New caravan falling to bits and the sellers aren't interested

kwaks

Thankyou to Haz for restoring my faith here, after reading the OPs' account and seeing so many subsequent posters miss the fact that he reported the issue with the wheel WITHIN the service schedule I was beginning to despair!!


The wheel came off whilst under warranty. It is up to them to fix it or prove that the nuts had been interferred with or subsequently wrongly torqued.

cybergibbons

kwaks wrote: »

Thankyou to Haz for restoring my faith here, after reading the OPs' account and seeing so many subsequent posters miss the fact that he reported the issue with the wheel WITHIN the service schedule I was beginning to despair!!


The wheel came off whilst under warranty. It is up to them to fix it or prove that the nuts had been interferred with or subsequently wrongly torqued.

The original e-mails are badly written and very verbose. They are in the wrong order (why not just put them in the right order?).

He said he called up and asked for a quote for repairs, not a claim under warranty.

Unfortunately, the way the OP has described re-torquing the studs, it's highly likely that they were overtightened by himself.

jennifernil

As a caravan owner I have some questions and observations........

Who are you insured with?

Why are the insurers not dealing with this? Let them get the wheel hub/fixings looked at by an engineer if they want. There have been a few instances of wheels falling off, the chassis manufacturer should be involved to ascertain if there was a defect.

If you bought a new car, TV, whatever, would you not want to know about the warranty? You were presumably given various books with the caravan, such as the handbook and service book, which would tell you all you need to know, did you not read ANY of them? When I open my handbook, the very first thing in it is about the warranty.

My insurance requires me to have the caravan serviced regularly, does yours?

If the only other problems you have had are an unreliable awning light and couple of plastic light fittings breaking, then that is actually pretty good for a caravan. Your light fittings look like they have been hit with something, is that possible? The caravan is not actually falling apart, these light problems are very minor.

It is your responsibility to keep to warranty conditions, the dealer has made a very reasonable offer to reinstate your warranty, you should accept it immediately. They did not have to make this offer. Why are you waiting?

The damaged front locker lid...I would not have accepted a repair, this material is not easy to make a good repair on. I hope you got a decent discount for accepting this damage?

Mark1971

cybergibbons wrote: »

Just throwing some fuel onto the fire here:
1. You say that you checked the wheel studs with a torque wrench each and every time you made a journey. The only way to do this is to undo the studs, then re-tighten with a torque wrench. Simply applying the same torque wrench to already tight studs would result in over-tightening, and hence stripping of the threads, and then in turn looseness.
2. Those type of studs with the conical bearing surface must be exactly the right size and pitch for the wheel and hub. All rotational force should be on the conical part, but from these pictures it looks like the wheel was loose and was bearing upon the threads. Bolts are only strong in tension, if they aren't tight, they will do nothing. The conical design means that there is a lot of "spring" in the connection, which in turn gives a lot of leeway when incorrectly tightened. Ones of the wrong size cannot take advantage of this spring, or worse still just bear down directly on the hub.
3. It looks like you have a plain hex-headed machine bolt in one of the 5 positions. If this is the case, this is really quite dangerous.

Ok I got a lot of questions to answer here.
It seems you know your stuff cybergibbons and thanks for the info.
I didn't know you had to loosen the nuts before you tightened them.
I just went to tighten them and the wrench clicked instantly and wouldnt tighten them.

Mark1971

DCFC79 wrote: »

Why not accept the offer put forward to you

Because if i accept the offer and pay for the wheel damage myself it comes to a total of about £570 which I find totally unnaceptable.

Mark1971

kwaks wrote: »

Thankyou to Haz for restoring my faith here, after reading the OPs' account and seeing so many subsequent posters miss the fact that he reported the issue with the wheel WITHIN the service schedule I was beginning to despair!!


The wheel came off whilst under warranty. It is up to them to fix it or prove that the nuts had been interferred with or subsequently wrongly torqued.

I think the same.

DCFC79

Them phots need to be smaller,

Mark1971

cybergibbons wrote: »

The original e-mails are badly written and very verbose. They are in the wrong order (why not just put them in the right order?).

He said he called up and asked for a quote for repairs, not a claim under warranty.

Unfortunately, the way the OP has described re-torquing the studs, it's highly likely that they were overtightened by himself.

I am sorry about the quality of the e-mails (I am not used to sending letters of complaint).
I did ask for a quote for repairs not a claim under warranty as I wasnt aware at the time it was under warranty, but when they checked our records to get the right parts THEY MUST HAVE BEEN AWARE so why didnt they let me know?
And finally the handbook tells you to check the studs and how to set the torgue wrench and it says nothing about loosening them first, just what setting to test them at.
Would I have been better off not testing them?
This seems like a Damned If I Do, Damned If I Dont situation.

Mark1971

jennifernil wrote: »

As a caravan owner I have some questions and observations........

Who are you insured with?

Why are the insurers not dealing with this? Let them get the wheel hub/fixings looked at by an engineer if they want. There have been a few instances of wheels falling off, the chassis manufacturer should be involved to ascertain if there was a defect.

If you bought a new car, TV, whatever, would you not want to know about the warranty? You were presumably given various books with the caravan, such as the handbook and service book, which would tell you all you need to know, did you not read ANY of them? When I open my handbook, the very first thing in it is about the warranty.

My insurance requires me to have the caravan serviced regularly, does yours?

If the only other problems you have had are an unreliable awning light and couple of plastic light fittings breaking, then that is actually pretty good for a caravan. Your light fittings look like they have been hit with something, is that possible? The caravan is not actually falling apart, these light problems are very minor.

It is your responsibility to keep to warranty conditions, the dealer has made a very reasonable offer to reinstate your warranty, you should accept it immediately. They did not have to make this offer. Why are you waiting?

The damaged front locker lid...I would not have accepted a repair, this material is not easy to make a good repair on. I hope you got a decent discount for accepting this damage?

And finally,

Hi jennifernil,

We are insured with K.Drewe Insurance Brokers Ltd.
They are happy to sort out a claim but they want to know why it wasnt covered under the warranty first, plus if I have it sorted through them, there is the excess to pay and our premiums would most certainly go up and it would probably be cheaper to pay for it.
The light fittings could not have been hit with something as they face down from underneath the top storage areas.
The offer of reinstating the warranty isnt as good as it sounds when the cost of doing this and then getting them to repair the other damage will be around £570, the caravan was less than a year old when this all started to happen.
And we got no discount for the locker lid, we didnt get any discount whatsoever.
This is literally the first time we have purchased anything over say £500 brand new, we have had old caravans in the past and that is why we decided to buy a brand new one.
That is probably why I am so disgusted at the lack of customer care after buying such an expensive product.

Thanks again to evertone who has commented and I will let you know as soon as the Finance Company let me know anything.:T

jennifernil

The warranty on a caravan is a very important asset. If you do not keep it up then you may be faced with huge repair bills further down the line if you get any water ingress. Water ingress is death to caravans if left unrepaired. You have a valuable asset and need to look after it.

Yes, the servicing is not cheap, though I think what you were quoted was quite high. You can shop around with other Lunar dealers, but be aware that some dealers will not service a van that was not purchased from them. You will probably have to go with your present dealer to get this sorted, but after that you may well be able to change. You do already seem to have found an alternative dealer, are they authorised by Lunar?

To get the matter resolved you really need to decide either pay for the repair yourself, or claim on the insurance. I think your insurers are being unhelpful here. They should have contacted the chassis manufacturer if they thought there was a defect, not leave it to you. Has their engineer inspected the damage?

Is the dealer insisting you have to let them do the repairs if they reinstate the warranty? Is there some reason why they will not let you buy the parts and repair yourself if the damage is only cosmetic? Or was there damage to the wheel arch? Is there damage that could let water in?

Caravan repairs are expensive, the market is much smaller than the car market so parts are expensive.

The lights.....did the missing plastic bits just fall off in your hand? If not then you really don't know what happened to them. Being under the lockers is no protection, they are quite easily hit with a head, a hand. However, I presume the dealer has agreed to replace them if you do the warranty bit? These lights can be sourced on the internet fairly reasonably anyway. Your dodgy awning light is likely due to a poor connection either on a wire or the bulb itself.

I am astonished that you agreed to pay full price for a new caravan (unless you had a trade-in?), let alone a damaged one! You should have insisted on a new lid. (easy to be wise after the fact, I know)

You have not said why you did not read all the literature, you do seem to have consulted the handbook at some point. This unfortunately seems to have been your main mistake. I am very surprised that the sales person did not draw your attention to the warranty conditions, but this unfortunately does not get you off the hook.

I very much doubt you will get anywhere trying to reject the caravan now, but personally, I WOULD be wanting to know why my wheel fell off.