So our saga began last year after we returned from visiting my Pop back home in Missouri. We decided to take the leap and purchase my little dream teardrop. We looked at many vintage and used trailers and then after finding Crybaby Teardrop Trailers and seeing their work decided to have them build ours. We signed the papers early August 2013. The build was to take 2 months, after 7 long exhausting stress filled months we got our trailer..... this is wear this blog will begin.
Once finally home it rained and our trailer leaked, we contacted the builder and as it was under warranty we against better judgement took it back the 200 mile round trip to them to fix. I can just tell you it was a disaster, the glue was slopped everywhere and the sides were now scratched. Okay we sucked it up and set to work on fixing the mounting issues we were finding. I started on the galley since it seemed to need the least work. After taking apart the drawers and cabinets since they were warped and had 3/4 gaps in-between them I managed to scratch out a small happy place in our trailer.
We felt confident we could take it on a trip to test it and packed up the kids and headed to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful and we set up camp. We lowered our stabilizer jack and encountered our first problem....they didn't even reach the ground. It was a good thing we brought two sets of stacking blocks and that was almost not enough but we got it level and stable.
The first night we had a Pendleton blanket and another thick wool and fleece blanket on the bed, we covered the girls in the sleeping bags since they were sleeping in the FJ. Oh Good Lord!!! It was so cold I couldn't get warm all night. We tipi camp all the time and I can tell you that is warmer than the tear was! I hit my head repeatedly on the ceiling that was falling down, yep you heard me falling down in our new trailer. At the midnight run to the restroom and back I had had enough and pulled the vinyl planks that were hitting me down. The next morning I took a flashlight and looked behind the ceiling and walls, no insulation at all. This was just another standard item included on our trailer build that was not. I took every available blanket we had and added them to the bed.
The trip was wonderful despite these setbacks and I highly recommend you camp there at least once. We share the camp with a large herd of elk and were visited by deer each morning. We watched the ravens defeat the zippers and bags on other campers food leaving a mess of clothes and food to be cleaned upon their return.
On our return trip home one of the jacks backed itself down (these we found were car jacks not stabilizer jacks at all) and nearly ripped itself from the frame. A bit of duck tape later we were back on the road. Once home we turned back to our growing list of fixes on the trailer. I kept messaging these issues to the builder but did not have confidence in him our his work quality to fix them right and we learned we were right during the next rain storm we had. This time not only did the galley leak but so did the cabin, doors, and windows. I climbed up and saw he left a seam directly behind the roof vent and he didn't seal it only pop riveted it. So now our bed was soaked the glue holding the vinyl planks to the ceiling melted with the water and dripped on my vintage bedspread and chenille pillows and everything inside was a mess. We secured a storage unit close by and moved our tear there out of the rain and left it open to dry out.
In all this mess we had upgrades we paid extra for that were never installed. I sent a letter from an attorney for a refund on these items and waited. Now through all this we were told on more than one occasion that our refund and galley bracket (they were mismatched on one was tweaked and rubbing) had been sent, first we were told it was in the form of a cashiers check then when we asked for a tracking number because it had not arrived we were told he had just sent a check instead. Last week he messaged me and told me that they had spoken and agreed to refund us the monies owed for services not provided. Wait, what happened to having sent it......yea we have been dealing with this since we put our deposit down last August. We have not to this day been refunded for the slider windows, tongue shelf, or the sink all of which we paid for as upgrades to our build.
Since I last chatted with the builder we received the replacement support for the galley lid shocks. I purchased it through the internet (tired of waiting for it from Crybaby) the same day the last time he said they were sending it and the check (last week). It came from NY and made it here in 3 days, the check and replacement from Crybaby are coming from here in our state and still now here. I'm sure he'll have another excuse as to why it's not here.
I'm not blogging to gripe about this trailer though I will keep you all updated on our issues we find and if they have paid us yet. This blog is to document the repairs to the trailer and our journeys along the way. Heck it's a teardrop.... they are never truly done right?
We took a couple weeks off just to reboot after being hit over and over with problem but next weekend we will be back at it stripping out the bad and replacing it with the correct materials. I strongly urge anyone looking to have a trailer built make sure they are licensed, bonded, insured, and a reputable experienced teardrop builder. There are many good builders and you can chat with other on the teardrop forums or by attending a teardrop gathering.
Check out the first of our video series on our trailer at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFD8JW4SLCE&feature=youtu.be
You can see photos of the trailer at:
http://www.pinterest.com/tabithajeen/crybaby-teardrop-trailer/
My next post I'll show the before and after of our galley and how we fixed it.
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