Problem with new RV

So, I got my new Class C Forest River Sunseeker 2500ts on a E450 platform, just about less than a month ago. Beautiful piece of equipment, I feel, being our first motorhome. We decided to take a trip to Phoenix from Corpus Christi, about 1200 miles away. The home part was great . All work as it should be. The problem is on the "motor" part of the motorhome. As soon as we started our journey, I quickly notice something wrong with the steering. Too much play on it, for my taste. For some of you who may have traveled through south New Mexico and Arizona, then you know about the burst of wind. Well, we had plenty of that and combine with the play on the steering, I was not a happy camper. To top that, at a certain speed, between 62 and 68MPH, there is a noticeable vibration which goes away as soon as move to 70 up or down to 60 or below, smooth riding. Not normal.
When we got back, I immediately contacted my dealer, Camping World. Sorry, it's a FORD issue. Corpus being a small town, we have two Ford dealers which neither of would touch it, saying they don't have the equipment to deal with a motorhome. I also contacted another Ford dealer, a few miles away. This one had a lift big enough but no one trained to deal with my type of issue. So, what to do? Can I hold the dealer responsible for that, can I take it to a place that deals with heavy truck and bill back Ford or Camping World?
This is a new vehicle with about 3000miles. Does anyone had to deal with something similar? Any advice will be appreciated.

Only advice I can give is to take it back to CW and good luck with that.

Find a good truck shop that works on the Ford chassis.  When I had a Ford, I went to an alignment shop and they worked with Ford and di an excellent job for fixing similar problems.  You may also want to consider the Safe-T-Steer product as I found it a great help in resolving the Ford handling problems.

Also how far down the road are you looking while driving?  If too close you will oversteer.  You should be looking a ways down the road and aiming for the center of you lane.  Just a thought.

The last place you want to go for anything is Camping World and especially chassis work.

Only because I owned a 29 ft Class C with a Ford E-450 will i let you know what I had to do to get mine to drive straight and smooth. First was find a scale and weigh it, then found the tire pressure charts to run the correct air pressures. Then to the local Discount tire store for all 6 wheels spun balanced. Then added new aftermarket front and rear heavy duty sway bars. All that cost me about $600 with me doing the sway bar install. After the improvements, I could drive one handed and it felt like it was on rails. Night and day difference from when I first purchased it.

Friends don't let friends purchase from camping world.  I hope you didn't purchase an add-on extended warranty as they are pretty much useless as it is often impossible to schedule a timely warranty repair with CW and other dealers after the sale.

Advice to find a truck shop that handles Ford Chassis is your best bet.  Good luck and I hope you get your issue resolved quickly to your satisfaction so you can enjoy your new rig.

PS Disclaimer:  I'm not a fan of the CEO/owner of camping world, Marcus Lemonis.  He really doesn't care for the RV business and would rather sell more profitable extended warranties and road side assistance to RV'ers.

Your E450 has to little +caster for highway driving.

POPULAR MECHANICS MAY 1973:
START QUOTE:
If too little caster exists, the car will wander and weave,
thus necessitating constant corrections in steering.
END QUOTE:

Here is a link to our experience, circa 2011:

http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php?topic=40337.0

2kGeorgieBoy has said it best:

http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,112427.30.html

Reply Post by 2kGeorgieBoy

Re: Wandering at highway speeds
Reply #36 on: March 14, 2018, 09:07:02 PM

START QUOTE:
Jeff..Although we have a 2000 Georgie Boy 31' Maverick "C" on  a Ford E450 chassis, I can fully agree on the caster effects, at least for us.  When we got the unit in  Jan 2014, the dealer had us take into a  truck shop for an alignment. It turned out OK....A trip to Moab shortly there after brought out the problems. I then started reading the threads and comments here about the caster settings....esp., from Harvard. I checked the data from the first alignment and found that it was set at about 3 1/2 degrees positive...about in the middle of Ford's recommended range. Shortly before a cross country trip to Maryland in fall of 2016, I returned to the shop where the first alignment was done. I talked to the service manager and he knew of the problems with the E450's and was happy to increase the caster as I asked. The alignment tech was also familiar with it and ended up with settings close to 5.5 degrees positive. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! The unit tracked straight down the road, passing semis no longer caused a white knuckle hold on the wheel, and overall it was just a lot more enjoyable. It did however increase steering effort a little but not anything to worry about.  But, be sure that the shop you go to is willing to "think outside of the box". Our first alignment was "plain vanilla", right in the middle like it was always done. Second time out, they were very willing to increase settings beyond what normally would be done, and still stay with in Ford's guidelines (0-7 degrees, I believe). I realize that our E450 chassis is an entirely different animal than yours, but I was trying to add support to the caster increase thinking and how it helped us......if you go down that road.
END QUOTE:

Thank you all for the good advice. As far as the comments for CW, I believe that. I had a very poor experience with them. After my order, they had 2 days to get the RV ready. We showed up at 11am as scheduled for pick up and they hadn't even touch the thing. We ended up waiting 4 hours to get it and when one of their tech was giving us an introduction tour, he didn't have answers for most of my questions. When I called CW yesterday, their answer was "go to a Ford dealer". Not even trying to suggest or recommend one. Very sad when you spend a load of money and get that kind of service. The sad part is that my dealer, CW, is about 180 miles from home, so it's not like I can go over there and raise hell with them. Anyway, I contacted Ford and found out they have a Motorhome Customer Assistance Service. It was late last night so I will call back this morning. No, I did not buy the extended warranty, although they tried to sell that to me.
Now for those of you who have an E450, under the hood there a bunch of small wires, about 10 or 12, looks like 18 or 20 gauge, that just hang there. They're not terminated and just have some heat shrink at the end. Of course, the tech was not able to answer that. I went to an RV show this past week end in San Antonio and looked as some RV and sure enough, all the E450 have those same wires hanging. What are those for? There is also some sort of a block next to the battery with heavy wire attached to it. Don't what that is for either. I will update after I contact Ford this morning. Pictures Attached

The second photo is a high amperage circuit breaker, probably for the leveling system if equipped, or the slide(s).

It's a standard Ford E450 van cutaway chassis, so any Ford dealer that handles their truck line can deal with it. However, I would not take it to a Ford dealer who was reluctant, so seek out a larger one that handles the larger Ford trucks.  Or simply a medium & heavy truck shop - they all know how to check & align with that kind of chassis.

Your steering issue may be simply excessive pressure in the tires, a fairly common problem when it comes right from an RV dealer or tire shop. Both tend to inflate tires to the max load psi simply to avoid a lawsuit over under-inflation. However, that often makes the tires way too hard and causes squirrelly handling as well as a harsh ride.    There should be a tire placard by the driver seat or on the driver door post and that will have a manufacturer recommended tire pressure. Use that until you can get the RV weighed, either axle by axle or wheel-by-wheel, and set the psi to the optimum for the actual load.

With their big slab sides, RVs are much more susceptible to cross winds than cars.  It's something you learn to deal with.

If there is indeed too much "Play" in the steering odds are it's a simple adjustment (Bearing pre-load I think)

But depending on the length and suspension there may be another issue.. This is common on Class A motor homes.

Leaf spring suspension allows not only up/down but side to side movement.  The result is if the rear moves one way and the front the other you THINK you are drifting and compensate. then the ends swap and you compensate the other way and thus you WAG your way down the road.

The solution is a Trac Bar. NO MORE WAG. two of them stop it 100% (Front and rear) One may be enough Under 1000 each.

But as I said that's is more common on a class A than a shorter C

Start with the tire inflation as Gary has stated. And the comments on the castor are spot-on.

You don't need a shop that works on trucks IF you can find the small guy/shop that knows what you are talking about. When I had my '07 Sunseeker I found a old timer that knows his stuff. Wish he could do my F53 chassis.

Sometime playing with the amount of fresh water can make a huge difference. I tried to keep less than half a tank, depending on plans. Empty black and gray too.

Thanks all. Here's the update.
Spoke to Ford Motorhome Assistance this morning. Nice lady on the phone. Explained all and she recommended 2 Ford dealers that deals with heavy trucks. The first I called, sorry, can't do. OK. Called the second one in San Antonio. This place deal mostly with truck. Drove there (165 miles) only to be told that my problems may not be covered under warranty. WHAT? So the service adviser said that he may take care of the steering issue, probably not under warranty, but not the vibration that may be cause by the drive shaft because, he said, the RV manufacturer "extend" the drive shaft due to the length. Looks like he's trying to take me for a fool. How do you make a drive shaft longer? You would have to cut the frame to do that. I thought the chassis is delivered complete ready for the camper to be installed. Weird.
Anyway, I authorized the work because I have a trip first week of February, but this is not the end of it. I will involve Ford. They the one telling me to go there for warranty work. I guess more to come.
Tires pressure is as recommended, 75 front 80 rear.

Many coach builders do extend the chassis, but most of them I've seen are extended behind the rear axle.  This wouldn't affect the driveline.

In addition to checking the tire pressures, I'd ask the dealer to check the front end alignment.  This may not be covered under warranty, as the coach builders are supposed to re-align the coach after the build is complete, but I don't think they do.

Old_Crow said:

Many coach builders do extend the chassis, but most of them I've seen are extended behind the rear axle.  This wouldn't affect the driveline.

In addition to checking the tire pressures, I'd ask the dealer to check the front end alignment.  This may not be covered under warranty, as the coach builders are supposed to re-align the coach after the build is complete, but I don't think they do.

Click to expand...

Some like Gulfstream (BT Cruiser model), had an extended the frame in the centre and and had a longer drive shaft, wiring etc. (It was not Gulfstream themselves that did the extension but a Ford frame qualified shop). I believe Ford still warrantied the extended chassis though!.

So Forest River has agreed to pay for the front wheels alignment. Still waiting on an answer for the vibrations. We'll see.

Though I do agree the coach builders SHOULD align the rig just before shipping to dealer.

I am not aware of any who even have an alignment rack. They simply do not do it. far as I know.

Yes, you have to go to a truck center. Found one in San Antonio that is Ford dealer. They have the rig right now.

They all claim the coach is "properly aligned" when it leaves the factory, but whether they actually do an alignment at the end of the assembly line is debatable. It seems to me that there has to be a realignment to compensate for the huge addition of body weight, but I know the factory likes to get all the chassis work before the coach body is built.

I can only speak to the E350/E450:
For an example, the caster alignment spec for the model year 2013 is:

LH +1.0 to +6.8
RH +1.4 to +7.2

So, almost any possible caster setting could be considered to be "properly aligned".

Why is it people can't believe this ...

many if not most 35+ foot long Ford motorhomes started out as an F53 ambulance chassis that is very often cut and extended by hundreds of indendent modification shops.

I worked at a large well known shop that made stretch limos....the workmanship was horrible..

Most longer chassis have a two piece extended driveshaft with a carrier bearing in the center, and most driveline vibrations are caused by a problem in that.  There are many driveshaft shops that will custom make any driveshaft you want.

Don't be supposed if Ford says take it back to the manufacture  :-\