Our Turn at Last!

In Red Bay, Alabama...

Finally, the call we’ve been waiting for!  We had just begun to eat breakfast when my cell phone rang. It was the Tiffin service center manager, instructing us to drive Phannie into bay 9 as soon as possible. 

Well, ‘as soon as possible’ is a relative term when it comes to launching a motor home, especially when you have to clean up from cooking, prepare the interior by securing the loose items, move the furniture to make way for retracting the slideouts, retract the satellite dish, disconnect the water, sewer and electrics, etc.  It’s sort of like launching a cruise ship--it can't be done quickly.  Amazingly, however, we found ourselves ready and starting the engine in 20 minutes.  That is some kind of record, I think!

I drove into the express bay and two techs came aboard to talk about the punch list, which had about eight items.  They worked through the list in about three hours, fixing everything we wanted, but oddly, they could not duplicate the leaking black tank.  They filled all tanks with water and found no leak anywhere. I was at a loss to figure this out, and so were they.  We decided to watch it while we were in the campground and then have Tiffin inspect the tanks thoroughly when they are removed in the next few days. 

Phannie and her sister ships in Tiffin Service Center

Removing all the tanks is required to enable the wooden wet bay floor to be removed and replaced with a fiberglass composite version. Tiffin used the wooden floor in its wet bay floors for several years and found they didn’t hold up for this purpose. Bob Tiffin decided to replace them all at no cost to the owners. He did the same thing with the cap rails on some models. For several years, these rails--forming the longitudinal roof edges--were built with a seam that proved to be a source of water leakage during rainstorms. Phannie did not have this problem, thankfully.  I thought this was a pretty impressive gesture on the part of the manufacturer because these recalls had to be costly.

Tech Checks Phannie's Black Tank

Among the items repaired today were the replacement of two windows that had become foggy when the seal failed between the two panes. It was nice to have the nice clear views again all around the coach.

After we were turned loose, we drove to Russellville and had a pulled pork sandwich for dinner at the Speedy Pig Restaurant, then stopped at Wal-Mart. During dinner, Sandy, forgetting that pork was the barbecue meat of record in the South, was expecting a beef sandwich, but thought the pork was pretty good.  Unfortunately, the Speedy Pig really doesn’t qualify for a recommendation.

We will be standing by for another call in the next day or two. We’re beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel!