Communicating with the Factory

12/14/2013
A good bit of my career was spent in Customer/Technical Service. For all of that, I always tried to imagine myself on the other side of the phone, even when the other side of the phone was attached to an asshole (follow this link for the theme song). Now that I AM on the other side of the phone, it is a lot easier to understand why customers begin conversations as if they are speaking with the devil. What follows is my discussion with the regional VW “Customer CARE Advocate” about the screwing I got and the 40’ shaft I would have taken if I’d have believed their techs are competent. I particularly love his closing “if there is anything else I can do for you, please feel free to email us again” comment. Please explain to me what he “did” for me. VW is one clearly clueless company. How the mighty have fallen.

VW
Dear Mr. Day,
We partner with our dealerships to provide you with trained technicians and quality parts when your Volkswagen is in need of repair. I am troubled to hear you feel you received poor service from one of our dealerships.
Complaints about service at a dealership are taken very seriously. At your earliest convenience, please reply with more detail about your experience, like which dealership you went to, and what the independent has determined the concern to be.
I want to make sure we have enough information to properly address this. I look forward to your reply and if you have any other questions, please feel free to include them in your response.
Sincerely,
Sam M.
Customer CARE Advocate

Me
On Friday, November 29, I had my 2000 Winnebago Rialta (Volkswagen Eurovan) motorhome transported to University Volkswagen and Mazda because the transmission had switched to “limp home” mode several times between Roswell and Belen, New Mexico during the previous two days. Preceding the transmission problems, the Scangauge II diagnostic device installed in my motorhome began to have difficulty communicating with the Volkswagen engine and transmission electronics. I made all of this clear to the service technician I talked to over the phone, twice, but the technician apparently decided I was a clueless moron and he chose to ignore that information. I am a recently retired electronics and manufacturing engineer and while I might not be much of a Volkswagen mechanic, I can also read test gear and the Scangauge made it clear that some system communications problems existed.

Monday, December 2, I received a call from University Volkswagen with a $7,500 estimate for a “rebuilt transmission.” Since I had been able to get the vehicle to work flawlessly (except for the inability to communicate with the Scangauge II) three times in the 230 miles between Roswell and Belen, I suspected this was a computer-driven “analysis” with as little insight or common sense from the “mechanic” as possible. As I’m sure you know, Volkswagen dealers are not known for supporting competent service departments. Since the Eurovan is not something commonly seen and the Rialta is even more rare, incidents of dealer incompetence are familiar and Rialta owner’s groups (Rialta Tech – Yahoo! Groups and Rialta Tech BigTent.com, for example) warn new owners away from dealership service. Again, I requested that the tech look at the transmission multi-function switch connection and the Engine Control Unit’s connections, since those connections and electronics are commonly known sources of “limp home mode” operation. I was told that analysis would be useless, but the tech would look there anyway.

Because I had no faith in the analysis received and the service estimate was so extravagant, I decided to obtain another opinion. An Albuquerque native and Rialta owner, Paul Joseph, offered to help me look at the multi-function switch, just in case that turned out to be an easy fix. We drove the vehicle two blocks to a nearby bank parking lot and pulled the engine pan. When I removed the transmission multifunction connector, water dripped from the connector. Obviously, the “tech” did not look at that connector. Because it was dark and neither of us had a clue where the ECU is located, I restarted the vehicle and drove it to Los Lunas to have Hans Foreign and Domestic Car repair look at it. Surprisingly, they gave me the same analysis with a slightly lower repair cost, but they were unable to fit the Rialta in their bay and I decided to get a third opinion, from German Motowerkes, in Albuquerque.

These two trips required me to drive the vehicle in disabled mode and, now, I know that probably did some damage to the transmission. However, after tracking down the various error codes, three days later German Motowerkes called to say they had found a corroded connection on the ECU and after cleaning it three times, the vehicle appeared to work properly. I picked it up on Tuesday, December 10, and drove it to Santa Fe to visit friends and back to Belen where we had been staying. The Scangauge read a high transmission temperature of 195F on the steepest point of the trip and typically read 130F (I had installed a transmission cooler before we started this trip.). Apparently, outside of damage incurred while the ECU fault disabled the transmission, my vehicle is back in service and my total cost was less than $300.

Before delivering the vehicle to University Volkswagen, I knew about Volkswagen’s service reputation but I hoped my experience might be different because I know that most independent service centers are unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with modern Volkswagen products and I was 1800 miles from home and didn’t know anything about the Albuquerque area.

To top off the insult, when I delivered the vehicle to Hans Foreign and Domestic Car Repair we discovered the battery cover was missing. I’ve since discovered that Volkswagen has obsoleted this part so I can’t even buy a replacement from a dealer.

VW
Dear Mr. Day,
Thank you for taking the time to provide me with all the details of your situation. I regret the service department at University Volkswagen was not able to meet your expectations for this repair.
I can appreciate your frustration. Being told a repair will cost you $7500, only to find out it is really a $300 fix, would not leave me feeling very confident in the abilities of the technician either. I am however, very glad to hear you were able to get the real cause for your concern diagnosed and repaired.
I have documented every detail you have provided me so we can review this situation internally. The feedback we receive about our dealerships is used to influence our future decisions about our dealership network. I greatly appreciate you sharing your experience.
To make sure the dealership is aware of your feedback, I have forwarded your comments on to their management staff. They are in the best position to make any adjustments to their practices, and offer training when necessary.
You are a valued member of our Volkswagen family, and this is not the experience we would hope you would have at one of our dealerships. I thank you again for taking the time to share the details of your situation.
If you have any other questions or comments, or if there is anything else I can do for you, please feel free to email us again.
Sincerely,
Sam M.
Customer CARE Advocate

Me
It was too late to do me any good, but after I posted my experience with University VW and Mazda on the Rialta groups, I got about a half-dozen emails from other Rialta and VW owners blistering that dealership for their lousy, overpriced, less-than-competent service. 30 years ago, I was a dedicated VW owner, but I did all of my own work on those simple air-cooled motors; including overhauls.
I'm a life-long motorcyclist and as I approach the age where two wheels could become impractical, my "reward" for being smart enough to get off of the bike was going to be a new VW Beetle convertible. I'm sure you can understand why that option is now off of the table. Maybe I'll look for a '67, like the one I owned back in '67, though. I just won’t be able to drive it for 6 months out of the year because, as every old VW owner knows, VW’s dissolve like sugar in the snow and old German vehicles do not have heaters.

University VW & Mazda
Mr. Day,
Thank you for taking the time to complete our survey. Although our goal and track record is to provide a higher standard of service, we fell short of your expectations. We are Rialta certified and one of the few locations that can work on these vehicles. I disagree with the Volkswagen shops terrible reputation, but certainly understand your frustration. I understand the vehicle diagnosed by Hans Foreign Shop in Los Lunas had also contacted us regarding prices on a TCM and Transmission. We had advised them that the TCM would not be available and suggested they locate one from a used or recycle parts center. We also stated this may not be a permanent fix from past experience and a transmission may be required. Regardless, we failed to meet your expectations and I apologize. If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
JC Ogborn
Fixed Operations Director
University Volkswagen Mazda
5150 Ellison Ave NE | Albuquerque, NM 87109
505-761-1900 | 505-761-1906 fax
jc@abqvwmazda.com

ME

Mr. Ogborn,

You’re disagreeing with the majority of VW owners, including the ones who rated Volkswagen in the bottom 5 for 15 out of the last 15 years, including a half-dozen bottom place finishes. If you were actually aware of the actions of your shop in regards to my vehicle, you would be embarrassed instead of arrogant about your shop’s performance. I was, in fact, told that your mechanic had checked the connectors on the transmission multifunction switch, the ECU, and TCM. When a friend and I removed the multifunction switch a few blocks from your shop, that connector was found to be soaked. Later, German Motowerkes discovered the same fault in the ECU and 150 miles and a week later, in Elephant Butte, a technician with more skills than your entire business possesses found the Transmission Control Unit connector was also full of water and highly corroded. VW’s incompetent installation of the windshield gasket allowed water to pour onto the connector causing all of the problems I have experienced. If your pitiful excuse for a technician had replaced my transmission, I would be in exactly the same place I am now, except $8,000 poorer. You may think that is simply a failure “to meet your expectations,” but I consider it to be incredible incompetence.
Technorati Tags: volkswagen,university vw and mazda,albuquerque,new mexico,rialta,eurovan

Reputations and Resale Values

One of the less-admitted aspects of getting information in the internet is that almost nothing from that source is unbiased. There are homers and haters and everything in-between and many of the people providing assistance—technical or emotional—have a vested interest in keeping the faith regarding the thing they are discussing.

For instance, this RV thing in which I am currently struggling my way across a tiny part of the country.

There is a fair body of information on the net about the incompetence of VW authorized service centers and more than enough sad stories of people who invested their life savings in one-or-another of Winnebago’s various hillbilly trailers with motors and ended up either going to work as Wal-Mart greeters or turning Winnebago maintenance into their life’s work. I’m not interested in either option and after experiencing “Winnebago quality” I’m convinced that if Polaris does move their manufacturing from Iowa to Mexico it would be a good thing for Polaris owners. Outside of a couple of brands of whiskey, I’m unconvinced that anything good is made in Iowa. Monsanto owns the damn place and they can keep it, for all I care. If Ioweegans eat enough of that GMO crap, maybe they’ll eventually mutate into electricians, welders, technicians, and engineers.

On the other side of the scale are the homers. Typical of their mindset is a comment someone posted after I’d listed my battle to get my RV back on the road, “in  my opinion there is too much "fright mongering" on the site.  it a wonder than anyone would buy a Rialta with all the chatter about its limitations.” The VW and Winnebago problems are not a secret, though. When I was in an Albuquerque Harbor Freight, two weeks ago, buying a siphon pump, an older-that-me guy asked, "Is that your Rialta out there?" He, then, went on to ask if the motor and transmission were as unreliable as he'd heard. After the last two weeks, I couldn't deny the facts. He owned a Dodge-powered Class C that he said got 14mpg "going slow" and wasn't at all tempted to experiment with VW.  That’s 4mpg less than me with a good bit more horsepower and towing capacity AND no VW service problems. If I were an RV-kind-of-guy, that would be incredibly temping right now.

As for the "fright mongering," I thought I'd done a fair amount of research on the Rialta and VW power train service issues, but there clearly wasn't enough information out there about both ends of the vehicle or I just didn't find it. "Fright mongering" could be interpreted as solid information from a buyer's perspective. I would be in a different situation if I'd have realized how useless VW's service is and how much most independent mechanics dislike working on modern VW products.  The first bit of information was pretty well known, I didn’t discover the second until I needed service. Even the “experts” on VWs dislike the company, their dealers, and their distribution network.

Back in the 60's, I hung out with a group of British vehicle owners (cars and motorcycles) in Dallas. In the group, we joked about Lucas being "the man who invented darkness," Brits being incapable of casting any sort of material that could contain fluids, and Weber fuel systems that were more suited for starting fires than metering gasoline. Of course, when we tried to sell our "bricks with wheels," none of this was mentioned. Protecting the "Rialta image" is suspiciously close to that experience. 
As motorcyclists, we all know of a few Euro-trash brands that need the same kind of image protection. I’ll refrain from naming names, but even the “king of adventure touring” has suffered some fractures in that over-priced reputation in recent years. Nobody is more unwilling to admit that king is naked and has a tiny penis than those folks. Those of us who have know dedicated Euro-trash owners, watch their gyrations to “prove” the superiority of their sad, underpowered, over-priced, rarely-ridden bikes with amusement. Like those 1960’s Brit-vehicle owners, their need to get back some of the fortune they’ve “invested” in their bikes is pretty funny, too. If you have $18,000 plus interest plus another $15,000 in maintenance costs wrapped up in your overweight, wider-than-a-Goldwing, hippo-dirtbike, you gotta get at least $15,000 out of your investment, right?

I think someone needs to have the word “investment” explained in simple terms. The rest of us need to know that searching the internet for real information about the maintenance costs, reliability, and serviceability of any sort of vehicle is scary business. In the meantime, does anyone want to buy my brilliantly designed, “made-in-America” except for the parts that were made by white-coated, anally-retentive German engineers, economical (18.5mpg, so far), and stylish Winnebago Rialta Motorhome for the low, low price of $25,000? You know where to find me.

When Do You Fold?

1/21/2/14
As much to tweak the VW assholes in Albuquerque as anything, I’ve been running an ad to sell the damn RV for the last four weeks. I’ve had a couple of calls, but nobody serious. More than one Craig’s Lister took it on himself to berate me for calling my pile-of-crap Winnebago a “good deal” as a “handyman’s special” at $20,000. I understand the sentiment, but it’s worth what someone will pay for it and, somehow, Winnebago Rialta prices are pretty outrageous. There is a company cynically named “Rialta Heaven” that regularly asks insane prices, $30,00-40,000, for exactly our RV model. According to their website, they get it.

Sunday night, someone called my bluff. A guy from Phoenix called and offered me $17,000 cash for the RV and said he’d be in New Mexico tomorrow if I was ready to sell. Unfortunately, I’m not. First, we’re living in the damn thing and I have to find alternative housing if we’re going to give this pile of crap away. Second, it’s our primary transportation and the one thing I have not seen in New Mexico is a half-decent vehicle for a reasonable price. Reasonable prices are pretty common, but New Mexico drivers are astoundingly bad and pretty much everything older than an edible sandwich has been dinged up pretty good. Third, the title is still in Minnesota.

If you followed this idiot’s retirement journey since spring, you know I wasted a whole summer working on this vehicle. We’re into it for about $25,000 in actual investment, but dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours in sweat equity. I know, I know, all of that was about as brainless as buying ENRON stock on the penny market, but it happened. I did it because I fell for the bullshit I was getting about folks claiming to have enjoyed 100,000-150,000 miles of trouble-free travel in these damn things. I did it because I really liked the concept and wanted to believe VW was an actual car manufacturer. Pretty early in the refurb process, it became obvious that Winnebago was not a real anything. Their welds suck. Their choice of steel is pretty much the formula for “instant rust.” Their assembly process is based on the belief that hot glue is the ultimate fastener. Winnebago’s engineering is laughable. The company’s “customer service” is a nasty joke. Everything you would think a company based in Iowa would be, Winnebago is. Once I get going, though, I don’t stop to think about anything. I ride that way, too.

I’m not going any longer. While we have come to a stasis point in the repair process, the only “go” I would consider doing in this RV would be the shortest line back to Minnesota where I would park the damn thing, clean it up, and sell it to the first person with cash. It’s my wife’s money, but if it were up to me I’d take any amount of cash to remove this thing from my property. It is simply painful to look at. It reminds me of too many stupid decisions, too many stressful nights, too many hours on the cell phone trying to find a competent mechanic or an unobtainable part, and pretty much no good moments remain. So, it’s up for sale and I’m taking all bidders. I got one last night and two today. I suspect we’re going to be free of all things VW before the end of January.

Officially, the Rialta belongs to Robbye. The majority of the purchase was something she wanted to do with money she inherited. Since she’s not involved in repairing the thing, she doesn’t have all of those negative moments to dwell on. She rarely drives it, so the hours I’ve spent behind the wheel wondering what will fall off of the damn thing next are mine only. She’s pretty much an uninvolved passenger on this trip, so she gets up every morning expecting to be able to do something fun; regardless of what I’m going to be doing to make that happen. We are clearly on two completely different trips here. I’d trade in a heartbeat, but that’s not an option.

Whatever we buy next will be a different kind of decision.

On the Road Again, Again, and Then Not

11/29/2013









Two cold days waiting in Whites City to get to either get the hell out of southeastern New Mexico or see the cavern (We didn’t care which by Monday.) and the Park Service cut us loose in the cavern at 11AM. We went with our new friends, Whitney and Christine, on Monday and went again on Tuesday after they’d left for Texas. I rode the WR up the hill and Robbye rode with Christine and Whitney. The first day, we took the 750’ elevator ride down and explored the Big Room and the spectacular self-guided tour of the cavern. Tuesday, Robbye and I took the WR up the hill for a second look at the cavern. On our second pass we took the original walk-in entrance, which is a completely different experience. Hard to imagine scaling those cliffs with nothing but a torch for light and cowboy boots for “gear.” It was all nicely paved for us, but it wasn’t for the early explorers. It’s still a workout, especially going uphill. Being the rough, tough cavers we are, we rode the elevator back up to the surface.

We hit the road fairly early Wednesday morning, but started off with a glitch that went south as the miles piled up. The Scangauge, a piece of electronics I installed to monitor my transmission temperatures and other engine functions, refused to acknowledge my vehicle’s existence. We’re heading into the mountains and the device that is supposed to give me an early heads-up if the engine is overheating (the dash temp gauge is practically worthless) and the transmission is in trouble is dead. I tried a bunch of things to bring it back to life, including a full reset, with no luck.

The transmission started acting weird about twenty miles later. A few miles out of Carlsbad, NM, the transmission acted as if it were slipping when it tried to shift to 4th. That was when I tried to reset the Scangauge in an effort to get some information about where the problem might be. After the reset, the slipping thing happened a couple of times, but when I manually shifted it got into 4th and seemed to be working fine.
We made it to Roswell where I went on line for troubleshooting tips. I got a few excellent pieces of advice and some comedy routines about being in Roswell and being plagued by VW-hating aliens. There are some transmission connector problems that VWs are known for and most of the helpful stuff centered around that. I remembered seeing something on the “Baldy Rialta Info Site” about resetting the transmission’s computer and decided to try that. Not only did the shifting problem seem to be resolved, but the Scangauge came back to life (sans all of my setup information since I’d done the hard reset which blew all of that away).

Once that seemed to be behind us, we set out for a campsite that had been recommended by a ranger at Carlsbad, Valley of the Fires National Recreational Park. We have been some cool places on this trip, but the road to Valley of the Fires and the park itself are high on the list. The highway from Roswell to the park is scenic and beautifully maintained. We were treated to an amazing and colorful sundown and we arrived at the park right at dusk. Again, the park was practically unoccupied and we got a beautiful site with an amazing view.





Thursday morning at first light, I made a lap, with the dog, around the park’s hiking trail. No pictures, just memories. It was about 25F, so the walk was brisk, but I had the park to myself and it was incredibly quiet and private. If the damn dog had a couple more brain cells it would have been perfect. Supposedly, Australian Shepherds are incapable of walking competently on a leash and Gypsy adds nothing positive to that reputation. She about dumped me into a couple of deep crevices and convinced me that if we ever get into a starvation situation, the dog is lunch. We’re down to one animal on the trip and . . .

The plan was to head toward near-Albuquerque to visit friends. Right out of the campground, the Scangauge was dead, again. The transmission shifted properly, but there was something that felt a lot like slipping early on. That seemed to settle down later, but I missed out on the beauty of the drive because I was paying close attention to the vehicle. A little after we hit northbound I29, the transmission started doing its slipping/down-shifting thing, again. We limped into Belen where we are while I figure out what to do with the RV.

So far, I have to say I’ll take tent camping on a motorcycle over messing with four-wheel bullshit any day. I am completely unable to relax or enjoy traveling when I’m driving a car/truck/rv. I desperately hate all things four-wheeled, if I’m stuck behind the wheel, and all of the good parts of this trip have been after this fucking thing is parked. The memories I’ll have of the traveling part will be mostly of staring at that POS Scangauge and listening for signs of self-destruction from the VW’s engine and transmission. Fun, huh?

About 2PM, AAA hauled the dead hunk of my RV away and we’re twiddling our fingers waiting to hear from the VW folks about the necessary repairs.

Technorati Tags: duane schawb,rialta,valley of fires,new mexico,rv camping,roswell,vw

How Not to Retire

The inspiration for writing this how-not-to instructional essay came to me while I sat on a picnic table outside of the dumbest purchase I’ve made in 65 years, my cursed Volkswagen-powered Winnebago Rialta, listening to Motion City Soundtrack’s “LGFUAD” for the nth time on New Year’s Day 2014. I was cold, frustrated, and stranded and had been all three of those for more than six weeks. If I had imagined retirement would be such unrewarding, complicated, stressful, expensive work, I’d have stuck with my job till I dropped dead from boredom. At work, at least I got paid to be bored. Retirement in an RV is all outgoing cash flow and the only satisfaction I can look forward to is the knowledge that this damn life has a limited warranty. That is, in a nutshell, how not to retire.

For three weeks of our internment in New Mexico, we’ve been doing our best to enjoy the moderate and sunny New Mexico weather. The first three weeks were spent struggling with Albuquerque area “mechanics” and mooching off of friends.  Once we gave up on finding someone who could fix a Volkswagen in Albuquerque and made a desperate dive south for sun and warmth, some of the misery moderated into resignation. The dramatic scenery around Truth or Consequences kept us partially distracted while I struggled with the various incompetent and manufacturer-unsupported power-train problems VW designed into the universally-detested but precisely named “Eurovan.” (Think “Eurotrash” and you’ll know why VW accidentally tagged this heap of junk with a near-truth-in-advertising nickname.)

I handed in my resignation notice and applied for Social Security in July. I spent most of the summer wrapping up my education employment, selling as much of the artifice of my professional audio career as I could find buyers for, and trying to convince my wife that we own way too much junk and should pay someone to empty our house and haul it all to a trash dump. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

We’ve been on the road since a few days before Halloween and, we enjoyed slightly less than a month where our misnamed “recreational vehicle” served as both transportation and a residence. For the rest of the time, we’ve been living in this thing in the same way hobos live in refrigerator packing cartons or prisoners live in their cells. Our RV is an overweight travel trailer without a hitch or a tow vehicle. The good news is that we managed to limp across eastern New Mexico to Truth or Consequences (TorC), where we have shuffled from Elephant Butte Lake to TorC, trying not to overstay in the park or overspend in town. For the moment, the rolling pile of junk rolls well enough to travel a few miles before self-destructing. That may be as much as can be expected from a German vehicle, based on the comments I’ve heard from New Mexico mechanics regarding all things Hessian. They may be the “Master Race” in their own minds, but the rest of the world rates German vehicles somewhere below cheap Chinese toys.

Being stranded in New Mexico wasn’t our plan. When we laid out our first year of retirement, we imagined ourselves travelling from Minnesota to Texas to California and Oregon through. “Best laid plans” and all that. We planned to completely avoid winter for the first month, but we drove right into a “storm of the century” just west of Dallas. By the time we straggled into Carlsbad, New Mexico, our vehicle had acquired a one-inch layer of ice and our VW’s electronics demonstrated an allergy to moisture and the electronically-controlled transmission developed a “genuine people personality.” From that point on, our recreational vehicle was not that recreational and rarely qualified as a vehicle. Two months later, we’re looking at renting a house or apartment in Truth or Consequences so we can hand our VW over to someone until they can bring it back to life or set it on fire.  This is not what the AAA and ARP travel magazines are talking about when they jabber about the joys of being retired.

However, from conversations we’ve had with other travelers, it turns out that our experience is not unusual. Repeatedly, when we meet other RV-owners, we are regaled with tales of near-bankruptcy, being stranded in awful places, and the trauma of having to abandon the family home (the mobile home, that is) because it died in a place where it was unrepairable. There is no shortage of such places, either. Depending on the vehicle you own, even the most urban locations might be a ghost town when it comes to finding a mechanic who can service a rolling house full of cobbled-together parts and mediocre engineering.

None of this experience comes without emotional costs, either. My wife and I have had next-to-no problems with living in close quarters, but the division of responsibility has been cause for communication breakdown. If yours’ is a typical relationship, where one partner carries 90% of the family responsibilities, and the other is along for the ride, don’t expect that to improve in an RV. Driving an RV is dozens of times more complicated than driving a car and if you are the family driver, you better like driving because you’re going to be doing all of it. If you paid the bills and dealt with “the big problems” when your household was stationary, you are not going to be seeing that division of labor improve on the road. An RV is just a house with the added reliability issues of a vehicle and, usually, the vehicle problems are going to be multiples of what you’re used to from a more purely single-purpose automobile.

The painful fact is that RV’s are second-rate vehicles, at best. Let’s face it, nothing good comes from the territory where most RVs and travel trailers are designed and built; Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and other seriously economically and socially depressed states. RVs come from the Rust Belt backwoods where there are lots of disposable low-skilled, low-paid temporary laborers, but where no self-respecting manufacturing or design engineer would be caught dead. Nobody goes through four or six years of painful engineering classes thinking, “Boy, I can’t wait to build trailers and motorhomes when I graduate.” This is a career of last resort and only the worst of the worst get stuck with a last resort (Think “nuclear power plant engineers.”)  All of that combines to make the perfect storm of unreliable, low-quality, poorly engineered products.

The little-known-fact about motorhomes, RVs if you will, is that they are nothing more than motorized trailers and, once you’re living in one, you become trailer-trash. By that I mean, you are living in a pile of junk that will need constant maintenance because the morons who design and build this crap think hot glue is the ultimate assembly tool. Everything in your RV will have to be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled with proper fasteners and adhesives after you have lived in it for less than a year. If you think roving the country in a motorhome is going to be a vacation, you’re clueless. If you are going to stay on the road, you are going to have to be, or become, an expert mechanic, a welder, a mechanic, an electrician, a long-haul trucker, a finish carpenter, and very, very patient. You will probably have to redesign several of your vehicle’s systems, so you need some serious engineering skills or a whole bag full of one-hundred dollar bills.

With that in mind, it’s important to consider how many of any of those skills you are willing to develop and exercise. If you are on the extreme end of the DIY world, it’s probably reasonable to consider poorly supported and unfamiliar power trains from Volkswagen, Mercedes, Renault, and other brands and models that only you will be able to service. If you want to have any hope of getting outside assistance when your vehicle breaks—and it will—you better play it safe and buy something every shade tree mechanic can cobble back together. In the USofA,That means Ford, Dodge, and GM and you better think twice about opting for the diesel offerings even from those car companies because competent diesel mechanics are almost as rare as unicorns.

There is a breed of, mostly retired, people who proudly call themselves “full-timers.” That, in un-obscured English, means “homeless.” These folks live in a variety of RVs, from beat-up old pickup toppers to sixty-foot behemoths lugging more luxury than most mansions, 365 days a year. There is something odd about the “pride in a patch” attitude full timers exhibit. If they lived in trailer courts, many of these people would be embarrassed to describe their homes. Since they hobo across the country, pretending to be “camp hosts” to obtain free campsites and, sometimes fuel and a pittance, they elevate their status to the “full timer” label. Calling them “janitor” would be insulting, but doing janitorial work for sub-minimum wages and the honor of parking in a “camp host” space seems to be some kind of status symbol among the full timers.

An Open Letter to VW’s Mismanagement

12/4/2013
Jonathan Browning
President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America
Volkswagen of America, Inc.
2200 Ferdinand Porsche Drive
Herndon, Virginia 20171

I realize that your interest in my current problem and opinion of your company is probably as close to non-existent as humanly possible. In fact, based on VW’s corporate attitude, it’s likely that you don’t care about anyone who owns one of your products. Regardless, I own a second-hand VW-powered Winnebago motorhome. The VW Eurovan front-end to my little vehicle seemed like a pretty clever piece of engineering, until the transmission and/or engine-control electronics broke down.

There is a pretty extensive users’ group for this vehicle, the Winnebago Rialta; which was produced in the USA from 1995 to 2004. One given assumption well-known across this group of dedicated and knowledgeable recreational vehicle owners is that Volkswagen’s service departments are next-to-useless and grossly overpriced. I mean this is an absolute conviction from a substantial group of VW-powertrain owners, not an occasional comment. If you think some silly advertising and a lot of Forbes Magazine hand-waving is going to fix that, you are as delusional as Donald Trump.

When my vehicle started acting as if the transmission were hitched to a rodeo animal, I foolishly took it to a VW dealership in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I was told I needed a $7,500 replacement transmission. I was warned in advance that would be the response and some of the people who provided that warning had unhappily wasted that money in the past. I was warned that a visit to a VW dealership would be a waste of time and money and that I’d drive away $7,500 poorer and with all of the same problems with which I’d arrived. So, when that threat came likely I collected my vehicle and hauled it off to an independent service business.

While I was doing some research on my vehicle’s lame power train and unreliable electronics, I learned a few things about Volkswagen in the 21st Century. For example, I was amazed to learn that VW holds an dismal 2% of the US market share. VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech’s inability to “understand the U.S.” (as he put it in a Bloomberg.com interview) is directly related to the fact that U.S. car owners talk to each other. VW’s reputation is of an overpriced, unreliable vehicle with terrible customer service. You can probably get away with customer-hostile behavior in Germany, where the whole damn country is smaller than some U.S. counties and you can push your VW home if it fails halfway across the country. In a country where we often drive across a thousand miles of barely-populated desert, mountains, and plains, owning a car that has a terrible reputation for reliability and whose dealers are well-known for price gouging and incompetent service is down right stupid.

Obviously, my problem has nothing to do, directly, with sagging new car sales. Stories like mine, however, scare the crap out of wise prospective buyers who either plan to keep their vehicle past the warranty deadline or sell it when they buy their next vehicle. They talk to the less wise, more typical buyer and your company’s sales suffer.

I am a motorcyclist, for example. I’m an 65-year-old motorcyclist who will, sooner rather than later, have to give up the two-wheel pursuit of happiness and trade my bikes for something less satisfying but slightly cool. I’d set my sights on a new VW Beetle convertible as a throwback to the wonderful 1967 VW convertible I  owned when I was a young man. Having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously expensive VW service, there is no chance that I’d consider your company for my late-life-crisis convertible.

Your marketing idiots are wrong. They usually are. Snazzy new ads are only putting paint on a turd. To regain US market share, VW should reconsider its winner-take-all service policies and take a page from your company’s humble beginnings in the US and retool your dealers, parts distribution, and service centers’ training so that you can deliver excellent service for reasonable prices and, maybe, you’ll have a chance of putting a dent in the sales of Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and whatever Chinese brand arrives on our shores next week. Keep going the way you are going and you will have made some marketing morons rich and you’ll still be at the bottom of the pile.

Shade Tree Geniuses

1/14/2014
The cause of the series of disasters that set us back 10,000 miles and two weeks in Albuquerque, was a piece of typical shade tree mechanical stupidity. VW installed the Engine Control Unit (ECU) circuitry just to the left and below the battery. Then, to compensate for a generally silly location for such critical electronics, VW built a battery box cover to protect the battery and the ECU from the inevitable moisture that would pour through the seam in the engine hood. One of the previous owners cleverly decided all of that protection was unnecessary and removed it to make getting to the battery 15 seconds quicker.

This is the battery cover I cobbled together until I could get the real thing from VW. It’s pretty embarrassing, but not as humiliating as not having anything to protect the delicate German electronics that hides beside the battery.
So, I jury-rigged the tarp replacement in the picture above. It’s not as pretty as VW’s half-assed solution, but it’s pretty good and it will protect the ECU. When I posted a picture of my solution on a Rialta-Tech users’ group list, someone wrote, “What happened to the vinyl engine cover?”
All I could say was, “What vinyl engine cover?”

When I was shopping for an RV, I looked at four different units and not a one of them had a vinyl engine cover or the top battery cover. Does this sound familiar? When I was looking for a WR250X or a Suzuki SV650 (in 2000) or a Yamaha TDM850 (in 1993), every one of those vehicles had been “improved” by some hillbilly wanna-be mechanic. In every instance, the improvements made the bike louder, narrowed the power-band or outright reduced power overall, reduced reliability, and made the bike less practical and comfortable to ride. Every one of those bikes had such low mileage that I considered them to be “new except for owner errors and damage from ignorance.”


This is what the actual VW battery cover looks like. All $93 of it.

The fact is, modern engineers (possibly excepting VW and Harley “engineers”) use some pretty sophisticated tools to design “systems” instead of individual engine parts and messing with either end or the middle of those systems requires a complete retuning of the rest of the system. Simply slapping on a noisy pipe does nothing for performance and only provides a moronic placebo for those who can be fooled into thinking that being noisier is in some way similar to be faster. The day of the shade tree mechanic is fast vanishing, except for historic/vintage vehicles that will soon be relegated to parades and collector shows. In a lot of ways, this is a sad thing because it closes a collection of doors for young people to find their way into technology. As unhappy as that fact is, a big deficit for any used product is that a previous owner has “improved” it. Turns out, that is a fact even in a product as miserably designed as my RV.