Finished Up In Red Bay; Now In Little Rock

We just finished the most successful visit to Red Bay that we have had since we became Tiffin owners.  We arrived on a Thursday with an appointment for the following Monday!  We were in a bay on Friday morning, and completely finished with all items (roof rails replaced, new Attwood jack system installed, two fogged windows replaced, slide floor sealed, and a slide chain cover fixed) by Tuesday morning at 11:00am.

We moved to Bruce Deaton’s body shop on Wednesday morning at 6:00am, and they were taking damaged parts off by 6:30am.  By Wednesday evening all damaged body parts were either replaced or repaired and all was primed waiting for paint.  On Thursday morning, the painting was completed, and we were on the road to Little Rock by 12:30pm.

When we left, it was not raining, but two hours later, it was coming down very hard. We also went through a front, and the temperature dropped to the low 40’s.   I did not like the new paint getting wet, but Bruce told me that it was dry and it was not a problem.

We drove until 7:30pm and arrived at the North Little Rock Riverside RV Park with the rain still heavily coming down.  We had a reservation, and we got into our site, and settled in for a warm night’s sleep.

Our visit to Little Rock was to see our daughter, son-in-law, and soon to be one-year old granddaughter, Rachel.  While here, we are baby sitting while they do some work on the new house that they are having built. 

Here are some pictures of Rachel that I took with my cell phone……….

Grammie enjoyed her day with Rachel, and visa-versa…

It was a nice sunny day in Little Rock today, after all the rain yesterday.  I drove Deanne out to the house to meet Mike and took a picture from a long distance on the way out.   It does not have the brick up or the shingles on the roof………

More pictures of Rachel and the house to come.  We will be baby-sitting again tomorrow.

Red Bay Update

For the readers who have a Tiffin motorhome and have been to Red Bay for repairs and other work, this post will make more sense than for others.

This has been our most successful visit to Red Bay from the timely repairs and lack of frustrating events.  As posted previously, our appointment wasn’t until Monday, but they got a little head start on Friday with the ‘short side’ rails. 

We were scheduled to be in the mechanical shop first thing on Monday to get the attwood  jacks replaced/upgraded to the new system.  This meant replacing all four jacks, new computer and control pad as well as additional wiring.  We were in the bay at 7:00AM when they opened, and we were out by 11:30AM.  I went back to the rail area, and managed to get us in to finish the rails at 12:00noon.  Except for one piece of trim, our rails were finished at 4:00PM……… and since they have pre-painted black rail material, and our rails are all black, no painting was necessary.

Here’s the Bus up in the air for the jacks installation……

At 7:00AM Tuesday, we were back in the rail bay to finish the trim work, and I talked to the supervisor in charge of that area, and I got him to agree to pick up the rest of our list of work.  They replaced two fogging windows, (upper door and the passenger side window) checked my DS slide floor for rotting and sealed it (no rotting found), and repaired the chain drive cover on the rear of the PS slide.   With that, we were finished up…….. and it was only 11:00AM. 

Here’s pictures in the bay with the window installation in progress…..

After parking the bus back in our site, I returned to settle our account, and found that the windows, which are out of warranty, were quite expensive.  My bill was $595, and the two windows was all that was billable.  I rationalized that since I got the $2700 jack upgrade for free, there was not  problem.

While watching the windows being replaced, I got a chance to see them set up a new coil of aluminum material for the curved side rails.  It is much like the gutter machines except it is set up to make the semi-circular shape:

We had previously made an appointment to get some dents and scratches repaired on the passenger side of the Bus that I got when I lost a fight with a six-pack of baskets in a Wal-Mart parking lot in El Paso.  My preference was Bruce Deaton’s Paint and Body shop located just outside the factory gate here in Red Bay. 

We were getting tired from getting up early enough to be at the bay doors at 7:00AM here at Tiffin.  I assumed that Bruce’s shop would be better, like starting at 8:00AM.  When I checked yesterday for our appointed on Wednesday, I found out that they start at 6:00AM. So, this morning, we got up even earlier!!

The good news was that Bruce and his crew was ready to work on it, and we were in the bay and they were removing dented panels and doors by 6:30AM.

Here are pictures of Burce’s shop and the work…..

The Tiffin factory tour now includes the Power Glide chassis plant and the carpenter shop.  As soon as I post this, we are headed over to take the tour.

We may even be on the road by Thursday evening!!

 

Saturday and The Rattlesnake Saloon

After a stormy couple of days, complete with tornado threats, and hitting in areas both south and north of us, we woke up on Saturday morning with blue skies and plenty of sunshine.

We took the opportunity to clean of the bugs that accumulated on the front of the Bus and the windshield. It was a little cool, but not too bad.

After that, we made a run to the Piggly Wiggly for a few groceries.

Our Tiffin friends, Steve and Sandy Allgire are here, and we had made a date with them to go to the Rattlesnake Saloon for lunch and to see what it is like. We kind of wanted to compare it to the Desert Bar that we visited on our stay in Quartzsite in January.

If was a neat place to have lunch when you are bored at Red Bay, but it did not compare well to the Desert Bar. The hamburgers were good, and we had a good time. Some friends of the Allgires, the Nelson’s from Washington state went with us. Like others from Washington, they tried to get me to pronounce it without the “R” in it!! I explained that I warshed my car..... I did not waaash it!!

Here are some pictures:

It was a nice drive of about 20 miles to the site, and we followed Steve in his “new to him” Tahoe with dual glasspacs, which he “gunned” and drove like a 15 year old kid. I suspect he did not have them on his first car as a teenager…..

Upon arrival we were ushered into the back of a pickup truck for the ride down the hill to the restaurant area…..

The ride was a little exciting and we had to hold on…..

We looked around for a while and then went inside to eat. With the recent bad weather, they were not very busy……

There were some interesting items in the restaurant:

A rattlesnake attacking a rabbit……

A flower arrangement using a pair of boots as a vase…..

A statement on gun control……….

As usual, there is always great ‘guy’ philosophy in the men’s room….

As we were leaving, Steve noticed that the four ceiling fans were belt driven from a single pair of motors at one end of the building…

Back outside, we took more pictures….

Steve wanted to get some plant close-ups, but ended up stumbling a bit……… and Patsy caught it with the camera…..

We saw the ‘limo’ coming back, so we snapped picture of a cow with long horns and climbed back on the truck…..

As we got back to the parking lot, we came across some folks that were horseback riding, and they talked ‘Cowboy Steve’ into taking a ride….

We traveled back to the Tiffin Service Center and had a quiet evening.

Don’t have any plans for Sunday……… we will have to see what happens!!