[glen]

That is a first…unbelievable

[AL]

I just want to add that a bus, regardless of who manufactures it has the body as the frame. That frame is almost universally a welded structure into which the house or seating is built. The sub structures like the axle structures and the engine cradle are welded securely into the body structure so in the event of any collision or upset it all holds together.

There is a considerable advantage to a chassis structure that remains intact during a collision because it is generally absorbing the impacts while continuing to protect those inside the structure. Over the years we have seen the results of an RV accident in which the entire house portion of the RV was strewn over several hundred feet leaving the occupants with nothing around them to protect them.

[PHILIP]

Hate it when that happens.

[AL]

You’ll need to enlarge report.

[Archived]

[Dick]

I saw that picture on another site also. There was a post (I don’t know how reliable) that the manufacturer of the RV was investigating.

There was also speculation on Facebook (how reliable could that be!) that “maybe” the house wasn’t fastened to the chassis properly. (I do have a couple of theories of why the house separated from the chassis.)

Side note … in I think a Facebook thread a Prevost shared a discussion they had with a SOB, Sticks N Staples RV owner who kept asking “who made the chassis for your Prevost” and couldn’t fathom that the bus is built from the ground up by Prevost and the chassis wasn’t built by one of the “reputable, recognized high end Class A chassis builders”.

[Mark]

There was a cable TV channel that featured articles on what they called high end RVs. I once watched the complete build of a very expensive 45 foot motor home and I knew from that moment on I wouldn’t even want to ride in one.

The chassis was a RV chassis but I cannot remember if it was a Spartan, Freighliner or another brand, but it was a two rail chassis with a rear diesel and it was apparently heavy. From that they showed how it was prepared for the house portion. The entire two rail chassis had a flat floor the size of the motor home added to it. There were cross members attached to the frame rails and then the floor decking was attached with bolts to the cross members.

Then the show switched to how the walls were built and bolted or screwed to the floor platform which appeared to be 3/4″ plywood. As soon as I saw how the house structure was attached it was obvious there was no rollover protection and any collision with something big or heavy was apt to tear the screws or bolts through the plywood allowing the upper structure walls to depart from the floor decking.

Looks like in the photo above on what appears to be a much cheaper and probably less well built motor home no consideration is given to protecting the occupants. In the case pictured above the floor seemed intact because the weak points were the cross member attachments.

[Archived]

Note that there is no license plate on this coach. It’s likely it was being transported by the factory to the dealer and driver quickly found out that the factory did not properly bolt the chassis to the house. He just ran off the road and hit a berm causing a sudden weight shift on the chassis and house. Not properly bolted in place, this is the end result.

[John]

I have a very good friend who owns a motorhome built by Winnebago. About 2 years ago he told me that while under the rear end of it he noticed an area at the left rear corner where the body was attached to the frame some wear at the attach point. He took it to an RV service facility and upon inspection they told him not to worry about it, that it was just normal wear at the attach point and that it should pose no problem. He asked me what I thought. I told him that I didn’t think that any wear pattern at a body attach point should be considered “normal” and offered to take a look.

He brought it to my shop where I do maintenance on and restorations of vintage airplanes and I took a look. What I found was that the left rearmost body mounting bracket that had been welded to the frame had broken free from the frame and the floor of the body, which had been supported by the bracket 1 and1/2 inches above the frame, had dropped down and was now resting on the frame. The wear that he had observed was on the floor crossmember where it was now in contact with the frame now unattached and able to move around somewhat.

To correct the problem I jacked the body up to restore the original frame to body clearance and put in a 1 foot piece of solid 1 and 1/2 inch square steel bar stock for the body crossmember to rest on and welded it and the original mounting bracket securely to the frame. I don’t think that there will be a reoccurring problem here again.

After completing the repair I took a look at the rest of the body/frame attach points on both sides from front to rear. What I found was that the brackets had been welded with a wire welder (MIG machine) and that there was an obvious difference in the quality of the welds between the left and right side of the coach. Obviously done by two different people with different skill levels which I would attribute to normal assembly line production. What really bothered me was that there couldn’t have been much of an inspection in the interest of quality control. I took some photos and gave them to my buddy and suggested that he give them to Winnebago for their consideration and to possibly give them a heads up on what had gotten past their QC inspectors. I think that he was just glad to get it repaired and didn’t follow up with reporting to Winnebago what had been found.

I have since often wondered how many Winnebago manufactured motorhomes are out there that this same person welded the body attach brackets on. Maybe that coach in the photos is one of them.

John

[PHILIP]

It is a major NO-NO to weld on a truck chassis or frame. Most trucks will have labels that forbid welding because it changes the characteristics of the frame metal.

Because of that most truck and school bus bodies are bolted or riveted to the chassis frame rails.

I am sure the professional truckers on here will echo my comments.

[Darrell]

John: What was the quality of the weld that had broken free? I suspect poor quality.

I’m on a Facebook page called something like RV Horror Stories. People post pictures of actual RV horror stories (often purchased with their life’s savings). Some of the horrors manifest themselves even before the first campfire and S’Mores.

I’m not a professionally trained welder nor an engineer. But what I find MOST troubling are the pictures of welds with little or NO penetration, stitch welding when it should have been continuous, spring attachment points to the frame without effective gussets and/or boxing of frame channels in these high stress points.

These are being cranked out by the tens of thousands of units, being bought, and are rolling down the highway near you, towards you, and at you.

[Jeff]

The weld bead first of all looked like it had been done by a beginner with no continuity. My dad would have described it as looking “like a chicken had left a deposit” (or something similar). Not at all a smooth continuous bead. There was penetration alternating from one side to the other but not much with both the bracket and the frame together. I removed all of the original weld before rewelding it. The reason that I put the bar stock spacer between the cross member and the frame was because I didn’t want to chance a metallurgical problem due to the weld compromising the frame composition as Jon states. After the repair that I did, the bracket isn’t supporting the weight of the body anymore. I would have never thought that a Winnebago product would have been designed and constructed in this manner. I would have expected to find the body cross members to have had direct contact with the chassis frame rather than sitting on a relatively small support an inch and a half above it. I’m sure there must be a reason, but it’s not apparent to me.

I might also add that I have no idea what the left rear corner of the “box” weighed, but it took a considerable amount of hydraulic jacking power to lift it enough to get the spacer in position under it.

The bottom line is that the structural integrity of the coach is dependant on the method and quality of the attachment of the “box” to the chassis as illustrated by the wreck photo that started this discussion.

I’m just glad that I don’t have that kind of a potential problem to think about or possibly deal with.

John

[Archived]

This was a Foretravel, tornado caught it in SD. Judy and I golfed with this gentleman and his wife this January at ORI. Very sad, there is actually a youtube video by stormchasers recording the impact of twister and tthe coach.

[Ronald]

A perfect illustration of how the structure surrounding and supposedly protecting the occupants fails to do so.

If my coach is picked up and thrown I have confidence that my structure surrounding me may get seriously damaged, but will remain intact. I hope.

[darrell]

Jon , I think this Tornado is on line without the results here but clearly the item being destroyed is this RV . I would have attached it however seems the site does not allow that or I have no clew how . I can tell you this I do not feel any coach could have survived what I just saw . Give it a look .