These articles explain what actually happens to a recreational vehicle or fleet unit during repair, written by Marcus Delgado, the Shop Foreman and Lead Estimator at OCRV Center. Price ranges reflect jobs performed at this facility rather than industry averages copied from elsewhere.
Most of what an owner finds when searching a repair problem is either a parts catalog or a sales page. Neither one helps you work out whether the soft spot in your floor is a $2,000 problem or a $12,000 problem. These are written to answer that.
Every stage of an RV collision repair explained by the people who do it, including why the estimate always grows after teardown and what that means for your claim.
TLDR
Collision repair runs through seven stages, and teardown is where the real scope appears.
The supplement is normal, not a sign something went wrong.
Structural work on a large coach realistically takes eight to sixteen weeks.
Most slide out leaks are not seal failures. They are geometry failures wearing a seal costume, and replacing the rubber without fixing the cause guarantees a repeat.
TLDR
A seal that failed in three years failed because the room is not compressing it evenly.
Water at an extended slide is frequently a roof leak arriving at the slide.
Check squareness and sag before spending money on rubber.
By the time a stain appears on an interior panel, the wet area behind it is typically several times larger. That single fact explains every water damage estimate.
TLDR
The wet area is always larger than the stain. Always.
There is no drying process that restores delaminated substrate.
Fix the leak, or you are paying for the same repair twice.
Call the shop, describe what happened, and we will tell you what the realistic scope and timeline look like. All work is performed in shop at our 35,000 square foot facility.