We drove west for about 1 1/2 hours to Red Bay, AL which is the home of Tiffin Motorcoach, the major competitor of Newmar. It felt like we were entering “enemy” country. We headed over to Bay Diesel to get our annual maintenance work completed.
Very friendly people and they finished the work in just over two hours at a cost of $822. We had been paying around $1,200 at the Freightliner headquarters in Gaffney, SC. What a great deal! Unfortunately, they were unable to fix our dash AC as they didn’t have the correct line to replace the faulty one. They did say that they would try to source it as we were going to be in the area for a couple of more days. Thank you Jeff/Molli Wills and Bob/Jan Oakley for the recommendation. I’m not exactly sure how to describe Red Bay but I think I would use the word “podunk” if I knew how to spell it. I had asked the technician where we should go for lunch and he told me “nowhere in Red Bay”. After speaking with Bob he told us to try the Red Bay Yacht Club located in the campground called Red Bay Acres.
We didn’t see one yacht, trawler, boat, canoe, or kayak in the pond! But, since the yacht club also included a lounge with WiFi we decided to book a night so that we would have a comfortable space while we awaited our new windshield installation the next day.
We took the Busse Bus over to 1st Class Glass about 10 minutes away.
The place has bays designed to accommodate motorcoaches and they installed 100’s of windshields every year.
The new windshield looked great, now to keep the rocks off of it so we don’t get another crack. Since we had to wait a day to have the windshield glue dry we had to spend the night inside of their bays. It’s a little eerie being in the Busse Bus and sleeping inside a large garage. As we were waiting for the windshield to dry we called Bay Diesel to see if they had sourced the new line. They hadn’t but stated that they could make the line and that we could come in the next morning to get the AC repaired. We decided to stay another day, reserved a spot at First Class Glass for the night and let our friends in Memphis know that we would be coming in a day later.
Bay Diesel was able to replace the line but when they tested the system it still wasn’t holding pressure. After investigation it was determined that we also had a bad compressor. They also found a frayed electrical housing that needed to be replaced. The two hour fix now turned into a five hour ordeal. Around 2pm we were ready to pay when the technician backed the Busse Bus out of the bay without unplugging our electric and damaged our 50 foot cord, the reel and the pass through area where the cord transitions from inside to outside.
Luckily there was no damaged on the coach. Bay Diesel totally took ownership and repaired what they could to get us on our way. They will purchase a new reel for us and ship it to Colorado where I’ll have to figure out how to swap it out. Another unexpected delay of 2.5 hours. We finally left Red Bay at ten to four and had a 2.5 hour drive to get us to Memphis. One thing I have learned with driving a RV is patience. I took a deep breath.
After being in Red Bay for a few days I can see why people love coming here with their coach, the people of Red Bay are incredibly nice and so welcoming. There are very competent cottage companies that know how to take care of people and their rolling homes.
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