Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

Need gloves:

 

Looks like the cover of a Stephen King novel.

 

Bring a 2 X 6 or 2 X 8 that sits across the top of the tub and sit on that in the tub.

 

Water, propane, and electricity. They all play together nicely right? Water bypass valve replacement on the camper.

 

Pictures RV wiring gives me seizures.

The industry answers to absolutely no one when it comes to code wiring standards!

The lack of pride in the work is just amazing.

The builders know it's shitty and they know the new owners are gonna be into the guts of the RV to fix shit, they could care less.

Get the unit out the door is all they care about.

Next!!!!

 

100% truth, ask me how I know...

 

@six5crèéd got a fresh find for prize warehouse.


Hot and ready!youre welcome

 

Yeah, you can tell no sh*t’s were given on this mess! But the valve can be turned by hand now, no pliers needed. And no leaks, so far…

 

Fresh!!

 

thats cuz it was done by somebody with a conscience....YOU

 

I might have caused a little trouble in a family chat tonight. I’m still laughing about it.

 

incoming rant..

as some of you may or may know, i'm in upper west corner of indiana, about 2 hours west of elkart indiana, the general headquarters of 'everything rv'. i'm even planning on a trip to that area next weekend for some camping.. i look forward to the trailer surplus stores...

i also work as an upfitter-- taking trucks of all sizes and modifying/customizing them to the customers needs. primarily for municipal usage.

i understand your frustration, but i believe you're also lashing out without respect to understanding the individuals situation. in fact, i and some coworkers were just talking again about it today before the end of the day.

so i'm going to go through this quote-by-quote, not as an attack, but to try to keep my thoughts organized. because there's a lot to unpack, mostly me venting about the state of american industry in general.

this is factually untrue. rv units are built to an RVIA specifications. the difference is that the manufacturers tend to take the minimum specification as the rule--because it costs extra to go beyond the specification, so they maintain whatever absolute minimum meets the standards. this is no different than 'track houses' or 'spec houses'. but without the 'pesky' residential building code requirements.

vehicle upfitting is the opposite. the only standard i actually need to abide by is whatever i personally have, and/or can hide/sneak past the couple of over-worked guys that do a visual "quality control" (yeah, think about that next time you pass a dump truck on the highway!). and i can tell you that there's plenty of nooks and crannies in most vehicles to hide a lot of things that they'll never see.

my personal standard is a lot higher than the other couple guys that do the wiring work, and leaps and bounds higher than most of the industry.

but that leads me right into a problem. specifically this one.

so here i am, someone trying to implement a solid and technical standard into a 'wild-west' situation. i've been doing home theaters, system integration, and car audio for the last 20 years. previously, i've been an electrician for 14 years. to say i have far more qualifications for understanding wiring codes and standards is an understatement. i've forgotten more than most of my coworkers will ever learn.

the boss see's that my trucks are consistently done neat and tidy, and my interior controls always come out looking far nicer than most others. i also have far fewer issues with quality control's checks/balances, and he's learned that he can just take me on my word. if i come to him to say i've completed a job, it can unquestionably move on, and quality control is a slight technical paperwork bump in the process, not something that he really needs to worry about, compared to other guy's builds, where quality control is a critical step in making sure things are presentable, and function as required, which can sometimes take an extra day to a week or more to re-fix what was slap-dashed together in many cases.

HOWEVER. all the jobs are pre-sold. the billable hours are pre-determined according to a magic 'book time' number the sales people use to determine what to quote the customer, and the customer signs off on the overall cost of our services based on that magic book number. there are no additions unless the customer adds/changes something. and all of these jobs have been sold for 2-4 years at this point. so there's no going back anymore and asking the customer for more money to do the same thing they agreed to years ago. the only option is to get it done.

so nearly every job, i get in a position where the job is sold to include about 14 hours to install the interior stuff to control all the add-on's the customer is paying us to add to the truck.

it generally takes me 20-35 hours most times to complete that work to the standard i've been instructed to meet, and the standard i personally demand.

this is the point that things get very messy with the boss. on one hand, my installs are better than everyone else's, and require far less attention than anyone else's before or after i've done my part. on the other, the company is only billing for 14 hours, and 'losing' around 5-15 hours on every job(i'd argue my pay rate vs. the significant hourly rate they charge as part of that 'book time' rate makes up for it, but they have different ideas).

and that puts the boss in a difficult position defending me and my quality of work, but also me in a bad position that the boss needs to 'rescue' me from the higher-ups that keep seeing negative times on spreadsheets.

the last time i went job hunting, it took me 8 months to find this job that pays adequate for the area. so i've got this personal pressure in the back of my head that if the higher-up's finally get their way, to fulfill the demands of their spreadsheets to close the 'actual-vs-billable-hours', i won't have a job for much longer, unless i come up with a way to close the gap.

and so i'm put into a position questioning how important my personal standard is if i can't put a roof over my head for 6 months to a year. i do somewhat like this job, combining my wiring, and car audio passions into one thing, and i get to work on new vehicles that actually come apart nicely.

personal accountability really only goes as far as anyone can afford it. start threatening my income, and i can put my experience to use becoming far more of a hack than the hacks could find acceptable. i won't be happy about it until i can find something else, but life isn't free.

fortunately, it hasn't come to that yet for me, or my current customers. but i have been down that road (which was part of why i left the electrical field). for the time being, the boss prefers to leave me alone because my quality speaks for itself.


but the RV industry is really that same problem on a much larger assembly-line scale. i don't know if you've ever been through the elkart area, but get past the glitzy amish/tourist area, and much of it is extremely economically depressed. some of the parts i've accidentally driven through give Gary, Indiana a run for it's money.

to have a job, any job, means we're trading our time for money to live. these rv plants are churning out spec-housing units with very minimal overhead, and keeping the final price low. importantly, they're also providing jobs in an area that otherwise don't have a lot of industry outside of farming. sure, there's room for quality to improve. but as with my case, that takes extra time. and time costs money. and they already set this unit up to be a $25k camper, not a $50,000 camper.

the larger scale issue is that the customer is who sets the tone of the final product. if the level of quality at $25k is unacceptable to you, start demanding better, and encourage no one to buy until it happens. but it's going to mean an invisible improvement in the 'bones' of the camper, with no visual change in the rest of the interior. and we've already seen that the majority of customers aren't ok with cost adjustment improvements that they can't see in the final product.

you're absolutely right. but that's sort of the point. i generally get a speech about that from my boss in the form of a corporate pep talk at least once a month.

what's curious/interesting to me is the different perspectives on the matter.

i'm of the opinion to do it once, do it right, and i'll never need to see it again. regardless of when i was doing houses or trucks, i've always been of the mindset that i'm ecstatic to finish any of them. i firmly believe the best jobs are the one's that i never need to hear from ever again.

but the sentiment of the majority of the population is more "hot potato". if there's any chance to offload the job to someone else, they take the opportunity, no matter how short-sighted it might be. they're just happy it's "no longer my problem". it doesn't matter that there's checks/balances like quality control to catch those issues and make them fix it, what matters is getting it done and pushed away as soon as possible.

as an effect of all those things, management naturally encourages RV's that look like hot trash hidden behind the panels. just as long as they hit their (unreasonable) time frame to get it out the door for the low low price they promised!

 

Very, very good post. I thank you for the behind the scene, 1st hand experience.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my new RV came with a 30' ( estimated) coax cable that only needed to be 18". Seems that they could save money on using the correct length of coax. I've found this is quite common with other wiring in the RV.

Fortunately, I like to fix shit.

 

Good morning Wrenchmen

 

Good morning shop crew, be safe today.

 

Good morning and Happy Fourth of July everyone

Have a great time, be safe

 

As per usual, I'm ready to head to the airport and my wife isn't dressed yet.

We balance each other out.

 

Good morning shop crew I hope you all had a great week and enjoy the Independence Day weekend! Be careful with the fireworks, if you’re not we want to see the pictures!