Motorhome Front End Alignments

[NWJeeper]

So we took our 1.5 year old rig in today to have the front end alignment done, finally. The owner of the shop was surprised that I was bringing it in as it is so new with such low mileage. After telling him our story he just shook his head and told me it would be ready in a couple hours.

Well we picked it up and I asked him how bad it was. He told me the camber was off, which I had already figured by how badly our tires were worn in only 9000 miles, but he also said the toe-in was out by 1.5"!!!! That is huge and he told me, that more than anything will chew up tires quickly, I told him "don't I know! I just spent close to $900 for two new tires on a 1.5 year old rig!"

Forest River claims they align every rig before it leaves the factory but clearly they don't or they do a really bad job of it. However from other RV owners we have talked to we aren't alone and it seems to be common on new RVs from many manufacturers.

Forest River will only cover the cost of an alignment in the first 90 days of ownership, this is their policy. I doubt that anyone will notice the onset of damage to their tires in the first 90 days of ownership.

If you have recently just bought a new motorhome, call Forest River (not your dealer) and tell them it doesn't seem to handle right and INSIST they pay for a front end alignment. I really wish someone would have told me this, it would have saved me $900!

[kvtaylor]

I mentioned this before, but I will add my two cents again. It was brought to our attention from the dealer that ours was out of line when I was adding a Safe-T stablizer on the front end linkage. This was brand new. They sent it out to the local Ford Truck dealer in Richmond for allignment. Forest River paid for it. We now have 17000 miles on it and the tires are in good shape. I'm not sure why but it seems that the ones mostly that are out of alignment are the 378 models such as ours.