Exterior paint job

[slam308]

Has anyone gone from a really light colored rig to a really dark rig or vice versa? I'm wondering how much the exterior paint color effects the interior temperatures. I believe that all motorhomes have a white roof, so maybe I'm concerned about nothing.
Shari

[JudyJB]

Sounds like you are doing some shopping!! That is always fun. I have a multi-color rig with a white roof, and not anything else, but I have a question. Are you thinking of painting a current rig or buying one with a dark paint color?

When I was first shopping for my new motorhome, I was very much against spending the extra money for full body paint. As it happened, I got a very good deal on a rig that already had it. Ordering it without the paint would have taken longer and cost more because the dealer had had this rig on his lot for several months and wanted to get rid of it.

Seven years later, I am really glad I got the darker color with full body paint for one very big reason--the paint does not turn yellowish or become dull with age. Other than a few scratches and scrapes, my motorhome still looks pretty new. Some, but maybe not all, rigs with just bare fiberglass and a gloss coat, look older faster. Decals also loosen with age and have to be replaced, but a lot of people wax their vehicle. I have done nothing to mine other than washing it.

As far as heat goes, most of the sunshine hits the roof, not the sides. And it also depends where you plan on camping. I am guessing that sitting in the sunshine all day, my rig is going to be hotter than one that is plain white, but I nearly always camp where there is electricity or use my generator to run my AC when it gets hot outside.

[Pooker]

Right this moment, Serendipity is at the RV repair facility getting her graphics replaced. Although she is only 6 years old, she looks old and ragged, compliments of our So Cal sun, they say. I'm nearing the time when I will need to hang up the keys and there's no way I could get what I owe on her looking the way she does. This time the graphics are being painted, not vinyl ones. I thought a nice maroon or wine color would look great with her golden tan body color, but the repair guy said dark colors deteriorate and fade faster. I'm not absolutely sure that's true, having owned dozens of camping rigs over the years and redoing one Class A a few years back. Actually, the oldest and darkest motorhome we had held up better than any of the others!

Back a few years ago, a local news channel did a test to either confirm or debunk whether or not black cars got hotter than white ones. We have all heard this for years. They parked two identical model cars, one black and one white, in an open parking lot in the sun, in summer. They put thermometers in the back seats. After a period of time they checked the temperatures. They were exactly the same! So, I'm sure there are people who will still believe the exterior color makes a difference in the interior temperature, but I've owned a dark brown rig and some white ones. I never noticed a difference. When it's a hundred degrees out you need A/C no matter what color!

Pooker

[slam308]

Thank you both so much! This is exactly the real world experience I was looking for.
I'm not looking at re-painting anything, but was wondering if I should eliminate a dark full-body paint job from my list of possible contenders.
I wouldn't pay to have a full body paint, but if something pops up, I don't want to discount it for no reason. Most of the time I'd probably be in an open field with no hook ups and no shade.

Pooker, when the repair guy said dark colors fade faster, any idea if he was he talking about paint or decals? Sounds like decals.
Also, that's really interesting about the test of black vs. white cars. I'd never heard of someone doing that before. This opens up my options considerably.
Shari

[Pooker]

Shari,

He was talking paint! I'm still not convinced of that, but we'll see what happens when he calls me to come pick out a color. He plans to remove all the vinyl graphics, sand, fill, (whatever needed) and then call me to see paint samples. I've had experience with vinyl graphics on previous RVs and we even had one totally redone, but that was redone with vinyls. That place did an amazing job and designed the new graphics. I hope Sere comes out as nice. This guy did say most of us screw up because we don't have our rigs waxed often enough to protect the paint and graphics. He's right!

Pooker

[Bethers]

Evie, a good hand washing and waxing 3 times a year and my 2014 rig looks like garbage. Unfortunately washing and waxing don't help poor jobs from the factory. I've given up. Winter before last I got a quick wash at Blue Beacon (who I've used a lot) and all the finish washed right off. I don't blame Blue Beacon because, again, this rig has been a nightmare finish wise. Eventually I'll have to have it completely redone.

[MandysMom]

My class B sat neglected for several years, in the heat of California sun and rain of winter. It's Mercedes white painted metal with vinyl graphics. Earlier in spring I paid a young man who has done detailing to clean her up. He literally was getting moss out of crevices! Once clean and waxed it looks great! The graphics have some peeling of their clear covering and a little fade, but Night Owl turned 14 in April and I've had several people say she looks much newer than her age. I think it may well depend on what the RV shell is made of. Mine with German automotive paint on metal may well fare much better than environmentally compliant US paint over fiberglass. From now on my rig will get much better attention but your stories sure make me think about what other rig I might add to my fleet once the bus sells.
Velda

[JudyJB]

I was told to make sure the manufacturer used regular automotive paint, but I have no other evidence, other than I have driven my motorhome for 126,000 miles in a variety of climates, and the paint still looks new. (Not counting the small area of chips where a car sprayed small gravel. It is not in a prominent place, however. I also have a few places where the gloss overcoat got scraped by tree branches, but you have to really look to find them.) When it is clean, I have had a lot of people think it WAS new.

Also, what Fleetwood does is paint the entire vehicle one color--mine is beige. Then it layers on the other colors to make the pattern. So some places have two or even three coats of paint, plus a gloss coat. I have had no peeling or anything else and have been through many Blue Beacon truck washes with no damage, so I think my paint job is pretty good. I am really sorry Beth and a few others have had such bad experiences.

And what happened with me is that I found this rig loaded with paint and a bunch of extras I did not really care about, but the price was excellent. The dealer had ordered it loaded because they wanted to take it to RV shows to show it off. If you are looking for used, also look at dealers for rigs that are on display and they want to get rid of. This will depend on the part of the country--in the cold east coast, winter is a good time, although I got mine in March, after all the RV shows. It had plastic on the floors and was clean with no damage from being shown. And once the new models come out in September, they can't wait to get rid of the old ones!!

[slam308]

Any idea what type of paint Winnebago uses? That's what I'm looking at.

I'm very lucky since my husband paints antique cars/trucks, fire engines, fork lifts, farm tractors.... And, I can pick any combination of red, white, black or gray (or mixes of those colors) and we wouldn't have to pay for paint. Hmm, an all pink RV with black paw prints all over it...

[Pooker]

Beth - sorry to hear about your rig. I remember how much you loved your old rig and how happy you were when you bought this one. It's a shame that many manufacturers are using cheap, shoddy products in their RVs today. I told Pleasure Way that one of the graphic companies who examined Sere said they weren't properly applied, the vinyl was cheap and inferior, and looked like the designs were applied on bare metal. Customer Service wasn't very agreeable, for sure.

Just before my husband died, we bought a Windsport Class A that on the surface looked high quality. However, underneath the gorgeous decor all the drawers were shoddy with plastic guides that broke and they had only one thin track of wood. First trip out the large, mirrored closet door plastic latch broke and the doors had to be braced with pillows and we had to replace the kitchen faucet the second day out. Everything behind the scenes was cheap. We sure wished we had kept our older Coachman even if it did have 89,000 miles on it. Now there are times when I think I should have kept my Itasca Class C, but I do love my B. Sigh.

Judy - Sounds like you were very lucky and with the serious use your rig gets it was a very good decision.

[Bethers]

Any idea what type of paint Winnebago uses? That's what I'm looking at.

No idea, but my rig is a Winnebago. I honestly believe my problem stems from purchasing a new rig on its first year. New color scheme, etc. I've found a couple other people with my same problem and turns out they bought rigs of the same year all with the new color scheme. Most frustrating was that I complained after just over a year and, of course, that was not covered anymore. If I had been close to the Winnebago factory I would have gone there but now, I think I missed that opportunity.

Evie, many things on my old rig were much better made. And it was considered a lesser manufacturer back then. Now they all seem to take lots of short cuts. I treat this rig with much more care... Constantly checking that screws are still tight. Discovered one missing entirely the other day.

[JudyJB]

Pooker, just to be clear, the paint has held up wonderfully, as has the engine and transmission, but the rest is pretty much the usual crap!

The engine and transmission were made by Ford, and when I bought it, I was working at Ford developing a training program on quality for hourly team leaders for the Ford Corporate Quality guys. They were the Six-Sigma group, meaning they went farther than the normal bell curve with quality. They told me I should be able to get 300,000-400,000 miles on that v10 engine. I had worked with them for a whole year, and they were not trying to sell me anything. (Their offices were on the outside edges of a very large room. In the middle were big bins full of things returned from dealers all across the country--sideview mirrors, bumpers, engine parts, brakes, etc. so they knew what they were talking about.) They were right--the engine and transmission are about the only parts I have NOT had problems with.

I have had regular problems with drawer latches, water pumps, outside storage bins leaking during rain, faucets, couch, sinks leaking, toilets, plumbing, you name it. I don't know how they got the paint right, to tell you the truth, because they got almost everything else wrong. My recent shower faucet failure was due to their using wood screws to hold the faucets on instead of the regular screws that come with faucets!! I am guessing someone lost the screws and just used what he found on the factory floor!

I spent almost 30 years working for the automotive industry, and can attest to the terrific gains they have made in quality since I started there in 1986. (When I worked for a training company in the 90s and early 00s, I visited over 50 GM plants, so I got to see a lot of manufacturing, rightly or wrongly done. I worked for Ford from 2005-2012, although that was mostly doing finance courses.) Unfortunately, the RV manufacturers are still way back in the early 80s! The big problem is that they make these things one at a time, not on a modern real assembly line where standards are controlled by computer programs that catch errors as they are being made, not months or years later. In an RV factory, there is no one or no computer to catch a guy losing the screws that came with the faucet and picking up some wood screws instead because that was the easiest fix at the time!

One of the things with robots is that they do the job the same way every single time with no errors. These guys who make RVs do their jobs any which way and however is fastest and easiest. I went to visit three RV plants before I bought mine, and frankly none of them did things the way I knew they should be done, but I bought one anyway. No choice. As one guy with a $400,000 RV I met in Florida said, "They're all crap!"

If you ever get to Detroit, go to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI, and take the factory tour. You will be taken to the Dearborn Truck Plant, which is one of the most modern in the country. You will be shown all the ways that errors are prevented in a modern factory. In that factory and many others, if an assembly line worker tried to put in the wrong screws or failed to tighten something, a sensor would catch it and lights would flash and sirens howl! If it was not immediately fixed, the assembly line would shut down. Really! This is called Poka Yoke, one of the weird things I learned on the job. Look it up for fun.

And spend a day touring the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, as well. And while in Detroit, spend at least a full day at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and half a day wandering around downtown and the riverfront!

[OregonLuvr]

I have been very happy with the quality in my Winnebago. I dont have paint I have decals and after 12 years they are starting to oxidize and peel a bit but still look okay. I have a 2007 and I sure would not buy a new one in this day and age. They just dont make them the same anymore. Their plan is to turn em out fast and furious. I have friends that have bought new and they are very disappointed in the things they have had to fix or unable to fix for a reasonable cost. I would like a smaller RV now that I am not living in mine for contract assignments but I have done so many upgrades to this one I could not afford to repeat. So keeping mine until I just dont want to do it anymore.