AMERICANRASCAL
Active member
Let me begin by saying for the most part we are big fans of Winnebago RVs. We just traded our 2014 Itasca Sunstar for a new 2016 Winnebago Adventurer 38Q. The 38 Q has been our dream coach as it is configured exactly with what we want. The Sunstar was near perfect and we experienced no significant problems with it in the 2 years we owned it. It had just been a bit small for us and we wanted more space, amenities and capacity- this we traded up.
But we have had some serious problems with it the first week we've owned it and its now back in the shop after our first 400 + mile trip. What I offer here is not to complain but to give information about what we experienced that may be useful to others. If this rig is repaired properly we will be very happy and we are so looking forward to enjoying the 38 Q. Some of you may have seen my experience on other sites but I share here just to let folks know about this so they can keep an eye on things in their own rigs.
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.
We were pulling into the dealership/service center when the fridge fell and tipped over from its mounting slot.
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 screws and bracing brackets to secure the refrigerator to the wall at the top of the fridge behind the appliance seem very inadequate 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.
The Power gear slide failed on the way back home on our first trip.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 Powergear slide 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 operators manual out and read the drill on how to manually 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. Four small nuts held it in place.
We 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 its warranty work regardless so we wanted the service folks to observe exactly what was found. We left it alone and drove it 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.
We offer this and hope no one else experiences a refrigerator - or any other major appliance- falling out of its mounted slot, and hope no one had or has a Power gear slide failure on their new rig. But be careful when traveling and stay under a seat belt- you never know when a bracket holding an appliance might fail and send a heavy appliance careening across your rig.
We're being positive about this( but we're a bit shaken by the experience also) and have learned much even though this is our 8th RV in 35 years. We're hoping Winnebago and the Dealer get this all squared away and our rig back to us promptly. I still am a fan of Winnebago and hope to be in the future. But this experience does have us concerned.
But we have had some serious problems with it the first week we've owned it and its now back in the shop after our first 400 + mile trip. What I offer here is not to complain but to give information about what we experienced that may be useful to others. If this rig is repaired properly we will be very happy and we are so looking forward to enjoying the 38 Q. Some of you may have seen my experience on other sites but I share here just to let folks know about this so they can keep an eye on things in their own rigs.
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.
We were pulling into the dealership/service center when the fridge fell and tipped over from its mounting slot.
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 screws and bracing brackets to secure the refrigerator to the wall at the top of the fridge behind the appliance seem very inadequate 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.
The Power gear slide failed on the way back home on our first trip.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 Powergear slide 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 operators manual out and read the drill on how to manually 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. Four small nuts held it in place.
We 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 its warranty work regardless so we wanted the service folks to observe exactly what was found. We left it alone and drove it 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.
We offer this and hope no one else experiences a refrigerator - or any other major appliance- falling out of its mounted slot, and hope no one had or has a Power gear slide failure on their new rig. But be careful when traveling and stay under a seat belt- you never know when a bracket holding an appliance might fail and send a heavy appliance careening across your rig.
We're being positive about this( but we're a bit shaken by the experience also) and have learned much even though this is our 8th RV in 35 years. We're hoping Winnebago and the Dealer get this all squared away and our rig back to us promptly. I still am a fan of Winnebago and hope to be in the future. But this experience does have us concerned.
