Broadway Build/Design Quality Issues

We don't use the towel ring either. It originally fell off the door just after we bought the van, being held onto hardboard with 2 wood screws is just plain incompetence on AS's part
I refixed the bracket to the door using proper sprung fittings. The bracket stayed in place, the screw holding the ring unscrewed itself. We are in France now, but as soon as I get home, that will be locktighted too. 
Wonder what's going to fall off/ break/ stop working next week!  We are away for a month......

mikethebike wrote:

Shuggiegreen wrote:It seems a real shame that spending all that money on a so called quality product that there appears to be so many niggling problems.

Yes , and its not just this thread.
Maybe someone knows Peter Vaughan,he has had a tour of the production line.His views may be interesting.
For info the CEO is Geoff Scott.

Micky

Peter Vaughan , editor of MMM/Which Motorhome does all the videos for AS website so I can't see him being very impartial (on the payrole?)

Anyone been round the factory?

Micky

Some time ago Micky, and I was impressed.

I came away wondering how such a complex jumble of disparate bits and pieces ever went together at all, and quite agreeably surprised at how relatively few problems most people suffer.

When workers are paid on comparatively low salaries you are never going to get robot precision and consistency, and that's not to excuse the too frequent examples of shoddy, uncaring workmanship - but overall I don't think they do a bad job.

A friend bought a brand new Autotrail something-or-other and the first time he opened the swing cupboard it fell off on his foot. His bathroom wall had a long open gap where the unit had not been sealed to the outer structure, and one of his rear mudguards was hanging off not long ago. His fridge was not correctly installed and has never been satisfactory - and these are only the problems he has moaned to me about.

I think Autosleepers can be summed up as a cracking good base vehicle, all too frequently spoiled by (usually) fairly trivial examples of shoddy, uncaring workmanship. (Please note I did say "usually" trivial.) A boot up the backside of their Quality Control department is well overdue - assuming they have one!!

If they are as bad as this thread makes them sound, that makes all of us look a bit daft for buying them when there are so many others to choose from - the always perfect Hymer to mention just one!

Dave

Gromit wrote:

I came away wondering how such a complex jumble of disparate bits and pieces ever went together at all, and quite agreeably surprised at how relatively few problems most people suffer.

My latest kitchen was fitted by two 'artists' and its superb but if I could put it on the van of a van and drive it for a few hundred miles it would drop to bits. The fact that a motorhome can be built to survive is a mix of super engineering and long experience.

I wish I had your confidence Peter. I recently bought and built a kitchen from IKEA.  It was held together with a combination of metal  pegs with metal locks, long metal screws and wooden dowels. 
My Autosleeper kitchen base unit is held together with short woodscrews through plastic brackets into plywood, which is in turn screwed to the thin plywood covered habitation walls.
I'm not saying the ikea kitchen, installed in a van, would fall apart, but it is much more sturdily put together.
But, in Autosleepers favour, it is put together so much better than almost any other van we looked at in the 6 months or so and tens of vans we looked at before we bought ours. 
I still haven't seen a van I would prefer, it's just the lack of quality control in these vans that spoils them

ajrm wrote:I wish I had your confidence Peter. I recently bought and built a kitchen from IKEA.  It was held together with a combination of metal  pegs with metal locks, long metal screws and wooden dowels. 
My Autosleeper kitchen base unit is held together with short woodscrews through plastic brackets into plywood, which is in turn screwed to the thin plywood covered habitation walls.
I'm not saying the ikea kitchen, installed in a van, would fall apart, but it is much more sturdily put together.
But, in Autosleepers favour, it is put together so much better than almost any other van we looked at in the 6 months or so and tens of vans we looked at before we bought ours. 
I still haven't seen a van I would prefer, it's just the lack of quality control in these vans that spoils them

I think its "don't spoil the ship for a h'p'orth of tar" that we are dealing with.
Personally i would buy from a dealer that does the FULL pre-delivery checks that would find most of these faults we read about. I expect they will also give the paperwork to confirm this has been done.
Maybe Mark can confirm he is one such dealer.
My last two motorhomes were thoroughly checked by Wellsbridge dealer before sale.

Regards

Micky

Ours was thoroughly checked before handover, and a huge list of all the checks made given to us. Unfortunately, without taking every component apart and fitting it back together, it's impossible to tell if it's been put together properly. Everything worked on our van when we got it. But the things that fell apart did so because of poor assembly techniques at the factory. 
I know there is an argument about them being hand built, but surely this should mean built properly and made to last. The fact that other people have had exactly the same problems with their vans as I have over two years, and all that has gone back to the factory, means they are aware of the faults but ignore them. 50 years experience of building "Luxury Motorhomes" doesn't keep you at the top. 
I am sure Autosleeper still think people buying their vehicles mostly use them infrequently, in the summer and in the U.K.