Inspecting Our Grand Design RV Quality!

[Music] how's it going i'm jared gillis welcome to another all about rvs today i want to take you on a little inspection of our rv we have the grand design 28 bh and i've been doing a lot of installs and a lot of things to the rv over the past few months everything from being up on the roof installing things down underneath the rv opening up the different panels and so i just wanted to share with you some of the things that i see in the rv sometimes i'm surprised by the the quality or the things that they put into the rv and other times i see room for improvement so this isn't going to be an exhaustive look at the rv from top to bottom in every single little detail but these are going to be the things that stand out to me as i've been working on the rv and the things that i have noticed that have stood out to me so this is not sponsored in any way by grand design we bought this rv and so these are just the things that i have observed and so sometimes i'm looking at things that i'm surprised they put that on the rv for instance like the airflow system on the ac unit i didn't realize this was going to come on the rv and when i was opening up the cover to have a peak inside i realized that they already installed it in the rv it's a product you can usually buy after market you can install it inside the ac and it just helps give you a much better airflow system for the ac unit to give you more airflow out of your ductwork that's in the ceiling it helps your ac work more efficiently you have less turbulence in there so for one that's a great addition to be able to see that installed from factory especially since we only have one ac unit on this it's prepped for two and i can say from round one going down into southern florida around 85 degree days uh this had no problem keeping up with that with the one ac in the rv airflow system so i think that's a great addition that they started doing from the factory at grand design now if we take a look at the shower door in the rv it's a little bit different story uh there it's not a bad product i wouldn't say it was a bad shower door but i didn't like the way that it was installed we had issues with it it was constantly leaking it needed to be sealed up properly and that had to do more with the install if you let the water hit it from inside the shower which is obviously going to happen when you're taking a shower it would run down that glass it would pop over the track and then it would leak onto the floor this is something that they should have sealed up at the factory when they installed it we actually ended up getting rid of the shower doors and we went with a curtain just to save on a little bit of weight and the use of it we preferred the curtains but also inside the shower as far as a material i really wish that they would have used different screws we've been replacing the screws in there for stainless steel screws they put screws in there that rust so that's something that you shouldn't put in a shower if you know there's going to be water contact it's going to rust it's going to run down the walls so we preemptively swapped out all that hardware inside the shower there wasn't a ton of it but the screws that were in there we swapped them out with stainless steel and we sealed behind it when we put those screws in so that way we don't have any water getting back in behind there and those screws are not going to rust so it's not exactly like i'm typing up an inspection report but if we want to chalk one up for great job on the rv airflow good install on that the shower needs a little bit more attention [Music] to start off with i'm glad that they changed the brand of the tires that they're running now this is the goodyear endurance we were probably going gonna swap them out if they had been a different brand but uh glad to see that they made the switch uh i like the the load range that they put on here the last one we went a load range up uh but for this and this rv i think it's a good load range load range e and it has a good speed rating so i don't feel like i'm always bumping up against that as we're going down the highway not that we travel exceptionally fast but if i want to go 65 while we're driving i don't feel like we're at the top of the speed rating of this tire i also like what i'm seeing in the suspension and the components that they're using here for this equalizer so for this type of a system i think this is an excellent setup so we have the cre 3000 which gives us three inches more of travel which gives you a little bit more cushion when you're going down the road it's supposed to make the rv ride a little bit better a lot of people like to upgrade to the system so it's nice that it's coming stock on a unit like this but then also it comes with the wet bolts so that you can lubricate these rather than having to change the inserts on the inside and they give you the much thicker beefier shackles that a lot of people like to upgrade to so having that all in the equalizer suspension system is i think a a great addition to this lineup for the rvs i don't fully know why i crawled under here to tell you that but you can see what i'm talking about [Music] [Applause] now this is an area we can dig in and see a little bit more of the internal components uh so this material underneath usually used to be like a coroplast they would have a coral class under there which is basically a similar material as what you're you're seeing here but this is more of like a individually closed cells inside here uh we now have a radiant barrier on there also which is nice because it used to be the choroplast radiant barrier and then you would try and line those up and make sure it was all right before you screwed it back into place but this is one unit it has the radiant barrier and these closed cells in there which i think would make it more efficient all in one unit so it makes it easier to work on easier to install and i imagine it functions a little bit better because you don't have those things you have to try and line up in there now i'm also seeing what i what i saw when i was installing the inverter behind that wall is just the the wiring and everything there's just not a whole lot of order to it yes everything functions and there's not a problem with it being safe or functioning well there's just a whole lot of extra loose material that's back in there that isn't a hundred percent necessary for a cleaner install you could eliminate a lot of that lose some of the weight lose some of the excess and have it just be a cleaner install so so i'm seeing that on the electrical and the heating things just aren't 100 optimized for running that heat or the wires that could be tidied up in the installation process so that's definitely an install thing that can be tidied up and done in a cleaner way but on the good side we can see that this helps create that envelope in there that can be heated and i can see the tank heaters directly connected to the tanks here all that is fantastic helping it to be more of a four season rv so we can go into those freezing temperatures and this radiant barrier is going to help in the cold and the radiant barrier that they put on the front cap and the ceiling is going to help in the summertime when you're trying to use the ac to be a little more efficient in there [Applause] now this is the back side of the nautilus panel so this is where we make all of our connections for water if we're connecting the city water or using the pump or filling the tanks this is a very functional use for that but the thing that i would really like to to see change and as i've been going through it are these pex clamps on this flexible tubing these pex clamps are meant to be for pex pipe and they work fantastic for that but on this flexible tubing it works in the beginning but there's a chance that it can work its way loose and you can start to get a leak back in here it's not the proper intended purpose to use these clamps on this tubing so it'd be better if they used a lot less of this flexible tubing they use it in a lot of areas where it's going to the point of use so it's going to the fixtures it's easier because they can make that connection all in one flexible tubing even though pex is flexible too this is much more flexible so they can get to that point without having to have more connections like we have an elbow here in this pex this is something that we swapped out when we were doing the water heater we swapped out this flexible tubing four pecs and this is a brass fitting in here so you can get away with less fittings less crimps if you use the the flexible hose but i would prefer to see more pecs because pex is amazingly strong and use less of this tubing i would only use this tubing when you're connecting to the pump to eliminate some of that vibration and get rid of some of that noise everywhere else i would use pecks because you can bend pecs you can put in these fittings and that's how you would do a normal house so that would give a lot more reliability to not having leaks behind this panel so in the meantime um i have this water sensor that i'm placing back here so if there is a leak and we get some moisture back in here that we may not notice immediately it's a slow drip it'll give us an audible alert so that we know that we need to get in here and fix something before that water gets behind and causes some damage delaminates or just whatever it does to damage the rv we would like to stop that in the beginning the other thing you can do is you can put a hose clamp on these fittings so that you can tighten those down that's the proper clamp to use there you can tighten it down again if you needed to but my plan is to go through and eliminate as much of this flexible tubing as i can and i'm going to be installing pecs so i actually have a little bit of pecs on hand in case i get a leak and i have the crimp tool and the crimp rings everything that i need to do to be able to make a repair in here if we do have a leak so this is something that i would like to see change because those clamps aren't meant for that tubing now those are probably the biggest things that i would love to see changed in the rv but there's a lot of things that impress us about the rv so there's some smart features that i didn't actually expect there's a screen down in that bay that gives us a bluetooth control of the rv some for from our phone we can change the lighting we can raise and lower the landing gear we could put the slides in and out so i really wasn't expecting that when we purchased the rv now i've also been pleased with the workmanship on the inside and the outside of the rv with it being built in a time when they were just trying to get as many rvs out as they can they were just flying off the line there was a backlog people waiting for them people were wondering what is the craftsmanship how is the the install going to be on these rvs and so looking outside looking at those seams it doesn't look like it was rushed they were done well they're sealed well it looks like a good quality job and on the inside you look at the molding and you look at the trim work and everything has been tight not perfect but nothing's been trying to come off the wall like it wasn't nailed on or stapled on well enough and that the joints are looking like they were mitered well or if we have scribe molding that goes along the side of a wall we don't have large gaps or anything like that so it's been done well on the inside it feels solid and that has something to do with the hardware that they put on the inside of the rv so the the cabinets the doors they are a real wood i think they're a beach wood possibly uh but they're a real wood and then the boxes are not a solid wood which is pretty typical in this level of an rv but the hardware that we have on there we have the great hinges for the doors we have we have ball bearing slides for the drawers no plastic involved there so they should last a long time and they feel solid i really could go on and on but in a nutshell i would say there's room for improvement but we're very happy with the rv we would definitely do it again but we'll continue to update you as we have things i'm sure we're going to have to fix on the rv as they break as we go through warranty we'll definitely share with you what that process was like for us we just want to be open and transparent and share that with you so that was a little bit more in-depth looking at the rv looking behind some of those panels that you don't always get to do when you're doing a walkthrough or just checking out an rv so i hope this was helpful for you guys so that's going to do it for today so if you like this video give it a thumbs up if you want to see more videos about rving hit that subscribe button and if we don't see you on the road hopefully we will see you next video

Channel: All About RV's

Views: 68,555

Keywords: RV, RVing, RV life, RVers, Jared Gillis, Less house more living, How To RV, DIY RV, Learn to RV, Motorhome, Class A, 5th wheel, RV Electrical, RV Repair, RV America, All About RVs, Learn To RV, RV Knowledge, RV Life, AllAboutRVs, Allaboutrv’s, Grand Design, Reflection, Grand Design RV, RV Inspection, RV Quality, Quality RV

Id: etu4qQ-BROU

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021