Camp Scholler isn’t as much of a madhouse this year as it was last year. It also feels as if AirVenture hasn’t attracted as many visitors this year as it did in 2022 or 2023. Then again, those years were pretty special. We were still coming out of the pandemic in 2022 and 2023 marked EAA’s 70th anniversary, a huge deal.
Still, Camp Scholler remains one of the coolest camping experiences ever. The campground is basically a small city where most people are friendly, chaos is the norm, and you see the coolest stuff. I’ve already seen a Tesla Cybertruck towing an old travel trailer, all sorts of awesome motorcycles, and even some homebuilt scooters and such. There isn’t a KOA on this planet that can match Camp Scholler for pure awesome.
It Runs In The Family
In case you didn’t read my last entry, here’s an overview of my family’s camper situation.
My family has been lifelong campers with an affliction for RVs. Sure, I’ll sleep in a tent if I need to, but I do like a small trailer with stand-up room and a bathroom. I’ve done enough roughing it for years that I now just want some basic amenities. I’ve had enough of waking up to water features appearing in my tent. That’s why a small fiberglass trailer like a U-Haul VT16 is so appealing to me.
My parents are different. They don’t just want basic amenities, but to bring a whole house with them. Over the years my parents have owned everything from old Winnebago motorhomes to scrappy travel trailers to the two giants they have today. In 2016, they purchased the trailer I’m sleeping in this week, a 2007 Adirondack 31BH by Thor Industries.
RV manufacturers aren’t that creative and you’ll find that the “31” means the trailer has a 31-foot box. It’s also 35 feet long in total and weighs 6,292 when dry. This trailer also has a 46-gallon fresh tank, a 36-gallon gray tank, and a 34-gallon black tank. Sheryl and I have found that these stores are good for about a week of showers and toilet use. The Adirondack’s water tank isn’t fully clean, so we get drinking water from elsewhere.
The funny part about “dry” is that it means really empty without a drop of water in the tanks and without any propane tanks mounted. This is why it’s important to have a lot of overhead when it comes to tow vehicle capacity. The listed tongue weight is probably wrong as it stands, but is even worse once you start adding basic stuff.
The Adirondack is very much your standard-fare travel trailer. It has lauan plywood walls, a plywood floor, wood framing, a rubberized roof, and fiberglass sheeting for siding. This is very much the kind of trailer that is pumped out of Indiana as fast as physically possible with seemingly little care for quality control. This trailer is the kind I caution against buying unless you’re getting it for hilariously dirt cheap or you at least know what you’re getting into.
The Adirondack showed early signs of distress from the moment my parents brought it home. They saw that the trailer’s fiberglass siding was bubbling — a sign of water ingress — but the dealership said that this was “normal” and that all old trailers do it. Perhaps that was a bit on the nose, but my parents bought it. My family then took it camping for a few years, creating the kinds of memories a hotel stay can’t match.
Over this time, I observed the trailer’s bathroom floor getting softer and the fiberglass bubbles turned into giant waves. My parents continued to ignore this, saying they were told nothing was wrong. Well, my parents eventually had to face the music because the deterioration became so bad that the outside walls of the trailer quite literally split open.
Now, the official fix for water damage that bad would be to tear down the walls and rebuild. However, such a job would total the trailer. Instead, in 2022, my family found a crafty RV repairman who was able to rebuild just sections of the walls and replace the rotted floor without doing a complete teardown. Even the $7,500 price wasn’t too bad. Obviously, the work wasn’t perfect, but that’s easy to live with.
In 2022, my parents also decided to pick up a second travel trailer. They purchased a brand-new 2022 Heartland Mallard M33. I’ve written about this pile of junk before and somehow, this brand-new trailer was in worse condition from the factory than the Adirondack was before the walls split open. I’m talking frame rust right off of the showroom floor, interior walls that are separating, broken safety chains, and just a general lack of attention. That alone is shocking because “attention to detail” is not really a selling point of the big RV makers.
Anyway, what you need to know is that my parents own two massive piles of junk.
Last Year’s Problems
Let’s start with what happened last year.
Upon arrival at the overflow campsites of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Camp Scholler, I found that the gray and black tanks were reading 2/3 full. This was alarming because we hadn’t used the trailer yet. My brother’s family used the camper last so I thought they filled the tanks and left them sitting full over the hot, 100-degree summer we were having.
Many readers pointed out that gauges become inaccurate as your RV ages, something I hadn’t ever paid attention to before. Sure enough, they were right. The tank readings always either read as empty or full throughout the week, but we survived the week without actually filling the tanks. Now that we know the tanks can last about a week, we no longer even check the gauges.
We also had problems with the battery monitor, or so we thought. The only time the battery showed as full was when the generator was running or the trailer was hooked up to the 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. As it turned out, this was because the battery was just super trashed. My parents allowed the battery to die at least a few times in the past and now it couldn’t even survive a full night. Running out of power was a major headache because Sheryl’s health condition requires running water and a toilet. This is non-negotiable and will kill any camping trip if we cannot get access to either.
We also had problems with the trailer’s stabilizer jacks, which are bent enough to jam in the shut position. Finally, the trailer also had problems delivering propane to the stove and freezer.
Things Are Better!
So, we learned a lot of lessons last year and are applying them to camping at AirVenture this year.
Last year, I talked about upgrading the trailer to a lithium battery, solar panels, and possibly bringing a 12-volt air-conditioner. This wasn’t necessary. Replacing the dying RV battery with a new one has totally fixed our overnight power issues. Sure, the battery doesn’t have the same kind of legs as a good lithium battery, but it lasts the night and then some without losing vitality. That’s all I can ask for right now.
As for cooling, coming to AirVenture early enough means we have access to a 24-hour generator spot. Basically everyone’s running a generator in the 24-hour generator section, so it’s not a big deal if we do too. The Champion generator I bought last year remains my rock. The darn thing hasn’t run in a whole year, but like a reliable snowblower, it sprang into life like I ran it yesterday. I highly recommend a Champion if you want reliable power. Just be prepared to live with a noise level rivaling that of a fighter jet.
I’ve also learned how to work around the trailer’s limitations. I’ve found if I turn the gas on before I park the trailer, the propane finds its way to where it needs to go. We haven’t had a single propane issue this year thus far.
I also just give the stabilizer legs a little kick and that dislodges them before lowering. Overall, camping at AirVenture is now even better.
But Things Have Also Gotten Way Worse
What really surprised us was how much Adirondack’s condition had declined since we last saw her.
Sheryl and I were the last people to use the Adirondack last year. We’re also the first people to use it this year. So, we cannot blame my brother for anything this time. We shut down the trailer last year and my parents had it winterized. When the trailer came out of storage this year we were shocked to see that things have gone so far downhill.
Let’s start with the exterior! The trailer’s awning has been slowly disintegrating, but the wear has accelerated over the year it sat in storage. The awning was so dry-rotted that it started tearing away from the trailer’s roof. My mom hated how ugly it looked, so she had the entire awning material cut off from the trailer.
I warned my mom not to do this because the frame of the awning uses the awning to help hold itself against the trailer. Without the awning, you have just a few clips holding the structure on, and in my experience thus far the old clips can’t do the job on their own. So, I’ve employed ratchet straps. My mom isn’t feeling the irony of trading an ugly awning for ugly ratchet straps.
At first, that seemed like the only problem, so we hauled the camper to my parents’ house to begin cleaning and setting it up. Another nightmare presented itself when we opened the door. Rats or mice had taken residence in the trailer and it looks like they were drawn to an open bag of Fritos one of my brother’s kids stashed in one of the trailer’s compartments. So, we had to clean up all of the poop.
But worse was the walls. The ceiling above the forward slide had mold or mildew on it. Here’s the crap halfway through cleaning. The trailer smelled like a towel that’s been wet for a while:
That was the first time we’ve seen this stuff in this trailer since buying it, so that was alarming. But that wasn’t all. There was some brownish-red dried liquid on the floor next to the rear slide. Clearly, this liquid came from somewhere, but its origins weren’t obvious.
Oh, and speaking of that slide, when I hit the rear slide switch there was a huge spark show and no movement. I yanked it out of the wall because it seemed like it was going to start a fire as it let out all of its wiring smoke.
Before I could finish dealing with that, we discovered more black particle-looking stuff in the primary bedroom and huh, the headboard for the bed came down too. All of this came on top of discovering soft patches in the floor.
Keep in mind that this trailer has done nothing but sit for a year. These problems weren’t obviously present last year, especially the horrible-smelling black stuff. But, seriously, what the heck is going on?
I’m not one to just accept that something is broken. I have to figure out why it’s broken. Once we got to Camp Scholler I started my investigation. First, I tackled the slide.
I had a hunch that Thor Industries wasn’t going to use different switches for the slides, so I yanked out the working switch from the front slide and hooked it up to the rear slide. Sure enough, the slide deployed without issue. Deploying the slide also allowed me to research the brown water ingress issue. The front part of the rear slide is suffering from some serious water damage. The wood and boards are all warped, rotted, and falling apart. As for the “brown” part, well it looks like water is traveling from somewhere in the slide and is leaking out of the now rotting carpet on the edge of the slide.
I still wasn’t satisfied, so I went outside. This is where I discovered additional problems. See, the slides have their own self-retracting awnings.
It would appear that the retraction mechanism is no longer working properly on the front slide, so the awning gets caught up in the seals of the slide. This was something I caught entirely by accident. Obviously, no longer having a proper seal is allowing water to get in, which appears to be the source of the nasty stuff above the front slide.
As for the rear slide, conditions are worse. There appears to be some kind of wood under both slides and the wood under the rear slide is totally rotten. Rotten wood “snowed” on my head while I set up the generator.
That’s the bulk of the new stuff. By my best guess, water is finally doing damage in front of the primary bedroom, which is why the cabinets look like this:
And that is possibly why the headboard fell. All of this sounds expensive. My parents will have to hire the RV repair guy once again to pinpoint the source of all of these water leaks before having him seal them up. Then comes the repairs and my, there’s a lot that needs doing.
The rear slide will need an entirely new lower board plus the interior wood, then the soft spots in the floor will also need to go. I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents threw another $7,500 or more to fix these issues.
It may sound like I’m complaining, and I am, but I also want to use this as an example of all of the things that can go wrong with a used camper. These rigs may look nice on the outside, but you never know what they’re hiding underneath.
Despite those issues, we’re still having a ball of a time. Having hard walls, a roof, and a nice bed to sleep in makes camping so much better than a tent and an air mattress. Things have been so nice we even just shut off the generator every night and sleep with confidence. Sure, we lose the air-conditioner and household outlets, but the new battery is a champ and keeps the water flowing and the lights on. Being able to use our own private bathroom and clean ourselves in our private shower is also awesome. This is especially nice in this era where trans people like ourselves are targets of certain people and politicians. It’s just easier when you have your own bathroom.
Also, shenanigans are afoot! Sheryl accidentally locked me out of the trailer. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but my phone was in there and I had no idea how to contact her. As it turns out, these things are super easy to break into when a window is left open:
Don’t try that at home, kids!
Our campsite neighbors are cool people and Camp Scholler remains a special place that’s about as fun as AirVenture itself is. There’s nothing quite like pitching some chairs, firing up a grill, and having a good time while ultralights buzz overhead. I still say that camping in a pile of junk of a camper is better than holing yourself up in a hotel.
If you’re at AirVenture and want to pay me a visit, you’ll find me directly across the street from Alro Steel Oshkosh in Camp Scholler. I’m usually around in the morning and in the evening. Knock on my door and say hi!
My parents started having issues with their (smaller) camper. They reported it to insurance hoping to repair, but it got totaled out. They cut their losses, since buying it back and fixing it was going to be way too expensive. The amount of money you’re going to put into this thing is only going to increase, I think. Get something smaller, simpler, and higher quality if you can.
As a resident of the Adirondacks, I do not approve this camper.
Scrap that trailer. Then buy something smaller that can be checked for quality. It will definitely be tighter accommodations but there won’t be the issues you’re having.
Mercedes, in the past you’ve presented us with many posts about small “overlanding” travel trailers that are exceptionally well-built but cost $50k or more. Scale that level of quality up to a 30+ foot travel trailer with full amenities and the retail price would top $200k. Nobody will pay that for a travel trailer. In order to sell a big travel trailer in a price range that people are willing and able to pay, and you’re going to get a level of quality similar to the homes of the first two of the Three Little Pigs. Math is math.
It’s not quite that dire. Something like a Grand Design is going to be several notches up in quality and under $100K, though admittedly the basic construction and appliances are about the same. A Bigfoot or Airstream will avoid the “falls apart when it inevitably leaks” issue, and the Bigfoot at least is easily under $100K and only moderately smaller (25′ box with no slides).
That’s a real shame to have so many problems with such a new trailer. The water leaks seem to be pretty severe and the most concerning. Probably need to have some go over all protrusions to check for tears and re-seal everything. I avoided slide-outs just for the reasons seen here – they are a problem waiting to happen.
I had some water issues over this past winter with my little ’03 class A but it didn’t damage the interior, luckily. I will probably have to cut the roof membrane and repair the wood this fall. And get a decent cover to keep the few feet of snow from causing trouble.
RVs are such a pain to maintain. Between the questionable build quality, poorly made parts, and poor maintenance it can a real challenge to keep up with them. Essentially it has to be another hobby to keep them going. For the motorhomes, at least there are real manufacturers involved (Ford, GM, Cummins, etc.) in the chassis so there’s at least a chance they stay drivable.
I have just one word for you: Airstream. New, used, vintage…
Yeah it seems airstreams require a premium and hold their value for a reason. Seems most other RVs are just not built to last.
Are any of them good for more than a few years? They don’t seem to come as big, but are the all-fiberglass Escape/Casita/Scamp ones better?
Yes, the fiberglass ones are substantially more durable and weathertight and smaller independent manufacturers tend to have higher fit and finish quality in general.
Much better, especially in terms of longevity and depreciation. The appliances are largely the same and can still suck, but they leak a lot less and don’t fall apart when leaks do happen. They tend to last at least a decade or two, but there’s some on the road that were built in the 90s or even the 70s. I do think the build quality and QA is worse than I’d hope for the money, but it’s head and shoulders above the rest of the industry for sure.
Was it built in Elkhart, IN? If Yes, Walk Away.
Came here to say the same. I’d love to be proved wrong, but from what I’ve seen it seems like the culture of the Elkhart RV manufacturing sector is “slap it together and get it out the door”.
I used to live near a Fleetwood manufacturing facility. It was all about production numbers on the assembly line. My neighbor who worked there used speed (amphetamines) to keep up, and told me that nearly all of his co-workers did as well. He advised me to never buy a Fleetwood RV…
And I would never want to work at a place that practically requires you to become a drug addict to work there.
While not in the market, where an RV is built is a BIG factor if I do, and Elkhart IN is just the blac-khole where quality goes to die.
Thanks for the incite!
Not related to your camper Mercedes but related to the show — our local floatplane airline, Harbour Air, has their hybrid seaplane there. You should check it out. I live on Vancouver Island so we are big fans of seaplanes.
Nice to see Harbour spelled the correct Canadian way.
It would be foolish to sink ANOTHER $7500 into that trailer.
This. Junk it and walk away
maybe a good fire…
Omg. Is the old unit or the new unit? If old tear it down and scrap it. Once mold sets in it’s hard to get rid of it and to live in it. If it’s new see if you can get warranty work done on it and then fix it up as needed.
I think it’s time to cut that one up and throw it in a dumpster.
Tow that bad boy down to NC and I’ll have it done in a week. I’ve gotten a queen mattress in a regular city-pickup trashcan, I can probably get an RV in two truckloads. Dump fees are about $40 a ton.
Say the word, fam.
Nice!
I once helped my dad slowly dispose of Ford Festiva by cutting it into pieces and distributing them into the dumpsters up and down his alley over the course of a month
Was it associated with a crime? There are people that will haul away old cars for free otherwise.
Well, it just existing as a Festiva is a crime…
It was a parts car for his other Festiva and he didn’t have a title or bill of sale or anything to prove his ownership. Because of that the local scrapyards refused to take it.
Well, no loss there because Festiva
It died so his other Festiva could live. It was used as a parts car and nearly everything in it except the engine and transmission got transplanted into his other one.
We were fairly poor at the time
LOL I would agree, but my parents are stubborn. It’ll almost certainly get repaired again and again.
WOWZERS!
Two things you should almost always rent, unless you’re filthy rich-
Sheryl is a stone cold fox, by the way. Apropos of nothing, well done.
These are the top excuses you will hear:
Now, the truth is that these are built in factories. If it is built in a factory, under a controlled setting, then it should be able to be built correctly the first time. Warranties are a sales gimmick; they cost the manufacturer nothing, but allow the manufacturer to charge more for a product, or sell more (after all, if two products are basically the same, and cost the same, you’ll go for the product with the warranty any day). And of course, if they can pass the buck, they will do so. No matter that their geniuses are the ones that put a nail into the cooling coils of the refrigerator, or who wired up the unit so that the ECU of the chassis (on a motor home) goes into limp mode.
And when all else fails, they try to minimize your damages. Of course you can still use the trailer. But you can also sleep in a Smart Car. It’s not what you paid for, and it’s far from the use of the trailer that was intended…
I have a 92 Winnebago that I bought 10 years ago after it sat in a field for 10 years, I replaced a skylight and some sketchy sealant on the roof, put some eternabond tape on it and have had no issues other than a hot water heater that wont restart and a bad battery that I bought new- it has two and the bad one would cause the good one to not take a charge- Costco to the rescue
Eternabond (or clones) tape is essential wherever there are overlap joints on RVs. Yes, proper silicone sealant is a must, but Eternabond over a proper silicone seal will last probably as long as you’ll keep the unit. (The problem with relying on a bead of silicone is that A) it will dry out/degrade in sunlight and B) the seam it’s sealing will move/twist due to the lightweight construction of an RV combined with road shock/vibration. Eternabond goes a long way to protecting and augmenting the underlying seal.
The twisting is the issue- if they built them really stiff, everything would break, I am glad I have a fibreglass roof and not rubber as neighbors had a rubber roof on their new trailer, used it a week after the got it and aparently went under a low branch and scratched it- six months later they had delamination that was not covered under warranty
I’ve seen fiberglass roofs still leak where the roof and the seal under the overlapping trim that joins it to the sides eventually fails. Tends to take a lot longer, but UV plus mechanical stress wins in the end. And roof penetrations, as on any roof, are still a potential leak waiting to happen. The thing is, the oldies were generally built to higher standards, so that even if maintenance fell behind, damage was gradual and minimal unless really let go. The new rigs are built both lighter and cheaper. Lighter, to make more sales to people with underpowered/low towing capacity vehicles while still making the RVs bigger and bigger. And cheaper… Because profits.
Not wrong about the higher standards, and there was actual competition then instead of Thor with over half the market share and Forest River with most of what’s left, but there’s also probably some survivorship bias. Anything built like crap back then has long since gone to the junkyard.
My BIL/SIL just bought a new Grand Design Transcend Xplor 30-footer (specifically one without slideouts) a couple months ago and it seems to be pretty solidly built…and hopefully that is the case, because this seems absolutely awful.
Grand Design is at least a big chunk less terrible than the Thor brands. They’re fundamentally built the same, but they actually put a little effort into quality.
That’s what I had heard (from my BIL/SIL) as well. From the hour or so I spent around and in it when the brought it home, it didn’t seem obviously apparent that it was a steaming pile of shit.
I don’t get the American desire to buy these giant, shoddily built, single-use, rolling mold and mildew farms. You could spend way less money and stay at hotels or AirBnbs on your vacation and never have to worry about these stupid things which apparently become deathtraps after a single annual family outing. If you absolutely need the RV experience, renting makes a lot more sense than buying unless you’re rich enough to get a fancy bus conversion or vintage Airstream. You can turn it in after your vacation and let it be someone else’s problem when it inevitably falls apart.
I liked the *idea* of having a camper, but found out it was a lot harder to use than I expected. Too many campgrounds had no check-ins after ca. 5pm and/or 2 or 3 night minimums, and having that extra thing behind you limited which diners, wineries, tourist attractions you could stop at en route, since they don’t all have parking lots that can accommodate. Struggled to find ways to use it more than 3 times a year, was spending basically the same amount of money per year on hotel rooms as I did before I bought it, and it just sat and sat in the carport, while I had to worry about keeping it properly tarped and checking on the dehumidifier in it. Ultimately decided the cash and extra parking space were a lot more useful to me.
I might revisit in the future, but likely not until I retire and so don’t have to fit trips into short scraps of paid time off here and there. And with my family history, I’m not totally sure if I’ll live long enough to do that, so, we’ll see.
There’s definitely some advantages for longer trips. You have all your stuff with you, and you’re always sleeping in your own bed instead of adjusting to a new one all the time. It also makes traveling with pets easier. Definitely not the cheapest option, though.
Here’s a quick tip on cleaning mildew: vinegar. Just plain white vinegar, diluted as needed. NOT BLEACH! Somehow bleach feeds it and it will just come back. The vinegar really does take it out and keep it away. This tip courtesy of the other thing that gets gross all in its own when not used: vacation houses near water.
The problem with bleach is that it can’t actually kill mold, it just cleans the surface discoloration. It will grow right back unless you actually kill it.
Sort of. The problem is that wood is both porous and organic. So, the bleach reacts with the wood before it reaches to lower layers where the bulk of the mold is, and just leaves behind water. Which helps the killed surface mold grow right back. In theory you could bleach it hard enough to kill the mold, but you’d also destroy the wood.
On stuff like plastic, metal, or ceramic bleach will do an excellent job of killing mold.
You can also get higher concentration ‘cleaning’ vinegar for that really stubborn stuff. Good old acetic acid! Just don’t use the malt kind…
Back when I was a kid, my parents bought a 21ft trailer for better than tent camping. That thing last over 20 years without any problems except for just plain sun baking. I guess they don’t build them like they used too. I want to but one to go camping with my family, I’m glad we decided just to rent one when we needed to.
They really don’t. Go back and read some of Mercedes other RV articles and you will definitely get the sense that the industry is in a downward spiral for at least most manufacturers and manufacturing.
Yup. Looking at the options, I’ll either find an older well kept unit for cheap, or shell out for a proper fiberglass unit.
It’s actually just two manufacturers that are really bad, Thor and Forest River. But they each own a bunch of brands and between the two of them are something like 90% of the market.
on that 2022 they bought, I have to wonder how the IDGAF mentality and labor shortage during the pandemic affected the quality. especially with the demand peaking for these things.
My jealousy of the Super Duty presser is balanced out by my sympathy for the accommodations. At least it makes for great stories!
Yeah that truck looks awesome.
Love the red + sport package combo
Speaking from experience (unfortunately) — if either you guys or your folks wear CPAPs, and use them in the trailer, you will potentially get mold spores drawn into the machine and it will need to be replaced. My mom fought sinus aspergillosis for literally years because it had transferred from a swamp cooler to her CPAP, and continued to hide there even well after the swamp cooler had been cleaned and then tossed.
Yeah, mold is no joke. My grandma is a hoarder, and has a back bedroom no one has entered in nearly 15 years. At some point in that time, there was a major roof leak over that room, and it took them a couple years to realize that’s where the mold smell was coming from. They got the roof fixed but no one has been in that room yet. The whole house reeks of mold, even though the roof was fixed 10 years ago. My grandma and my special needs uncle both smell like it, everywhere they go. It’s on their clothes, their luggage, everything. They constantly have respiratory illnesses, exacerbated when they do their “cleaning.” Everything in the house is contaminated. My grandma also has a CPAP machine, and I shudder to think what might be living in there. I finally got my uncle to buy respirator masks for any future “cleaning” projects.
There’s probably a ton of mold in the walls and ceiling, and maybe the subfloor. Unfortunately there’s very little to be done except tear out all the drywall and OSB that’s affected and rebuild the whole area. Anything short of that, and it won’t be gone.
Oh, there absolutely is. The room with the leak had stuff piled in it about chest high, last I saw it. Unfortunately she will never clean the house enough for any kind of remediation to take place. She’s lived there over 50 years. There’s electrical problems with the house too and of course, an electrician can’t do shit when the house is packed full of stuff. Hoarding is no joke.
Were you able to bleach off that mold before staying in the trailer? That stuff can be pretty nasty.
Gotta love the awning repair, though. Ratchet straps and zip ties – yeah, baby!
This is Oshkosh, lady. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Have you considered having it burn to the ground somewhere? That thing is beyond any reasonable repair.
Exactly.
BTW, I might know a guy, who knows a guy, who, well you know…
I do too, except he’s going to want the equivalent of 25% of the insured value regardless of whether or not the insurance company honors the claim, so, buyer beware.