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Old 09-05-2010, 07:31 PM   #1
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New Flagstaff Owner...

Well, brought home a 2011 26RLSS and let's start it off with a pic:



That's it sitting our driveway about an hour after it came home. Power everything except the foot steps.

Floor plan:



The tow vehicle will my reliable ol' 98 GMC K2500 Sierra 6.5 Turbo Diesel ECLB with a 4L80E transmission and 4:11 gears.

Oddly enough, I only have a couple pics from when I bought it:



The ol' girl didn't even notice the trailer back there on the ride home, and that was without trailer brakes as my Tekonsha Voyager controller picked a few moments after leaving the dealers lot to die.

But then again, my truck isn't exactly "stock" anymore either......wink wink. It's a rust free British Columbia truck that I snagged for an outstanding price. Let's just say the wife beat the guy up so much we paid 2500 under fair market value!

It's got a complete compliment of guages to monitor every parameter in the truck, but the most important ones will be the EGT and boost guages. I'll be driving by those more than the speedo so we don't experience a holed piston or cracked head will climbing grades like those at Rogers Pass.

I'm also going to hook up my OBDII tuning software and come up with a good towing tune for the PCM.

Next for the "towing package" is a new Husky Centerline equalizer hitch with sway control:



Worked great even without the stab bars!

I took some measurements when we bought the trailer, set up the hitch at home and when we dropped the trailer on the truck it only dropped 2 inches (well, my truck also has the slide in camper factory package-ie: stiffer rear springs).
That was without the equalizer/sway bars (trailer didn't have the brackets installed), so a quick install and adjustment and she'll be sitting with the one inch drop the instructions call for.

Then ordered up a Tekonsha P3 brake controller to replace the Voyager:

Grrrrr...4 picture limit won't let me post it so here's a link - http://www.tekonsha.com/product/deta...90195&cat=1435

We finished up with a bunch of towing accessory bits we needed. Some of the items were:

-Couple boxes of stacking ground levelers
-Rubber rock guard skirt for the truck (attaches to hitch and runs the width of the truck)
-Tire changing "ramp"
-Chocks
-Tire covers
-Etc, etc....

Believe it or not, this is our very first travel trailer!

I've owned a tent trailer before (it was an older early 80's model) and I've done the "try to warm the earth with my body heat" tent trips.

-Tent trailer was a PITA to set up and tear down (although better than a tent).
-Trying to heat the earth with my body heat never worked out well. I figured out after few years the earth is just too darned big......

So we figured if we were going in, we'd go in deep, get it all and do it right the first "travel trailer" time around......well, we also have two huge dogs so this will make travelling much more trouble free than dealing with hotels and such these days...

Cheers
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Old 09-05-2010, 07:43 PM   #2
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Nice Trailer !!! Thats the way to go...deep end first. Thats what we did !! Just got home last night with our Windjammer 3065. I really like your lay-out !! Its was yours or our lay-out (wife liked it better..she won)lol. -- Have fun enjoy !!
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Old 09-05-2010, 09:12 PM   #3
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Welcome to the forum!! nice trailer, enjoy it
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Old 09-06-2010, 12:00 AM   #4
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Welcome to the forum and yes that is a very nice layout, almost identical to our V-Lite except for the V-Lite having a bedroom slide. ENjoy and be safe.
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Old 09-06-2010, 07:23 AM   #5
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We have the same TT. Love it! This was cleaning and mod weekend (I am on call this weekend for work), but will be hitting the road Friday afternoon. Enjoy it, we sure do!Click image for larger version

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Old 09-06-2010, 09:49 AM   #6
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Welcome to the forum!! nice trailer, enjoy it
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Old 09-11-2010, 09:40 PM   #7
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Well, it's official:



MaxAir II installed and my first modification to the trailer. These things really should be a factory install on a 35 000 dollar (after taxes) trailer

I bought one more for the bedroom "Fantastic", but I think I might take it back and buy a MaxxAir FanMate instead.

But now I've opened Pandora's box of modifications and there's no going back......

Thinking about a seriously upgraded AV system now. Should be no problem seeing as I've built 6000 watt car audio systems before. Should be able to blow the vinyl right off the roof!

Need to add a second deep cycle 12v battery. Perhaps grab that Honda generator I've been eyeballing for a week or so now.

Then I'll take the factory 22" Toshiba and move it into the bedroom, swap the biggest flat panel that will fit into the entertainment center, Samsung bluray with wifi media streaming, etc.......

Wifey is talking about adding another sky light now.

Oy Vey, what have I done?

Quick, somebody slam the lid shut on that bloody box!

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Old 09-11-2010, 10:35 PM   #8
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Congrats on the new trailer, the new look of the Flagstaff for 2011 is very nice. I am still finishing up the mods on our 2-week old fifth. We absolutely love it.
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Old 09-12-2010, 08:38 AM   #9
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Took a couple of pics of the inside. Lots of room for the two of us plus a future puppy!
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Old 09-12-2010, 10:37 AM   #10
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Great White, nice looking trailer & truck.

How long have you had the truck & do they use salt on the roads in BC? The reason I ask, a lot of the GMT400s ('88-'98) extended cabs here in Ontario are showing rust damage @ the rear cab corners & above the box wheel opening. I had a '94 K1500 for 6 years & sold it w/ 100,000 miles on it. I washed it more often in the winter than summer & the only issue I had was surface rust where the tailpipe heat had burned off the paint. Easily fixed before selling.
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Old 09-12-2010, 11:10 AM   #11
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Great White, nice looking trailer & truck.

How long have you had the truck & do they use salt on the roads in BC? The reason I ask, a lot of the GMT400s ('88-'98) extended cabs here in Ontario are showing rust damage @ the rear cab corners & above the box wheel opening. I had a '94 K1500 for 6 years & sold it w/ 100,000 miles on it. I washed it more often in the winter than summer & the only issue I had was surface rust where the tailpipe heat had burned off the paint. Easily fixed before selling.

I've had this truck for about 6 months now. But I've owned GMT 400 chassis trucks for years. I bought this one and scrapped my last (89 ECLB K1500) because of terminal frame rust (it was an east coast truck). This truck is sitting at 406 000 kms right now and still dieseling on....

Where I am in BC (vancouver island) they don't even really get snow. When they do, it might last a couple days at most. Temps rarely drop below 0c. So, no salt to really speak of. Heck, I don't think my town owns more than 1 plow truck!

GMT400's rusting in the cab corners, ext cab rockers and rear wheel wells are common. Thing is, these panels rust from the "inside out" and here's why:

The rear wheel wells are double walled (inner fender and bedside) and trap dirt in between them where the are welded at the fender lip. This gets wet and forms a "mud plug". This holds the moisture against the metal. The sun warms the metal from the outside and you have the best possible conditions for rust to form. I make it a policy to shoot high pressure water between the panels when I wash the truck and I keep spraying until it comes out clean on the other side of the well. Yes I'm adding water, but since I flush the dirt out, it dries quickly and staves off the rusties.

The cab corners rot because the cab drains plug with dust and dirt. It cakes on from the outside and runs down the panel from the inside. I periodically pull the rear interior panels off, flush the back side of the panels and finish with a rust preventer fluid of some sort.

Haven't had a panel issue yet that wasn't already in progress....

This one has clean rear wells and just a hint of rust in behind the ext cab rockers. Sure enough, there was a layer of dirt in the bottom that had clogged the drain vents solid. It was an easy afternoon to clean it up and shoot it with new paint. Then a good coat of rust preventative oil and clean out the drains.

Good to go for another 20 years....
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Old 09-12-2010, 03:17 PM   #12
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I don't know how the GMT800s will fare. Engineering was always having us cut the cab corners out of "tryout" cabs that they had built & sent thru the elpo process. They would have some new type of foam insulation that they were trying out.
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Old 09-12-2010, 03:33 PM   #13
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I don't know how the GMT800s will fare. Engineering was always having us cut the cab corners out of "tryout" cabs that they had built & sent thru the elpo process. They would have some new type of foam insulation that they were trying out.
Aha!

I see we have a factory insider.......
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Old 09-12-2010, 04:08 PM   #14
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Aha!

I see we have a factory insider.......
Make that "former factory insider". I "retired" in '08 before the Oshawa Truck Plant closed last year. If the VIN of your truck starts w/ a "2" it would've been built in Oshawa.

I was in the Truck Plant from '85 to '88, then from '97 to '08. I was over in the Car Plant (Luminas, Monte Carlos & Regals) during the interim years.
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Old 09-12-2010, 08:50 PM   #15
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is "elpo" what is commonly refered to as the "e-coat"?

Or is it a corrosion testing process?
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Old 09-12-2010, 09:20 PM   #16
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is "elpo" what is commonly refered to as the "e-coat"?
Yes, electro-deposit coating

The body is charged + or - (not sure as I wasn't involved in that stuff) & the tank w/ the coating is the opposite. I spent most of my years in the body shop rebuilding the spot welding guns, 1st manual ones during the C/K truck years, then robotic after '97.
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Old 09-18-2010, 12:22 PM   #17
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The tech heard back from FR warranty dept on upgrading our busted (less than 24 hrs old at the time) XS75.

The answer?

Basically, go "do something nasty" to your hat.

We'll replace it and nothing else. Shut up and take it.

No problem. I bought the seven year extended warranty and I'll be back every time it craps out. Every glitch, every stumble, every littel GD thing that goes wrong with it.

When that's done, I'll rip the pile out and swap in a jensen. Or whatever is the best going item for wall mount RV at the time.

It's not like we were asking for something for nothing. The trailer has a lower end model and were willing to pay the difference for a better one.

I bought a TT to enjoy travelling, audio and video are a big part of that for me. If it wasn't, I'd have stayed with lower end models or wouldn't have bought at all. For 35,000 all in (that's Canadian dollars in an area when TT's demand a premium), you'd expect a little bit of service. Service is not replacing a warranty item, that's the obligation of the contract. Service is finding a way to make the customer happy with thier purchase after an event like this.

Thanks for nothing FR, at least the dealer was wiling to go half on the price difference for the upgrade.

Not happy with FR and this does not bode well for the rest of the warranty experience in the future...not good at all.
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Old 10-30-2010, 08:42 PM   #18
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Well, you're not gonna believe this but:

I dropped in the other day to return my crapped out Concertone head unit and the dealer had just gotten in a 2011 Flagstaff Classic Super Lite 831RLBSS with the atrium slide.

Against my better judgment, I walked in to have a looky see.

Crap.

Right away I loved the atrium slide and the extra space. The larger Tv, pantry, dinette with actual chairs and zx700 with ipod option was also nice. The queen bed in it's own slide out and bedroom armoir was an extra nice touch

I took the wife down to look the next day and she agreed if this had been on the lot, this would have been the one we would have dealt on.

The dealer dropped in and after a long talk we headed to the finance office to see what could be done.

Long story short?

We lost a thou on the super lite and paid a couple thou less than asking price on the 831RLBSS. The dealer sweetened the deal by buying down the interest rate by 1% with his option and we transferred the extended warranty (7 year hitch to bumper) over for a couple hundred. They're even coming out to pick up the trailer and haul it back to the dealership. I'll loose my two maxairr II vent covers, but a hundred bucks will buy me two more.

I pick up the 2011 Flagstaff Classic Super Lite 831RLBSS later this week....



Hmmm, does this mean I have to start a new "welcome" thread?

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Old 10-30-2010, 10:35 PM   #19
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That atrium slide is a thing of beauty isn't it?
It cost us an extra 600 clams when we ordered ours, but when you're parked in a private site, the view is awesome.
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