Crappy quality control.. The new Shasta's

So I am going to beat this dead horse a little more. Last night I spent $20 for my wife and I to go the Denver RV Show, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with airstreams, Rpods, Retros, and yes the new Shasta. What I found was pretty much the first 3 put out a nice product, sure you could see filler where someone installed the thermostat too low and had to be moved on a RPod, but for the most part the fit and finish and quality of the material was decent. Then I got to the Shasta and what I saw appalled me, not only was it so badly done, people were going nuts over it. What I saw is something new, we haven't discussed it yet, so keep in mind this was at a RV show, the asking price was $18K+!  On the plus side I was able to talk someone out of buying one these and to find and restore a old one instead...my good deed for the day.

Nice Metal work


Gap much?


This is right below the wing on the curb side, so poorly done there is a crack in the roof.


Front Curb Side


More nice metal work


Curb side wheel well trim...yes falling off


Look close you can see a staple, curb side by front window


Hard to see but they used Silicone on the seams


Look how bad the Eyebrows are.


Nice Q/C...Rippled tape


Look under the window for ripples, and look at the window itself, they used foam tape as a seal between all the windows and the skin, that's never going to leak!


This one you have to look, but there is about 1/2" difference between the top and bottom of the seat, apparently nobody knows how to use a square anymore.


I also saw they used OSB in a lot of places, and one last thing, they had the opportunity to fix one of the biggest design flaws Shasta had, IMHO...the short tongue, they didn't.

I wonder how proud they must be of their product to allow a trailer looking this bad, to be displayed at a public RV Show?

It's an inspiration to every home builder to aspire to high quality build standards. It's actually not any harder to "DO IT CORRECTLY".

They should have watched my VIDEOS first. 

I have a viewer in Texas who hired an RV Service Company to put her metal on and when they got to the roof they were clueless. She even told them to WATCH THE FREAKING VIDEOS and they didn't want to. So finally she talked them into watching the videos of the roof installation but I don't think they did because they completely screwed it up. It's buckled and uneaven in the front and rear and she hates it. Besides putting the roof on crooked it's SO crooked that it doesn't fold over in some places. They weren't even able to trim the metal properly. Now she says she is going to have to order a second roof and they will not cover any of the bad workmanship or the materials. I told her to DO IT YOURSELF.... She can easily do a much better job than these so called specialists. I have many female viewers who have accomplished this task and had very little or no problems at all....

Im putting out a second roof and J Rail video in a few weeks so I told her to wait and watch that one also... The people at Shasta/Coachmen who put out these crappy Airflyte replicas should all be slapped and then handcuffed to a computer while they watch my videos over and over for 24 hours.

The good part about this is that we won't have to be waiting around for 40+ years to find something to restore...my best guess is about 6....These things look like they were ALL built on Friday afternoon at 2:30.

The scary part is that if you put this side-by-side with a new model at any of the shows, the new ones all will have similar problems, that are mostly discernible only to the connoisseur.   The rookie will be so star-struck by the electric fireplace and the garbage disposal in the modern ones that they will miss these flaws.  By modern standards, these are "good enough"....

Schweet, I hope you will post some of this critique over to some of the facebook pages that are filled with the women that are goading their husbands into ponying up the cake for these just because from a distance they are "cute" and "loveable"....   I hope they know what they are doing too, so they recognize what parts are also "rebuildable"....

I would say it's nice... but it is also "20-20" nice. Looks damned good from 20 feet away going 20 miles per hour....


I have noticed all this in the FB pages too.  It is not just the TCT, but the various Shasta pages too.  People are much more looking for confirmation that they are using the correct tonnage of silicone and rubber coating than that they are doing anything right.  I just shut up about most of it any more...

And here is the best photo of it....



The Pin should make up for the lack of sealing properties of the windows and the cracks in the sheet metal....