward and are covered by the trim. Which is why the trim has to come off. Over on the right, you can see the edge of the right side hinge for the door. The trim that covers that needs to come off too. But it’s a very long piece and I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time squatting down trying to access the flat head screws. So decided to cut the trim just beyond the edge of the door.

The blue tape is where I decided to cut the trim…just past the door so I’d only have to remove that short piece of trim to be able to remove the damaged door. I decided to cut the trim right at the slot between the furnace exhaust and the propane compartment door. Thought that a cut line would seem like it was meant to be there if I cut there.

The cut there would still give plenty of attachment points on the trim to keep it in place while on the road once this job is finished and I’m back traveling.

After I scratched up the trim piece a bit with a jig saw, decided that I didn’t want to make things worse so switched to a hacksaw. That wasn’t too bad, carefully cut most of the way through, but then decided to remove a couple more screws holding the trim to the right so I could carefully pull-bend it away from the RV frame and then when I had the room, used a pair of sharp tin snips to cut the trim the rest of the way through. That worked well.

With the trim off the RV, I could access the screws holding the door hinges. First removed the two screws holding the gas lift strut to the RV frame, then removed the door. Set it on a picnic table and removed the lock and handle assembly along with removing the gas lift so I could transfer them to the new door. Set the door aside and then set the new door in it’s place on top of rugs I’d put on the table. Didn’t want to scratch that new paint.

Used a very strong bleach solution to wash the inner panel to try to whiten it somewhat, being careful to not get the bleach solution on the new paint. It did improve the color just a little.

After it had dried, I took the old lock/handle/frame assembly and disassembled it further by driving out a pin on one side of the handle. Doing so allowed the handle (with lock cartridge) to be removed. Since it wasn’t damaged or bent like the old door assembly frame I wanted to reuse it. Basically I used the old lock cartridge and handle assembly in the new door handle frame. That way I wouldn’t have to have the lock picked and a key made by a locksmith…a key that would be odd ball. I know that the manufacturers only use 4 lock cartridges for their basement and main doors but my key didn’t match the salvaged one so I wanted to keep my old lock cartridge. Finally, attached the gas lift from the old door to this one. All ready to put the new undamaged door back in place.

Once the door was back in place held by 6 screws, reattached the trim pieces and then everything else, like the rear fender. Not a difficult job, only took a single day of just leisurely working on it. Probably 2 hours actual work time. And here it is with everything all buttoned up. I do need to dab some touch up paint to the scratches on the trim above the furnace vents but that will only take a couple minutes. Pretty happy that the accident damage was only bad on this particular door and not along the entire side of the rig. There are visible scratches from the accident nearly the full length of the RV and I’m considering having them repaired next time I’m in Mexico. The scratches are so shallow I think they’ll just fill them with paint. But it looks good enough now that I may never get the scratches painted.

So that’s how you remove and replace a basement door from a 2000’s era Winnebago. Pretty simple. Hope you enjoyed the article.

Thanks for reading!