Stop 01 of 08
The walk that ends in a sheet of paper
Everything else on this site is downstream of this. The rig gets walked in the same order every time, every item gets a line, and you go home with the sheet whether or not a single thing needed doing.
The order is not for show. A busy shop checks what is in front of it and forgets what is behind the wheel arch, so the walk runs top to bottom and front to back and it does not change: roof, then the outside skin and every seam and every hole cut through it, then the running gear, then gas, then electrical, then inside for the appliances and the slides. It takes two to four hours depending on the rig and how much of it opens up.
What gets written down
Every line carries three things: what it is, what state it is in, and what it costs. States are measurements where a measurement exists — lining thickness in millimeters, regulator outlet pressure in inches of water column, the four digits of each tire’s date code, the voltage a battery held under load. Where there is no number, it is a plain sentence rather than a tick. “Wiper seal on the curb side is compressed but sealing. Watch, do not replace” tells you something. A green tick does not.
The zeroes
Passes get written down as passes with a zero beside them, and so does anything we were asked to quote and decided against. Those lines are the only auditable part of an inspection. If a shop tells you next spring that your brakes are finished, a sheet from last fall with a lining measurement and a date on it is the difference between believing them and asking a second question.
When to book it
Three or four weeks before you leave. That is not us managing the diary — it is so that the inspection and any work that follows are two separate events, and so that a part that is not on the shelf has time to arrive. Booking the walk for the day before a trip means finding out about a problem at the exact moment you can do least about it.
What we are looking for that you cannot see
Soft spots underfoot on the roof, which means the decking under the membrane has been wet for a while. Brinelling on a bearing race, which is the little ladder of marks left by a bearing that sat loaded and still. Grease pushed past an inner seal onto a brake lining. Date codes on tires that look brand new because they have no miles on them. A regulator that holds pressure perfectly and still feeds the appliances wrong. A slide that comes in a quarter of an inch out of square, which is invisible until the seal it has been chewing lets water into the wall.
Water and tanks
The fresh side gets pressurized and watched, because a pinhole at a fitting behind a panel will empty a tank into a floor overnight. The black tank gets flushed properly, with water and time. If the sensors still read wrong afterwards we write that on the sheet and tell you why: residue bridges the probes and no bottle of blue liquid permanently fixes it. Count days instead of trusting the panel.
On the sheet, every time
- Roof membraneState + any soft decking
- PenetrationsCounted, each one
- Tire date codesAll of them, written
- PressuresSet from axle weight
- BearingsCondition, last repack
- Brake liningsMeasured, in mm
- LP leak-downTimed, pass or fail
- RegulatorInches of water column
- BatteriesVolts under load
- Slide sealsEach one, by name
You keep the sheet. We keep a copy, so next year’s walk can be read against this one — which is when it starts being genuinely useful.
The line we are proudest of
Not sold Six tires · $0.00
Quoted elsewhere, declined here. The date codes read 3421 and 3521 — late 2021, under four years old — and the tread and sidewalls are sound. RV tires age out before they wear out. We will tell you the season they need replacing, and it is not this one.
An inspection that never produces a line like that is not an inspection. It is a sales appointment with a clipboard.
Before the season
Book the walk three weeks out
March and October fill first. Call with your date and we will tell you honestly what fits.