Hondo Garage's New Thing

I’ll post up on the gfc board tonight. Finally got access.

Until the hinge failure, I have been very happy with the camper.

 

... and posted.

Not fun to deal with. Working with gfc to get fixed. My field repair is still holding strong at least.

 

Sadly, I might be interested. I shouldn’t have to be.

I think failure rate of just the hinges of the first units is >5% based on ~6 reported failures here for < the first ~100 units. That doesn’t even include leaks and tubes filled with water. That is an abysmal rate.

They need to say something, give some indication they are working on a solution. Give us some confidence.

I don’t believe resealing to be viable for the hinges long term. Two people reported failures with resealed hinges. Time will tell.

 

5% failure rate in less than 2 years. What about 2 years from now? It seems logical that the failure rate would increase over time with wear and tear and sun exposure.

 

I am not 100% sure sun exposure is a reason for the failures or not. I am build #96 and live in Middle Georgia where it is summer 9 months of the year, we also frequent the beach with the camper. My truck is my daily driver and it sits outside 100% of its life (no garage, lean too, awning, etc to park under). 95% of its life is in direct sunlight. I use my doors frequently given it is my daily driver and only vehicle. I have not researched the hinges but this conversation has intrigued me to do so.

I am dreading the day mine fails but I cant say sun exposure is or is not a contributor. I have been watching the hinges lately to see if there will be any warning of pending failure, nothing to report so far. I do believe the shocks have a big impact on failure, I am seriously considering changing mine to a much weaker shock (just enough to hold the door open under light force). I think this will also help with some water intrusion that comes from between the door and bar in heavy rain (shocks are bowing the door slightly outward creating a small space between the door seal and bar).

With that said, I would like to see GFC address the hinges publicly and let us know what they are doing. So far I am not a believer in the "new sealing" process being the fix. I also dont want to have to baby my offroad camper, others that open my doors (friends, interested parties) dont know to "baby" the doors so that is always a risk. These should be rugged enough to handle that.

I do love my GFC and have no plans to sell or anything, but this is a topic of concern that needs to be addressed with all current and future owners.

 

My take on it is they’re saying the old bulb seal method stressed the hinges so that even once the camper was resealed they were weak and broke and that campers produced with new sealant haven’t had any breaks and original but resealed campers that were given new hinges at the same time haven’t had any breaks.

 

Probably referring to the “not a single failure with the new sealant..”

Then “except for one or two.”

Can’t be both.

IMO, more GFC nonsense trying to dispel the realities of their design and construction issues. Every point along the way they have downplayed every failure and claimed it was a handful. We know it isn’t, and never was.

They get away with it, and they know it. Fast forward to the next big fail and rinse, repeat.

 

Is reading that hard?

Not trying to defend what he's claiming, but it seems pretty clearly stated to me.

Camper came from factory with sealant - no broken hinges
Sealant was added after the fact without a hinge replacement - a couple broken hinges

 

That’s what I understood it to mean.

 

100% agree that is what they said.

I am still suspicious of the plastic hinges. They still were working before resealing.

Time will tell. Six months ago no one had broken an original sealed hinge yet either. In a year we will know how the new seals and hinges perform.

As an early adopter, I was willing to accept a functional but less refined design. I was not willing to accept catastrophic failure of critical components in <14 months of use. I consider the hinges critical components and the failures catastrophic.

edit: typo

 

Well when I called I was the "first" one who had a resealed camper with a hinge failure.

Posted that on the hinge failure thread in the GFC thread and was quickly corrected, lol.

Mine was not one of the first to be resealed per discussions at the time.

It's all speak anyway.

By the time mine was sealed they were already sealing the campers in production. If mine was an early failure there weren't that many left to be resealed at the factory anyway.

So whatever. I'm of the same opinion as you. As an early adopter I've been understanding. After repairing myself I'm pretty much over that.

 

Another one reported on the gfc forum



not mine

 

So I sold my GFC back in June but I’ve still been following along on here every now and again. I sold mine for the simple fact I wanted something more comfortable for my wife and I but after reading about all these problems I guess I’m very glad to have sold it (though admittedly I really hope the buyer hasn’t had any issues).

The one and only issue I had with my GFC (#41) was rusting in the tubes on either end. BEFORE I sold mine Graeme told me personally that Aluminum replacements would be coming out and I was on the list to get the replacement. This is information I of course shared with the buyer of my camper. Disappointingly I still haven’t heard back about replacement bars yet so hopefully I’m still on the list, it’s been 5 months since speaking with Graeme.

I guess I am echoing the disappointment of others in that I follow them on IG and see them pumping out campers and selling new ones daily and those of us who gambled on GFC and basically funded the launch of GFC with the Pre-Sale have been a bit left behind. Again mine has since been sold but I’m disappointed non the less.

Here’s to hoping the hinge issue gets corrected and we don’t see the failure rate continue to grow. They are, after all rated for “like a million cycles”. It wasn’t something I would have ever even considered a possible failure point.

Good luck to everyone with any problems I hope GFC stands behind its customers like I always believed they would.

 

Mine broke last night, posted my fix up on the gfc forum. Also, after the fix, its for sale, see this link!

 

1st post here, but I’ve been following for a very long time (since page 1), and noting the successes and failures along the way. I’ve had a GFC on hold (build #445, which they technically could begin any time) for a few months and never thought I’d say this, but am waffling on whether or not I want to complete the purchase. I’ve always had faith that the issues that have popped up along the way have been addressed with engineering know-how, good-will and with as much concern about quality as the customers have had. This hinge issue is a real serious issue, and a complete safety concern for me. If you have a faulty batch of something coming out of your shop you stop production, put your heads together with all of that engineering knowledge, and don’t fire up the machines again until that issue is fixed. They’ve stopped production before, and IMO this is just as good a time to re-think design flaws as any before you have a couple hundred more out there with potential lawsuits on your hands. Not saying it would come to that. But we do live in America after-all.
Sure hope I start hearing some good-news about this issue as id really love to move forward with my build. But at the moment, it stays on hold

 

Yeah I'm in the same boat as you, but you but farther out at #622. I've been following since the beginning as well. They keep emailing me to lock in my color choices while I keep watching all of this unfold online, trying to decide what to do. My brother is #621, we've been busy anyway with other things so haven't had time to respond. I finally emailed them back earlier today and told them that I had my color choices picked out but didn't tell them but was concerned with the issues arising, especially the hinges snapping/shearing. I basically said I saw the post they made on their forum yesterday and was still looking for reassurance as I live 2000 miles away in Georgia. They basically said they haven't had a hinge failure on campers with the new sealant and quoted part of the forum post from yesterday. I'm not paying soon either. May look at selling my deposit and pursue a different camper option later next year.

 

What are you asking for the bed build out with the MTB attachment?

 

A million cycles by supplier specification is obviously different than a million cycles in the real world. Under what conditions does the hinge supplier guarantee a million cycles? What temperature? Humidity? Length of hinge? UV damage over time? Opening and closing force? Angle of force? Evenness of force across the hinge length? Tolerance of hinge seating? Twisting or torsion applied?

Can those specs be met on a camper? Clearly for many early builds the answer is no.

Jury is out on later builds. They may be an improvement, and you can cycle test for some confidence. What is not easy is simulating other factors like time and UV damage. Will they fail in two years instead of one? Or are they completely fixed?

Does any other camper shell use plastic hinges? There might be a reason for that.