What’s up with hinges breaking

[Pilosopo]

I feel like I’m pissing into the wind at this point but whatever.

@WileyDavis you should clear this up because I was told back in September when my hinges failed that a field fix was already possible.

My conversations with Graeme regarding this sealing process had me skeptical so I questioned this and was given the attached answer. That seemed fair enough so I agreed to just getting hinges till such time my camper could be resealed.

I’m guessing it’s a good thing then that I chose to forgo this at the time because it turns out this field fix isn’t even a thing

Also

Regarding the knowledge of campers and hinge failures, sealing and the effects etc.

[han]

I should have started a new thread instead of responding to your post about replying to emails. Doing so only clouded the issue, and wasn’t my intention. I never said you or anyone else wasn’t responding to people, and that wasn’t the point of my post. Responding to emails does nothing to address problems that aren’t known to customers. Simply put, it appears that GFC doesn’t fully understand how this looks from the outside, and the risk being assumed by not informing the owners that may be affected by it.

Expecting customers to somehow know about this issue doesn’t make any sense. No customer should have to search through a lengthy thread on a new, unpublicized company forum to find information about the possibility of the doors on their camper falling off. Why would they even be searching about a problem they didn’t know about? SEMA participation, small operation, staff turnover, etc. - none of that matters to someone that just had a door fall off for an unknown reason. While I’m sure staff has been scrambling to get a handle on the problem, that has apparently been accomplished. Good job, but that doesn’t do much good if the people that need the information don’t have it.

Does GFC have a customer email list? I’ll bet so.

Could GFC generate an email with an inspection process and the company’s refurbishment plan? Yes, especially this far into the history of the problem. All of that information is already in this thread.

How much time and money would it take to get that information out to GFC’s customers? Very little. Copy & paste from this thread, have the final version reviewed by staff, and send it.

I don’t see a reason not to send an email to your customers, but I can see a growing risk associated with failing to do so. The door problem is slowly eroding GFC’s reputation, and at this point, the harm it’s causing is self-inflicted. There’s no reason to wait on a new website, create separate promotional & support newsletters, or anything else. A problem has been identified, a solution found, and the company has published an official response here. Please get the word out before someone is hurt by a panel coming free, and the problem has a much larger impact on the company.

I know I’m being very direct, but I believe that’s required at this point. I want GFC to continue to succeed, as do many others. It appears that the corner is about to be turned on this problem, but it’s imperative that customers be informed now so that the mitigation process can continue. It’s in everyone’s best interest.

[Pilosopo]

It sounds like as long as the doors aren’t opened they feel curing will be alright

[WileyDavis]

@Pilosopo - Unfortunately it looks like from those emails that customer support jumped the gun. It is correct that when we started doing the reseals we were wary of transporting campers until the sealant had fully cured. We’ve since tested that and found that it’s okay as long as the panels remained closed for the seven-day cure (this is temperature and humidity dependent, so can be shorter in warmer, moister environments).

A field repair is possible but we’re still working out the details of doing it properly outside the shop. To affect the repair in a way that won’t cause the hinges to keep failing, a few things need to happen: First, all of the foam gasket needs to be removed from the tent frame. The adhesive on the rubber gasket is tenacious, so this can actually be a somewhat difficult step. But it all has to be removed or the new hinges won’t sit flat. Old hinges need to be removed from the panel. New hinges riveted on in the correct location (ideally using one of our flattening jigs to keep the hinge flat against the panel while it’s being riveted). All the panels installed and aligned before torquing the tent frame bolts. Aligning the panels requires that all the panels be aligned at the same time, since loosening one panel enough to adjust one, loosens them all.

All of this is doable in the field but to be done properly in a way that won’t continue to be problematic requires someone that’s been trained in the entire procedure (since we can’t send out our production assembly folks), and a few special mobile tools (flattening jig and foam removal, plus a few tidbits to make it easier for one person to do the job.) We don’t have this dialed in yet but we will soon. Once ready, we’ll be scheduling a resealing/inspection tour for customers who can’t bring their affected campers to our shop. I can’t say exactly what day this will start, but it is a top priority for us. We’ve also been improving the communication between customer service and engineering/production. That has been a problem for us but it is getting better and we’ll keep improving there so that the kind of communication problem you’ve experienced stop happening.

[Pilosopo]

@WileyDavis

So in other words, my camper has basically been a test bed for a bunch of things to be done incorrectly.

Through no fault of my own I have a camper that has been sealed incorrectly (hinges weren’t replaced), which is now stated to be one of the reasons for hinge failure. Personally, I don’t think anyone actually knew this till I started complaining as my emails show.

I have personally replaced both the drivers and passenger side hinges, one at a time as they failed with assurance from GFC that it was fine, there’d be no issues, etc. Except now it seems I should have used a flattening rig, and redone alignment as all panels have to be done at the same time, and that there are other tools, etc.

Have you guys actually done anything you state? Do you know how f’n difficult it is to break the sealant and do one panel by myself in the parking lot of an apartment complex? And now you’re telling me I was supposed to do all of them?

There’s a reason I wanted my camper to be returned to Montana when my first panel broke and that it should have been a covered, warranty issue. Nothing in this thread has shown me different.

Y’all should just buy this thing back from me at this point to get it out of the wild. Sounds like everything on it is a bit off now.

[Mike_GFCUSA]

I will start by saying I will let Wiley reply to directed questions to him.

For the warranty issue, it is 100% covered, and we will of course fix it. I am in the process of training a new driver so I can manage a sort of mobile warranty program. I will however be writing a new warranty policy as we have been going out of our way to fix, pick up and return campers at no charge to the customer and that is no in any way supported by our warranty. I should be done writing the new policy and have it posted up in the top section of the forum for everyone.

I do acknowledge your special situation here, so that was more directed at everyone and not just you.

[Tguffin]

I believe @han post (#189) is the most intelligent and reasonable post on this whole topic. I do remember entering my email address during the purchase process on the GFC website (a year ago) to receive newsletters/updates. Haven’t received any to my knowledge. Perfect way to inform customers of a “recall” /tsb relating to hinges on campers #1-n so they aren’t surprised when something happens, are potentially hurt if something happens, and can be proactive in having their hinge sealing redone. Seems like a pretty straightforward communication process to me.

[Casemler]

I do not have my camper yet so I can’t speak on the hinges. But I’ve seen a ton of people talking about bad communication. I sent them an email today and had a response within 30 minutes. This has been my experience pretty much every time I’ve reached out to them. Sometimes it’s over thirty minutes but most time it’s quick enough to make me feel like my business is important to them. I believe mike is doing all he can do, maybe just give him some room to work? Just my experience.

[Pilosopo]

I’m pretty sure if you experienced being told one thing, then another, and then find out from a completely different source (this forum) that everything up to that point was wrong, that you’ve missed 4 trips since purchasing due to issues like having spent a couple hours on separate weekends fixing hinges so the camper is just doing what it’s supposed to and then realizing you basically have a beta level camper with panels that can come off at any time do to hinge failure and all that you did was pointless…

Yeah, you’d have issues with the communication, too.

I know Mike is doing everything he can. He’s a nice guy. I bought him breakfast once.

The communication of issues and what’s gone on, still crap. But you know, that’s just my experience.

[Casemler]

Well good luck with your Experiences…

[Pilosopo]

And I truly hope they’ve sorted this all out for your camper.

Cause it sucks.

I have the same username here and Tacoma World. I’m a pretty positive person. You can see that in my posts.

This whole experience basically broke that part of me.

[ohhhmytaco]

Where did you see that the tubes will not match the frame?

[Zkzr2]

I share your sentiment and although I have had my share of issues (arguably yours are worse I believe) I think the process/communication/etc has gotten much better. I have a friend that recently ordered and his experience is nothing like when we ordered. I’ll give them credit that I believe the process is leagues better now.

However, for the folks that pre-ordered and waited and waited and being told conflicting stories for months on end with emails coming sparsely throughout the months with unanswered questions even when the emails were responded. And then after all that getting the camper and having issues in the field, it really puts a sour taste in your mouth. Hope your situation gets better; also I was lucky enough to get the new sealant (not sure if I have new hinges, but I assume so) due to a build inaccuracy and have yet to see an issue with them. I use my rear door limit strapped parallel with the ground with a kayak sticking out the back and have been on rough roads at highway speeds and haven’t noticed an issue [yet].

[Zkzr2]

@ace7196

One more edit. So what’s the deal with custom color matching? Now the front and rear don’t match the frame? Or did I just read that incorrectly?
It sounds like EVERYONE now only gets black tubes, regardless of frame color ordered. If true, I assume that was communicated to people ordering?

Not sure if you can order it custom color matched, but my replacement alu rear tube is black (original is the standard gray gloss powdercoat) and fixed to the frame rather than pinched between the anodized corners. Not sure where the front tube is yet, but not touching that till temps are well above 30F now; and we just got 9 inches of snow last week. Fluid film is my best friend with the wrath of salt coming soon.

[WileyDavis]

@ace7196 - the old tubes were made out of the lower frame material and built and powder coated with the frame. The new tubes are custom aluminum extrusion and processed and powder coated independently and are no longer color matched to the space frame. When someone orders a custom tent extrusion color they would have the option of having the cross bars In standard black or matching the tent frame color. You can still have the space frame in a custom color but even in stock colors the cross tubes no longer matched to the frame.

So essentially we now consider the cross tubes part of the tent frame as far as colors go and not the spaceframe. This is in part because they’re now two very different production processes and also because the textured black we use on the cross bars is more durable than most of the other colors and we prefer to use it on this part since it’s in a high wear area.

[WileyDavis]

@ace7196 - we’ll work on some more robot videos as for the printer, it’s been great. The new cross tubes we’ve been talking about began life as short printed sections. It’s nice being able to crank through lots of iterations before committing to the tooling.

[Nevadan]

@WileyDavis, since you’re here: Can you tell me about the riveting on the panels, or lack thereof? I understand that the glue is plenty strong, but it is a little disconcerting to see that your camper is one of the few sitting out there without rivets.

[Slowboater]

I don’t want to flog the dead horse too much. I need to remind everyone that I’m a very happy GFC owner. But, even if it’s only a couple percent failure - it’s making a huge ripple in the ‘community’. No matter how much advertising/instagramming is done - this is a small market and a couple dozen unhappy people talking about catastrophic failure of a key component is going to impact sales. My guess would be by A LOT.

I also assume that there aren’t many (any??) ‘impulsive buyers’ since you can’t get one off a lot. Folks come onto this site, TW, etc, and read the reviews. There are still less than 500 GFCs in the wild. So, the major proponents of the product and early adopters (Ace, Borrego, Me, Pilo, etc) need that ‘sunshine up the bum’ treatment. Get a couple of us bragging about how awesome we were treated and this thing can be turned around in a hurry IMHO.

[Czukie]

Smartest post I’ve seen all day

[Nevadan]

Agree, and you hit in on the head. And completely self-serving: we need the company to stay in business or else there is no “warranty program.” (I mean this in a positive tone!)