RVs... bad stuff can happen to them. Fortunately, we have the winter off-season to fix them back up. We did not make any internal or external improvements to the Ciaowagen this past winter, but we did have some repairs - both of them requiring insurance, unfortunately.
Let's roll the clock back to November 2022. We decided to close out our RV year with a camping trip to Belle Isle State Park in Virginia's Northern Neck area, a quiet visit to a beautiful park on the Rappohannock River. All was well until we decided to flush out the black and gray water holding tanks at the end of our time there, in preparation for winterizing the RV. We finished our flush and started to drive out. Unfortunately, we were not able to see this low wooden post at the end of the dump station from the driver's window...
...and made our turn too soon. The result was not pretty:
Fortunately, we determined there was no damage to the drive train or the underlying chassis, and so we were able to drive back to Northern Virginia and drop the rig off at Ace RV, our go-to repair place.
RV buying mania at the start of COVID in 2022 had turned to oversupply problems by the end of 2022, and many manufacturers were shutting down completely for several months because they had so much inventory. Consequently, it took about 2-3 months for Winnebago to ship replacement doors and fiberglass to Ace RV.
While the Ciaowagen sat around in the lot waiting for the parts, thieves came along one night and stole catalytic converters from 10 parked RVs, including ours.
Fortunately, our RV insurance covered both the fiberglass and catalytic converter issues (minus our deductibles). We were impressed with Progressive Insurance's claims process and their communications with us.
Now that we're not using the Ciaowagen as intensively as we have the past four years we didn't feel any upgrades were needed, and we stuck to the standard maintenance items like safety inspections, oil changes, replacing old tires, and so forth.
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