What timing! Over the past few weeks I've noticed that the body shop that SMBw insisted was very professional seems to have continued my horrible nightmare!!
I've been waiting patiently for the paint on that side of the van to cure fully (can be 8 months) to put my wrap on. About the past two months I've noticed around the rear window on that side, that the paint is simply peeling away and flaking off around the window. I'm under the impression that the window wasn't removed when they re-shot the side of the van and instead they just taped around it. Nice job. I told Alan the main reason I didn't want his shop doing the repair was because I didn't have faith that they would do as good a job as what I wanted. In fact, all I didn't want anyone to mess with the paint at ALL, I just wanted to be reimbursed to cover the non- perfect van body that was delivered to me new!
Additionally, our AC cut out AGAIN this weekend. This is the 4th time we've apparently lost all refrigerant, and my van has just had it's FIRST BIRTHDAY. I have had to go to Fresno, take a day off of work each time, spend my own money on fuel, and hassle with the drive 6 times now in one year.
That's a full week of missed work, over $1300 in fuel, considerable affect to my blood pressure, and damage to my faith in that SMB is anything close to a responsible, caring company.
To add the cherry on top of everything, recently I started having electrical gremlins.
First a 12v outlet kept blowing fuses.
Then I started going through fuses like were vitamins.
Then my CB died mysteriously.
The XM radio stopped working unless it's a cloudless day and required a replacement antenna.
Then the backup camera dies.
Then the THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR SATTELLITE DISH BLOWS OUT,
and now we're getting horrible shocks from the van. A closer look indicates some sort of rolling grounding issue between the xantrex inverter and the 12v lines of the van. All of the electrical component failures, on closer investigation, have blown capacitors on the controller boards, indicative of bad power.
(it's so freaking ironic that all of this stuff, I had to have special ordered, and since they had to be ordered before the van was finished, their 1 year warranty from the manufacturer's all expired mere months before things started blowing up.)
So. That's why I've been quiet lately. If I didn't love the potential of this vehicle (I do have 16k miles on it in this one year) I would have sold it long ago. Maybe if I thought I could even break even I would sell it and get on with building a van myself. Which I should have done. I would have been about a billion times better off paying some freaking meth-hed cheap-ass cabinet maker to build a freaking conversion than the rolling nightmare I've ended up with. At least then I wouldn't be surprised by the quality I got!
Sigh.
Ok, I didn't mean to get on a roll here, but I've been biting my tongue for far too long. I think it's no secret that there are a lot of SMB customers who feel that we've been treated poorly for the amount of money invested (thrown away) to our vehicle.
Having just come back from another camping trip where I finally compared notes with another user here, I did send an email to Peter and Alan with corresponding voice mails letting them know about the AC and paint. As for the electronics, I know the problem is beyond their capability and I'll just have to figure it all out myself.
Paint:
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Bearsmobile
Linear Mode
