RV and Motorhome Repair for Tustin Coach Owners

A motorhome is two vehicles bolted together: a chassis underneath and a house on top. They move differently, they fail differently, and the seam between them is where a lot of the work lives. Twelve motorhome types have their own page here, because a gas Class A on a Ford F53 and a diesel pusher on Spartan rails share almost nothing except a shape.

• Class A Motorhomes (Gas), front engine F53 and Workhorse chassis.
• Class A Diesel Pusher Motorhomes, rear radiator coaches on air ride.
• Class B Camper Vans, factory built on a Sprinter, Transit or ProMaster shell.
• Class C Motorhomes, cutaway chassis with a cabover bunk.
• Super C Motorhomes, coach bodies on a medium duty truck cab.
• Luxury Class A Motorhomes, multi stage full body paint and tile interiors.
• Compact Class C Motorhomes, short overhang units on a van cutaway.
• Off-Road and Expedition RVs, four wheel drive chassis and composite habitats.
• Vintage and Classic RVs, riveted aluminium skins and obsolete parts.
• Custom Converted RVs, one off builds with no service manual.
• Bus Conversions (Prevost, Marathon), coach shells finished by a converter.
• Skoolies (Converted School Buses), owner built interiors in a steel bus body.

Estimators who came up on cars miss three things on their first coach. The first is that the outer skin is often not structural. On a laminated sidewall the strength is in the aluminium or wood frame and the bonded core, and the fiberglass or filon on the outside is a weather layer. Push on a soft spot and you are feeling a failed bond, not a dent.

The second is water. Almost every big interior job here started as a sealant failure the owner could not see: a window frame, a clearance light, a roof to sidewall joint, a slide flange. By the time a ceiling stains, the luan and the framing behind it have usually been wet for a long time. Water damage restoration and subfloor replacement runs $750 to $15,000 across 4 to 60 hours.

The third is that everything moves. A 40 foot coach flexes on the road, and every joint in it is a hinge. That is why a repair that only fills and paints the crack comes back. The bond line or the framing underneath has to be addressed, or the road puts the crack back in the same place.

Related trades sit at fiberglass repair, roof repair and slide out repair.

The posted bands below come straight off the shop price sheet. They are ballparks, not quotes: the estimator writes the real number after a walk. All of them are published on the prices page.

Two numbers drive most of the spread. Cap work is slow because a bonded cap has to be released, fitted and rebonded before anyone thinks about paint. Paint is slow because a coach is enormous: paint supplies alone are calculated at $55 per paint hour, which on a 200 hour refinish is a line item of its own.

Order matters more on a coach than on a car, because the trades stack. Body before paint is obvious. Less obvious is that the roof, the slides and the seals get inspected before the body work is priced, because a coach that comes in for a rear cap hit very often has an unrelated water problem the owner did not know about, and finding it after the file is written means a supplement and a delay.

Systems evaluation is a separate line for the same reason. The RV systems estimate covering slide, awning, water, electrical and generator is $150, applied as a credit against an authorized repair. On a collision file with a carrier behind it, the collision estimate carries no charge for insurance walk ins.

Once authorized, parts get ordered before teardown wherever the damage allows it. A coach sitting open in a bay waiting on a special order cap is a coach you are not using. Special order parts require a deposit at order because they cannot be sent back.

Height, length and equipment. A 13 foot 6 inch coach with a roof mounted air conditioner does not fit in a standard body shop. This building is 35,000 square feet with a booth long enough to shoot a full body paint job in one pass rather than sectioning it, which is the difference between a coach that matches down the side and one that does not.

The drive from Tustin is short: the 55 north to the 91 east, or the 5 to the 57, depending on the hour. OCRV Center is licensed BAR ARD00288521 and EPA CAL000367879, and bills carriers direct including Progressive, State Farm, GEICO, Mercury, Allstate and Foremost. We stand behind our work. Request a Quote and bring the coach in for a walk.