Grand Design Factory Tour || Solitude Line || RV Living

hey guys I'm ray and I'm Jason and we are doing something very exciting today we are at the headquarters of grand design RV and we are going to take you along on the factory tour for their solitude line but safety first yes so we're all geared up we're ready to go we have our guide in there so I guess there's nothing to it but to do it so let's get started on this tour [Music] all right so we're here with Justin he's gonna go over the process with us today and if you have any question yeah I can talk a little bit about these two units that are out here right now and kind of what happens at the beginning and then we'll get into the end we can see a little bit more of the production process down there so what's gonna happen here at stages one and two which are right inside these doors if the frame is going to come in with just the frame so none of the components none of these axles or wheels that are on the unit right now it's gonna come in like that and we're gonna flip the whole entire frame upside down when it's upside down we'll mount your axles well mount your wheels a lot of the underbelly material and some of that first form of insulation after we do that will flip the unit back right side over we'll put in all of your tanks a lot of the wiring some of the hydraulic tubing as well and then we'll start to put on your leveling jack system so you can see on this unit off to my left here we've got our six point hydraulic leveling jack system on there some of the hydraulic tubing is actually finished up these are kind of in the first stage of the production process right now underneath this black covering we've got a lot of our tanks in there right now as well [Music] are constructed yeah for sure so kind of what's off to my left right here this is our big press for where we're building the roof so we've got all of our measurements here every day or every unit has a different roof that's gonna be honest so they're made custom to each floor plan so it's actually upside down right now if you look in kind of the end section here you can see all those rafters that are on the Radian shape upside down through here we put the inside luan wall this is what's gonna be on the inside of your RV so it's upside down right now yeah yep exactly Wow and then off to my right right here you can see the roof is actually back and right side over right now you can see all the radius trust no matter there you can see the ductwork that's that silver part up in the middle there as well we do all of our rope Center wood formation so whether you're buying and imagine whether you're buying a solitude or reflection they're all built exactly the same you get the same insulation values in every single grain design unit right now as far as the roof goes and do you know the Creed of installation will use a fiberglass batten installation and then while also use a turbo foil insulation the fiberglass pipe insulation goes to sleep goes between every single truss up here and then the thermofoil will go across higher up of the unit so you get an R for T insulation value in every single unit I guess I guess someone over there like that on top of the RV yep so this item that were or this being that we're in the ceiling here will lift this roof up it'll get brought down on to the floor and go right on top of a unit that's on the floor down there I'll also tell you guys just real quick about our Duff system in our our AC stuff to the top here if you have two ACS they're ducted into the same exact system so if you see a lot better air flow that way it's more of an open oval shape rather than an S shape for the ductwork so there's no end point where the airs going to stop and spin it's on an open system you get a lot better airflow that way and your ACS are gonna work about half as far as that way [Music] so this would board that's sitting in front of us kind of on this forklift here this is what's going to go on top of the wood trusses that we saw over there so we'll have a little bit of insulation between those wood trusses and then we'll go through this 3/8 inch marine grade wood board across the whole top of the unit so this is how you get a lot of the walkability of your roof if you need to go up there and do any maintenance if you need to recall anything fully walkable every unit we may come to the ladder off the back as well so this is where you get a lot of the walkability to the roof then if you guys look over here in these big barrels this is the fiberglass batten insulation that's going to go in between every single truss up there we'll end up putting another layer of insulation on top of this but this is what goes in between the wood trusses and the wood board on the top of the unit so we talked about upstairs the roof construction the full wood construction radius trusses so this is the main insulation on the roof as well as the front cap so we take the insulation we start at the back wall on the roof of the unit we go all the way to the front right up here above the cap and then we go all the way down to the bottom would be insulation so the front cap part of the unit is actually insulated the same exact way that the roof is insulated so you guys can see right here we've got our fiberglass batten insulation and then we're gonna put this thermo foil on top of this as well so this is mimicked on the roof of the unit as well as the front cap [Music] all right so we wanted to highlight this because I thought this was really cool we did the factory tour the other day and all of the rigs are spread out but now because they're remodeling you can see the different stages of each rig because they had to move them closer together you can see down there we've got some of the units of the sidewalls on them right here this is kind of the beginning stages after we came through with the framing and a lot of the insulation we've gone through in put your your sub flooring on the unit right here and then the next stage over is starting to frame out the bathroom up towards the front and then you can see a little bit later down there we're actually putting the side walls in putting a lot of the ductwork for your furnace together the kitchen island is in there as well so it's just progressing a little bit more as we're getting further down the production line here alright so this is kind of a cool thing to see in the production line you can't see when you get the unit so it's kind of cool to see right here's a big section that I'm holding on to at the top here this is gonna be our main subflooring so all the aluminum framing another layer of insulation inside of here and then the wood board sheet on the top here which is a 5/8 inch wood board down in the bottom here you can see we've got that astral foil insulation we've got the fiberglass insulation as well so when we have this insulation on the bottom and insulation on the top your tanks are inside of here and we're gonna sandwich all of that between two layers of insulation so you've got your tanks a lot of your hydraulic tubing wiring a lot of that stuff is in kind of this basement area is what I like to call it so we're sandwich egg all that between there then on the back here you can also see we've got a two inch receiver hitch off the back as some about two weeks ago every Solitude is going to come with a receiver hitch off the back of the unit and it's rated for towing now as well so you can see we've got a four flat for wiring so lighting off the back as well this is rated for 300 pounds of hitch weight capacity and 3,000 pounds of towing capacity off the rear of the unit [Music] this is our subflooring for our unit right here we've got all of our aluminum framing this goes the whole way through the main flooring of the unit you've got cross members the whole way through here getting your flooring a nice sturdy feel to it and then what we're doing all the way around the perimeter of this sub flooring here is we're gonna stuff wood inside of all of the empty aluminum tubes so instead of drilling into an empty aluminum to where that screws just gonna pull right out of we've got wood in there to hold on to that screw as well it's a little bit higher screw retention screwing into aluminum and wood rather than just aluminum so that goes the whole way through here this is all sitting on top of our steel frame so you've got steel below you then aluminum on top of that with a 5/8 inch wood board sheet on top of that so there's a ton of structure a lot of insulation in there it's a very very beefy floor so this is something kind of unique to grand design something that is a huge structural integrity part of all of our sidewalls if you look inside this window opening on the back of this solitude right here you can see the whole entire window opening is routed out in aluminum so when I say routed around every single opening we have aluminum that's holding in that big heavy dual pane possibly our frameless window in the back and that's the same case on the sidewalls in all of your slide boxes as well every single opening is routed out in aluminum when you're going down the road and hitting all those big piles in the road these windows are going to want to move but since we've got them put in a big aluminum housing they're not going to move and create all those water gaps like you would if it was just held in with a white foam block insulation I just talked about how this back wall right here it's got a lot of structure to it this back wall of the unit it's actually laminated and gets constructed the same way that our side wall is constructed so it's got the same aluminum framing the same insulation factor in this back wall right here as we do in the side wall as well I'm a big plus with this is when you're going down the road after a long road trip if you ever look at the back of your car that's the dirtiest part of the car so the same thing with the RV here since we've got all that dirt kicking up on the back of the unit we want this wall to be just as strong a lot of structure in the back of the of the wall here and then the same thing right here you'll see we've got a laminated wall all the way down the side wall our slide boxes our slide box and walls are also laminated the same exact way that we do our sidewalls in our back wall [Music] right so this is another big trademark construction factor of all the grand design units we are going to laminate all of our slide boxes all the way around them so even this end wall right here for the slide box this is a laminated aluminum framed wall right here insulated as well and then if I bring the box around this outside wall right here of the slide room this actually is laminated constructed the same exact way that your sidewall of your unit is constructed will actually build this pre-existing into the original sidewall will cut it right out of there will bring it down here will build the side wall or the slide box and then will put it back in that original wall that it came from so it has a nice seamless fit all the way around because this originally came out of the wall that is going to go back into if that makes sense but aluminum framed insulated laminated construction all the way around our slide boxes every side wall every back wall of our unit so behind me we kind of followed the whole production process starting here are starting down at the beginning and then we've gone all the way down the lateral line all the way to the end here so this whole side of the building is all production so the unit's getting built over here a lot of the major production is getting done once it reaches this step right here we've come off the rollers come right where we're standing and it'll go right behind us here on this side of the building when we're separating from production to inspection on this side so this whole side of the building is all PDI our pre-delivery inspection so every single unit that comes off of this production line will go through the PDI process a lot of manufacturers will do maybe 10 or 25% of what they make the rest of them they'll just get to this point and just ship them but we're taking every single unit to the the PDI process which is right behind us here all right so we get a lot of questions about how does the paint process work what does the unit look like where does it go if you guys look off to our left here this unit has a gray cap on the front and then this one behind me here actually looks a little little different it doesn't have any decals or anything on it so both of these units right here they've got a clear face they're gonna go over to our paint facilities but before they go over there they go through the same PDI process they go through the same production process and then they'll go over to our paint facility once they go over to paint facility they'll come back here again and then after they're painted they'll go through a whole nother inspection process so they look like this before going over there they'll get painted and then come back here again all right so I wanted to take some time and ask a little bit more about PDI this is something our viewers asked us about it is a big concern people want to make sure that their radios obviously working so you elaborate on it yeah so behind us here kind of in this all production line like I was saying this is our PDI department so the unit goes through 280 plus points of inspection whether it's the inside of the unit checking over the cabinetry making sure doesn't have any Nick's or Nick's or scratches in it we'll also go over the whole entire outside of the unit will go over your plumbing electrical components everything on the unit gets covered I like to tell people it's like we're taking the unit on its own little trip before you guys get it making sure all the components work everything's set so it's about 280 points of inspection every one of these points will be something different that they're looking at on the unit yeah so if they find something wrong and a lot of these units you'll see red tape in them the red tape is something's wrong with it they'll go through fix it if it's a cabinetry door that has a knickers the cabinetry door if we find leaks and [Music] what would like compel someone obviously we're in the same warehouse if these are their buddies what they not want to maybe mark an error yeah so there's a lot of concerns that maybe the production staff is the ones that are inspecting the product you can see a lot of issues with that so our PDI process is actually run by our customer service department so you don't have someone who's best friends with someone in the production line that's like I will just let this one go it's run by the customer service department they don't care if they find something in that and it has to wait a little bit longer they report to our customer service department they don't report to the production staff so I like to think of this is all customer service this is production over here awesome in customer service is gonna be the people that get the calls if there is something wrong so they're more inclined to make sure that they get everything right out the door yeah customer services are our service department pretty much yeah [Music] all right so we asked Justin to find us an example of something that didn't meet one of their 280 point checks so he found a unit for us and it might look familiar because it's a 375 so let's go all right so what did we find so as we're walking through here you guys will see a lot of red tape over some of the interiors stuff there's one on the wall there one of the table here everything that's taped off in red is something that needs to get checked before it goes out of here so it looks like right now they're just doing the internal inspection of the unit just a lot of cosmetic things so you can see right here there's just a teeny tiny scratch that's something that they'll go through and fix before we we shipped the product a lot of stuff they tape off I can't even see with my own eyes like what are they looking at but they're so trained to look at that stuff and inspect the product that even the smallest stuff a lot of times they'll catch we are still human so every now and then we miss some stuff but this is our time type making sure the unit is a little bit more completed maybe a different manufacturer wouldn't even catch this or catch some of the issues so we're trying to go a little bit further and make sure we're catching a lot of that stuff yeah I can't even find what this is yeah yeah I mean look at that that's nothing I feel like we have more scratches on the first day then you have that repo source over all right so this red tape was for these well not too tiny obviously you'd want them fixed but it looks like a little bit of black smudge so they're obviously coming back to fix this so when we came in here I thought that we were gonna be looking at defects that were like huge issues but this is just you know minor cosmetic things so I think that just shows the attention to detail is awesome and I mean when we got our rig we didn't see anything like this so they obviously come through and fix this stuff which is awesome yeah one on the wall behind you it's a tiny little scratch which you know once you have a dog they'll be doing this on their own yeah so that is crazy here's like a tiny itty bitty little nick so they're really thorough obviously yeah yeah this is just just one of the stages of the inspection process they'll go through and do a ton of other stuff outside the unit this is the stuff that when you look at that scratch for eight weeks in your unit that's really gonna be annoying so we want to make sure we're going through and catching that for you guys yeah so then they do this same thorough exam on the outside and then I think I saw in changing planes lock their video they test the water and the air and everything is flowing properly - right yeah you'll see as we're walking through here there's a lot of water on the ground underneath the unit so they're actually running water through all the tanks all the plumbing just making sure it's it's completed the right way okay cool yeah so we talked to a little bit at the beginning about how the solitude is built on what's called a draw frame chassis so the rear of the unit the i-beam that the unit sits on is a little bit higher and then it's disconnected in the front dropped down a little bit further it's dropped down about ten more engines you guys really get to see that up here in the pasture storage of the unit so instead of the frame being a little bit higher in the past year storage is gonna end at about right here it's dropped down so much further you get a lot more storage you can see inside here there's no obstruction in the pasture too so you can have stuff go the full length across the unit here there's no plumbing or pipe work coming down through the front here then also I know people are gonna comment about this this is because of the unit's gonna go full body paint so the magnetic door caches are not on here yet just cuz they'll paint and then put those on so I'd put that comment in there yeah yeah and we can attest to this storage because you've seen us literally crawling in a in our 375 days out we love it alright so we'll work through the whole PDI process behind me here it goes all the way down to the other end of the building once we get down to this last stage right here these big blue rectangles that are on the ground right here these are actually scales for the unit so we'll slide this unit right on top of these we'll get a weight UVW for every unit that comes down the production line here then we will send them right out of this front door to yourself it's going through the whole production process they've gone through all of PD I will come to the scales here and that's the last of the production process here in the plan thanks for coming along what kind of there's a quick overview we didn't touch on on everything but kind of cool to see some of the trademark stuff of what grain design is doing especially this this PDI process behind us so that was kind of kind of cool for you guys come along yeah well thank you so much for showing us especially with the changes that are happening on the production floor we really appreciate it I hope that this super video gave you a better understanding if you have a grand design on how your solitude is built or if you're looking to a grand design that I hope that this helped you make your decision as well with the quality that they have hold their standards too and if you are in Indiana and you want to do a factory tour yourself you are definitely able to schedule those so go to their website and look that up that's all we have for you don't forget to give this video a big thumbs up and subscribe join our getaway gang so this is gonna be what I would call our our actual economy Starla yeah well every single opening is rounded out in aluminum so when you're going down the bump or that was a really bad one no that's right alright go to their website and look that up [Music] all right so that's all we have for you today don't forget like an outtake section of the all of the [Music] [Music] yeah I have to put that in the out day [Music] you

Channel: Getaway Couple

Views: 86,663

Keywords: grand design factory tour, grand design factory tour video, grand design factory, grand design factory indiana, grand design solitude, grand design solitude factory tour, solitude 375, solitude 380fl, grand design fifth wheel, grand design rv, getaway couple, rv living, best rv youtube channels, rv youtube channels, rv youtubers, rv newbie, elkhart indiana, middlebury indiana, grand design, rv factory, gdrv4life, grand design rv factory tour, solitude factory tour

Id: gMcm6AUj39A

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 30 2018