Back in December, I posted a thread regarding delamination on the entry side of my 5er, and a crack that was developing under the bedroom slide. Thanks to traildog, he gave me the email address of Terry at Pilgrim Intl.,I sent them pictures, and on Jan 10th a transport company was picking up my 4 year old 5er, to take back to Indiana.
After a series of snafus, my trailer allegedly has brand new walls on it and should be shipped back to me any day now. I'm anxiously awaiting the return of my unit the weather is turning, and it's very odd not to have an RV in my driveway. As a matter of fact, we just got back from a 2 wk vacation to Fla.,was hoping to take my 5er, but it wasn't ready. We really haven't travelled hotel to hotel room like that in many, many years, all costs aside, it's just not the same.
Anyway, I'm waiting on a final inspection to be done and hopefully it will be back in my driveway next week.
Another Open Road owner here. One of the more positive things Pilgrim did in designing the Open Roads was to make the walls removable and exchangeable. As you have experienced, those of us who have early models have had to deal with design problems, which hopefully have been corrected in the newer models.
Over the past couple of years, many have experienced severe wall damage from blowouts with KENDA-Loadstar tires. Any trailer built after October 2003, through last year, may have tires that were not rated high enough for the application. Check your tires and make sure you have the corect ones on your trailer. Terry Hayes may be able to help you with this, as I know he has had several trailers in for repairs! It would be a shame for you to have been without your trailer this long, gone through the hassel of extensive repairs, and then maybe have a blowout causing another rebuild situatioon.
Good luck. By the way, what part of NY state do you live in. We may be close to each other!
Cool, glad to hear the good news. I am sure you'll be very happy to have your Open Road back in your driveway where it belongs. Like previously mentioned, keep us posted.
I live on eastern Long Island,and have already gone through the whole blowout scenario.
I have the 3996 5er and I pulled it from my local dealer out to the redwoods on the west coast on the maiden voyage, 10k miles without a problem. The next big trip was to the Fla. Keys in the spring of '05, 3k miles, 2 blowouts. My rig was delivered with G rated chinese tires, the tire supplier to OR paid to repair the damage, but would not reimburse me for new tires. It cost me about a grand to re-shoe it with Goodyears. I have been out to Utah and back to Fla a couple of times since with no problems. It's interesting that they're putting triple axles on all these big rigs now.
I will let you all know how this adventure ends!!!
After reading nothing but bad reports on the Kenda Loadstar tires I contacted Sunnybrook via an email address I was given by a S/B operator.
I got a quick response from the person who told me how good the tire is and DOT approved and all that.
But what was most disturbing was that the writer was more concerned about how I obtained his private email address and he asked me to delete it from my records.
My S/B 33ckts has been parked for a year in a campground and I intend to take it on the road in Sept. and to FLA next winter.
Now I have to worry about the tires.
I don't imagine that there are too many authorized Kenda Loadstar dealers along the road should I have a problem.
That sounds like the same response we got from Sunnybrook when we did a factory tour. When I called to give them some feed back on the tour the response was that's the way we do our tours and if you don't like it buy some other brand, so we did.
We too had our sides replaced because of delamination (in the manufacturing process). Forest River hired contract drivers to pull our 5er to Indiana and back, so we had no cost involved. It was out of warranty, but they covered it anyway. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a new roof and all new doors when we got it back. We still had the orginal back wall and front cap, but there was nothing wrong with them. Our roof had been stained with red dirt from a nearby gravel pit, and our entry door lock had always been screwy and hard to lock and unlock. One of our basement compartments had originally been cut a bit too big for the door and that was resolved with new sides. It made the whole rig look brand new! We had removed everything from it before it made the trip back to IN and this weekend we started packing it up for the first trip, which is a ways out since there is still too much snow on the mountain near us. It was fun to start over packing it up! Now if the snow would just get to melting!!
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