Our Repair Process, Step by Step

Because skipping any of them shows up later, usually as water. Large vehicle repair is layered work on layered construction, and the sequence exists to make sure each layer is correct before the next one covers it.

The single most useful thing to understand is that labor hours and calendar days are separate quantities that behave differently. Labor hours are estimable: a technician with the right equipment takes a fairly predictable number of hours to replace a slide seal, blend a panel or rebuild a slide room. Calendar days are governed by things nobody in the building controls, principally approval turnaround on insurance files and parts availability on anything discontinued.

That distinction is why a five hour bumper repair can occupy three weeks of calendar while a two hundred hour structural rebuild moves steadily. It also explains the most common frustration owners report at other shops: being given a completion date built from labor hours alone, then watching it slip repeatedly for reasons nobody explains. Here, the two are quoted separately and the reason for any pause is named specifically.

The stages below are the same whether you are paying directly or a carrier is. What changes is who authorizes the scope.

Documentation, before anything else. The vehicle is photographed on arrival from all sides, the roof where it can be reached safely, the interior, and every damage area in detail with something in frame for scale. That set becomes the baseline for the entire file and it protects both parties.

Then the conversation that saves the most time later: what you actually know about the vehicle. Which slide has been slow. Whether a window has ever been resealed. When the roof was last coated. Whether the generator has been run this year. Whether that stain in the corner appeared after the accident or has been there since spring. Owners consistently underestimate how much of this is diagnostically useful.

Practical items handled at the same time: LP tank state, black and gray tank state, battery disconnect location, alarm and slide control operation, personal property removal, and keys. On a claim we take the carrier, claim number and adjuster contact so the assignment can be requested immediately rather than after the estimate is written.

A thorough intake on a large coach runs thirty to forty five minutes. It feels slow and it is the cheapest part of the entire process.

Operation by operation, with parts and labor separated on every line, and the hours stated rather than implied. A collision estimate carries no charge. An RV systems estimate covering slide, awning, water intrusion, electrical or generator faults is $150, applied as a credit against an authorized repair. An in depth diagnostic is one hour at $285, also applied as a credit.

Each line carries the labor category it belongs to, so the rate is visible: $210 for body and paint, $260 for mechanical and electrical, $285 for diagnostics, $95 for detail. Materials calculate automatically at $55 per paint hour and $5 per body hour, with a $45 hazmat line where regulated material is involved, and sales tax at 7.75 percent applies to parts and materials only.

Where the estimating platform used on the carrier side has no entry for an operation, and on recreational bodies that is most of them, the line is entered manually with a written justification. An adjuster who has never written a line for a laminated sidewall section is not being obstructive, they are working without a reference, and a manual line with visible arithmetic is what resolves it.

The estimate is what you take away. It is yours, it is written, and it is comparable against any other shop's document because every rate behind it is published.

It converts guesses into evidence. On a laminated, sealed, multi layer body the visible damage is routinely a fraction of the real damage, and no amount of external inspection changes that. A sixteen inch dent in an aluminum skin regularly turns out to have crushed the luan and foam behind it, broken a framing tube and separated the lamination bond two or three feet in every direction.

Teardown is authorized work, never speculative. On a claim, the carrier approves a teardown allowance first. On customer pay work, you do. Panels come off tagged and stored beside the vehicle rather than scrapped, because a carrier reinspection should never require a second disassembly and because the physical part is sometimes the only argument that settles a dispute.

Everything exposed gets photographed as it is exposed, with moisture readings recorded by location where intrusion is suspected. That package becomes either the supplement on an insurance file or the revised scope on a customer pay one. Delamination repair runs $1,500 to $20,000 and water damage restoration runs $750 to $15,000 precisely because the teardown finding, not the exterior appearance, sets the number.

On structural files the supplement is frequently larger than the original estimate. That is the normal shape of the work rather than a warning sign, and it is why we tell owners at intake to expect it.

Almost never in the repair bay. Four places, in order of how often they hold a file:

1. Approval turnaround on a supplement. The largest single bucket on insurance work. A submission is reviewed, sometimes reassigned to a supplement desk, sometimes routed for a field reinspection if it crosses an internal dollar threshold. Same day to two weeks.
2. Parts availability. The largest bucket on older units. A slide motor for a fifteen year old coach may simply not exist as a new part, which converts an ordering task into a fabrication or adaptation decision, and that is a different conversation with a different number.
3. Booth scheduling on refinish work. A full coach respray occupies the booth for an extended block. On a shop running 50 to 100 paint jobs a month that block has to be scheduled rather than improvised, so a paint stage sometimes waits for its slot.
4. Owner decisions. Genuinely common and rarely acknowledged. Choosing between a repair and a section replacement, deciding on a color scheme, or deciding whether to add work while the wall is already open. We flag decision points in advance so they are not discovered as a stoppage.

Whenever a file pauses, you are told which of the four it is in, because each one has a different next action and a status call that only reports the pause is not useful to anybody.

Structure first, always. Frame, chassis and structural framing are corrected and verified before any panel goes back on, because a body hung on geometry that is still wrong will never align and every seam after it inherits the error. Frame and structural welding runs $750 to $20,000 and it is certified technician work.

Then substrate and panel work: laminated sections rebuilt, fiberglass laid up and faired, aluminum skins replaced, composite panels bonded. Then sealing, which on these vehicles is not a finishing touch but a structural function, since water intrusion is the primary long term failure mode for the entire category.

Refinish follows, in the booth, in a controlled environment. On a segmented coach scheme that means base, accents, masked boundaries and clear applied in a specific order, then decal and graphics reapplication where the original scheme includes them. Decal and graphics replacement runs $500 to $5,500 and full paint refinish runs $5,000 to $35,000, so it is scheduled as its own phase rather than squeezed in.

Systems and interior reassembly come last: slides cycled and adjusted, seals set, electrical reconnected and tested, plumbing pressure checked, LP leak tested by a certified technician, appliances run, cabinetry and panels refitted. Then verification, and only then delivery.

A verification pass and a walk through, in that order. Verification is the shop checking its own work against the file: every authorized operation performed, slides cycled fully in both directions, seals seated, roof seams inspected, water test where the repair involved any opening in the envelope, systems run, and a post repair scan on any vehicle carrying driver assistance hardware.

The walk through is you looking at it with someone who can explain what was done and why. Bring time for it. This is the moment to ask why a panel was replaced rather than repaired, what the sealant schedule should be going forward, and what to watch. It is much harder to ask those questions a month later.

You receive the documentation package: the estimate and any supplements, the photo record including concealed damage at teardown, moisture readings where they were taken, part sourcing confirmations, and the pre scan and post scan reports where applicable. That package is yours permanently and it has value beyond the repair, particularly if you sell the vehicle or pursue a diminished value claim later.

Then the balance is settled. Final payment is due at pickup and no vehicle leaves the property until it is paid in full, which is stated on the posted rate card so it is never a surprise. We stand behind our work, and if something is not right after you leave, bring it back and we will look at it.