Building a Fifth Wheel RV! Coachmen Fifth Wheel factory Tour! Part 1

[Music] okay so you're looking at the frame being rolled in and being set up for all the wiring this is gonna be a chaparral it is on a 12 inch eye beam frame you can see there's no drop section to it you can see the overhang up here one thing I want to point out about the chaparral is how they design this front nose piece to have the angle built into it this is one of the reasons why you can have an incredibly tight turning angle with the chaparral that you may not get with some other brands if you look how far ahead the hitch is this is essentially where the caps gonna come down and that gives you a tremendous amount of turning especially if you have a short bed truck so that's something you want to consider when you're looking at any brand of fifth-wheel is how is it designed and is that gonna benefit you whenever you're towing it with your specific vehicle now thread correct me if I'm wrong but this is essentially where kind of all the pre wiring all the subfloor wiring takes place correct so you know what we've done is is we brought the frame in and within this station we're going to hang axles install the wiring a lot of wiring that you know is going to go from front and back that will go within the enclosed portion of the floor so prior to the floor being actually set on the unit begins this ability to work within that structure that is all accessible through our bottom panel it's just at this point in time prior to those panels be putting on it's easier for us the wire without that okay [Music] [Music] [Music] so once it completes its journey through this first station it comes through here this is where the holding tanks are put in but you can also see they go step above so the bottom of it is enclosed but they also use a radiant barrier across the bottom floor area and this is going to provide more thermal protection against freezing it's gonna help your furnace feed a little bit better and it's gonna allow it to trap some of that warmer air in the bottom if you go to a colder climate you can see a lot of the wiring that's taking place up through here but this is essentially kind of the next step you can see the suspension that they use here which is the dexstar easy flight all Dexter components dexter axle's this is where the slide-out motor comes into place your wiring all the way up to the front the laminated product where we laminate the floors and laminate the sidewalls where it's a 1/2 solid structure we don't have the ability to run wires through those walls and through those floors so what's gonna happen is the main wire is going to run through the floor through the world and then we have the rear wall and generally so they've now moved the frame onto this little rolling station they have right here which gives them the ability to get it on the main assembly line which is gonna go through the entire stage of being built a lot of hard-working folks here okay so what's happening here they're working on the holding tank areas getting all the plumbing set fire to the floor actually being installed on top of the frame okay so they've now place the floor onto the plane family history agency the Augustan coming through you can also see the aluminum decking here it's gonna be her pass-through storage area or your basement so while the fifth wheel frame and floor it's moving across this side on the opposite side is where you have the cabinetry shop and I apologize it's a factory so it is very loud this is essentially where all the cabinetry is getting set up already introduced as well as your interior wall you can see over here where all the components are getting assembled and put together and then right here in front of me you can actually see the interior wall part you're going ways your hallways the parts that will essentially make up the bulk of the interior of the coach okay so as the body moves along to this next section this is where you're gonna see the interior structure start to get added you can see where some of the furniture the walls countertops all to get installed you can also see their flooring system here which is actually very innovative flooring system so they layer two pieces of wood along with the flooring on top of it on the bottom and this is a laminated floor so to correct this plant have laminated this ability to build a one-piece floor that is a solid as a side wall you can see the aluminum framing there as well a little bit more on the structure here this next station is actually a Brookstone you can see some of the differences again you can see the frame but let's take a look at the pass through and compare it to the chaparral so this is gonna be your shaft where I'll pass through with the straight frame and this is gonna be your Brookstone faster with the drop frame you can see it gives you roughly 7 inches additional height but more importantly it's completely flat you can also see the significantly thicker aluminum sections here that's a 3 inch section right here versus the shaft burrell which is about an inch and a half so much much taller aluminum beam structure here in the brook than on the Saffir elf but you know it's also nice though is that this is actually a lot larger than some manufacturers use on their higher and fifth wheels as well you can even see the framing underneath regardless of whether you get a separate book done you have these huge huge front storage areas I mean without the actual cap being honor this cover here too puts out massive this is this is easily four feet tall a little bit shallower on the chaparral versus a Brookstone but again that's another benefit of having a drop frame and then you can see the radiant barriers that they put here as well and this radiant barrier extends the entire length here they do that on both the chaparral and the Brookstone so something else that's innovative about this specific burke stone floor plan is traditionally you see all your waterworks boards up front in the main basement area on this specific coach it's back here in the back corner so this is really cool because typically you're running these long hoses just to be able to get from your waterworks to all your plumbing connections which tend to be near the back of your RV on this one they position the waterworks board here on the back of the coach so you have access to it really where all your connections tend to be so that is pretty cool so Fred you just explain to me what this young lady does down the line what if you're currently doing currently she's inspecting for code violations if we can't build a unit the code we should be building unit yeah and you know codes are pretty complex I mean there's there's so many different codes for codes you know goes through all of our glasses and everything and she consistently walks unis looks for areas you know that you know could potentially you know a concern for us and takes into account you know units that we've recently their central PD is right over there you know it has any type of deviation you know she's looking for those issues to to make sure that there's no trends and this is the best time to do it while everything's expose you know and yo you can't inspect it after the gotras built you have to see it you know when the walls and no no prior to all this be built absolutely so a fred was just telling me is that they're gas lines and everything are checked even during this process where a lot of manufacturers will only check pressure on their gas lines once it's in PDI at the end of the line they trick there's consistently throughout the line as well because there's always a chance that it could have been pink or something could have happened and they want to make sure that it holds the right amount of pressure even at this stage of the assembly each of those walls will become the outer wall of the slate oh wow so that's cool and that's actually different than some manufacturers yeah manufacturing dependent [Music] the outer walls will see and that actually is something a lot of people may not realize that the slide wall itself uses a cell and not just the side wall so that's very cool so this next station down the line they've attached the sidewalls on both sides you can see kind of how they route everything out of it and if you take a closer look here you can actually see the as Dell material with the fiberglass on top of it where it's laminated to it that is a very tight lamination to it's it's actually hard to tell where the fiberglass stops in the ass cell begins that's that's a very very tight process and I've heard that that's the benefit of a cell is just the fact that it laminates very well to the fiberglass and you can have a lot of consistency with it you know you know it's a different little bit different process than with what a lot of manufactures do it through and everything else it is going to adhere rolling site so we've gone upstairs to take a look at the roof assembly whenever it's time to put the roof on they use this gantry system hoist it up and place it on top let's see if we can get a closer look at this [Music] this is where they actually put the Astra foil and the batted insulation on top of the roof so you can see that they use a residential insulation and then they cover it with the astro foil and this is their chaparral so you can see even on their slightly lower cost unit they still go through the process of putting insulation and ask for foil on it which acts as a radiant barrier on top of the residential level of insulation you can see them putting the decking on top as well that gives it the full walk-on capability so one thing that's pretty impressive and this is the first time I've ever really seen the roofs of an RV in this process of assembly it's just the construction here it's a very structural setup very rigid I've seen some videos where some manufacturers use steel up here but it's that real thin steel and it's real flexible but this is a very rigid assembly and Fred was telling me that this enables them to build a solid one-piece roof that can be lifted up and put directly on to the body of the fifth wheel and not have to go in sections like some manufacturers have - you can see kind of the ducting system how it goes throughout the coast as well to get air where it needs to go [Music] [Music] so directly under the platform we were just on looking at the top of the ceiling of the roof is the ceiling section down here and they make this section the perfect height for you to stand up and work on anything you need to work on such as installing your vents installing speakers this is really cool like I said it's just right here so it's roughly six feet off of the ground and it's a really well lit area as well they have LED lighting all around this section so they can install what they need to install

Channel: Big Truck Big RV

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Id: b5bYn_0xFFs

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2019