--- title: "RVs and Motorhomes Repair in West Covina" description: "In shop collision, fiberglass, structural and house systems repair for every class of motorhome, serving West Covina from Yorba Linda." canonical: https://ocrv.xyz/vehicles/rvs-motorhomes/ business: "OCRV Center" phone: "(949) 799-3387" address: "23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887" market_served: "West Covina, California" --- # RVs and Motorhomes Repair in West Covina OCRV Center repairs Class A gas, diesel pusher, Class B, Class C, Super C, bus conversion and vintage motorhomes for West Covina owners at our Yorba Linda shop about 22 miles southeast. Collision, fiberglass caps, delamination, roofs, slide outs, paint and house systems are handled in one building under one estimate. ## What a motorhome is actually built out of Almost every modern coach is a laminated sandwich. A sheet of filon or smooth gelcoat fiberglass is vacuum bonded to a foam and framing core, then backed with luan or azdel, then bonded again to an interior finish panel. The whole wall carries load. That is why a motorhome sidewall is not a car fender. Punch a hole in it and you have not damaged a panel, you have broken a structural laminate that the roof and the window openings were relying on. Older and budget built coaches use stick and tin instead: aluminum framing with screwed aluminum skin over fiberglass batt insulation. Those walls do not delaminate, but they telegraph every frame member once the skin dents, and they leak at every screw head as the sealant ages. Knowing which of the two you own changes the repair completely. A laminated wall gets peeled, recored and rebonded. A stick and tin wall gets the skin panel replaced from seam to seam. Caps are a third material story. Front and rear caps are molded fiberglass with a gelcoat surface, bonded and bolted to the house structure at a flange. Roofs are EPDM rubber, TPO or one piece fiberglass. Floors are a laminated deck over steel outriggers. A single water leak can pass through three of those materials before it shows up inside, which is why the visible stain is almost never where the water got in. - Laminated sidewall: filon or gelcoat skin, foam core, luan or azdel backer, structural as a unit - Stick and tin: aluminum frame with screwed aluminum skin, dents easily, leaks at fasteners - Molded fiberglass caps bonded and bolted at a flange, prone to stress cracking at corners - EPDM, TPO or one piece fiberglass roof over plywood or laminated decking - Laminated floor over steel outriggers welded or bolted to the chassis rail ## Chassis under the house: F53, Freightliner XC, E450 and Spartan Gas Class A coaches sit on a Ford F53 stripped chassis. It is a straight ladder frame with the engine ahead of the driver and leaf springs at both ends. The house is bolted to the rail through rubber isolated body mounts. Those mounts compress and take a set over a decade, and once they do the house rocks a little more than the frame does on every driveway apron. That relative movement is what cracks front caps and pops entry door strikes out of alignment. Diesel pushers ride on a Freightliner XC, Spartan K2 or Roadmaster raised rail chassis with air bag suspension and the engine at the rear. Air suspension isolates the house better, but when a bag or a height control valve fails the coach sits down on one corner and the whole body twists. Owners usually notice the slide out binding before they notice the ride, because the slide room is the most sensitive thing on the coach to a body that is not sitting square. Class C and Super C coaches keep a factory cab. Ford E450 cutaway, Ford F550, Chevrolet 4500 and Freightliner M2 chassis all end at the back of the cab, and the RV manufacturer builds a house behind it. The joint between that cab and that house is a manufactured seam that has to flex forever without leaking. It is the single most common structural repair on the cutaway based coaches we see. ## Where water finds its way into a motorhome Sealant fails on a schedule. Lap sealant on the roof shrinks, pulls away from the flange of a vent or an antenna base, and opens a hairline gap that a garden hose test will not reproduce but a driving rain will. Once water is under the membrane it travels along the decking to the lowest point, which is often eight or ten feet from the actual entry, and it soaks the plywood the whole way there. The second common path is the front cap to sidewall seam. That joint is covered with a molding and a bead of sealant, and it is exactly where the house flexes most. On a gas Class A the crack usually starts at the upper corner of the windshield opening and walks outward. On a Class C it starts at the cabover corner. Either way the water runs down inside the wall cavity and the first symptom is a soft floor near the entry step, not a stain on the ceiling. The third path is glass and openings. Kinro and Hehr window frames use a butyl tape seal between the frame flange and the sidewall. Butyl dries out, shrinks and stops wetting the surface. Slide out seals do the same: a bulb seal that has taken a compression set will look fine and still let a sheet of water track down the inside of the slide box wall every time the coach is driven in weather. - Roof penetrations: vents, fans, antennas, AC gaskets, refrigerator vents and solar mounts - Front and rear cap seams where the molded cap meets the laminated sidewall - Window and door frames sealed with butyl tape that has dried and shrunk - Slide out wiper, bulb and D seals that have taken a permanent set - Awning rail fasteners and the screw line above the entry door - Basement bay door frames and the roof edge molding on both sides ## Why collision work on a coach is structural before it is cosmetic A 38 foot coach that clipped a bridge abutment or backed into a post rarely has damage that stops at the skin. The impact travels through the laminate into the aluminum or steel cage behind it, and it often shows up as a door that no longer latches or a slide that binds at one corner. We measure before we quote. If the openings are out of square, the fix is a structural realignment, not a bonded patch. That is the order every job runs in at our shop: structure, then substrate, then finish. Frame and cage work first, then laminate repair or panel replacement, then primer, block and refinish. Reversing that order is how a coach comes back six months later with a crack running through a beautiful new paint job. We would rather have the conversation about structure at the estimate than after the booth time is spent. Insurance work follows the same discipline. The estimator documents impact path, hidden damage and every disturbed seal with photographs, and supplements go to the adjuster with that documentation attached. Insurance walk ins are welcome during shop hours and collision estimates are written at the shop, because a coach estimate written from photographs on a phone misses the structural half of the job every single time. ## House systems that fail on coaches stored in the San Gabriel Valley Inland Los Angeles County is hard on rubber and hard on electronics. A coach that sits in a storage yard off Azusa Avenue or on a side street in Nogales through a Southern California summer bakes at surface temperatures well over 150 degrees. Slide out seals harden. Awning fabric loses tensile strength at the fold. Roof lap sealant checks. Refrigerator cooling units that are already marginal give up during the first long heat run. The electrical side fails differently. Lead acid house banks that sit at partial charge on a storage lot sulfate and die. Inverter and charger units from Magnum, Xantrex and Victron will fault on high ambient temperature before they fault on anything else. Onan generators that have not run in eight months load up carbon on the exhaust valve and start hunting under load. Most of these are ordinary in shop repairs when they are caught before something downstream burns. Because we do not run mobile service, every one of these repairs happens at the Yorba Linda building. That is deliberate. Slide mechanisms need the room cycled dozens of times against a level floor. Laminate work needs vacuum and heat. A booth big enough to close the doors on a 45 foot coach is not something anyone brings to a driveway. - Slide out seals and toppers hardened by ultraviolet load and heat cycling - Awning fabric that tears along the roller fold after a few seasons of sun - Roof lap sealant checking and pulling away from vent flanges - House batteries sulfated from months at partial charge in storage - Absorption refrigerators failing on the first long hot run of the season - Generators that hunt and surge after a long storage layup ## Bringing a motorhome to Yorba Linda from West Covina OCRV Center is at 23281 La Palma Ave in Yorba Linda. We are not in West Covina and we do not have a West Covina location. We serve West Covina from Yorba Linda, and the drive is about 22 miles, normally 30 to 45 minutes. Most owners take the 10 or the 60 west to the 57 south, then the 91 east to Imperial Highway. When the 57 backs up through Brea, Carbon Canyon Road across to the 71 is the shortcut, and it is comfortable in a Class A that is not towing heavy. Shop hours are Monday through Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and Saturday 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM. Sunday we are closed. If your coach is not drivable, tell us that when you call and we will talk through how to get it here. Coaches stay on the property for the duration of the repair, so bring anything you need out of it before drop off. Call (949) 799-3387 to get on the schedule. If you are coming from South Hills, Woodside Village or the Plaza West Covina side of town, it is one interchange more than the drive to a local body shop, and it gets your coach into a building that was laid out for full length motorhomes rather than for cars. ## Frequently asked questions ### How long will my motorhome be at the shop for a collision repair? It depends on how far the impact traveled. A rear cap hit with no structural movement is usually a couple of weeks. A side impact that racked a slide opening and pushed the cage runs much longer, because structural realignment has to finish and settle before laminate work starts, and laminate work has to cure before paint. We give you a target date at authorization and we call you if teardown changes it. ### Will a repaired front cap match the rest of my coach? On a coach under about eight years old with sound clearcoat, yes, blended into the adjacent panels. On an older coach the surrounding finish has faded away from the factory formula, so we read the actual panel with a spectrophotometer, spray candidate cards, and check them outdoors in daylight before anything goes on the vehicle. If a color has faded unevenly across the coach, we will tell you at the estimate that a full side reads better than a blend. ### What is the difference between a soft spot and delamination? A soft spot is a floor or wall that flexes underfoot or under hand pressure because the plywood or the core has absorbed water and lost strength. Delamination is the bond between the outer skin and the core letting go, which shows as a bubble or a wave in the sidewall that gets worse when the sun heats the panel. They often travel together, because the same leak causes both, but they are separate repairs. ### Do you work on the motorhome engine and drivetrain? No. We are a body, paint, fiberglass, structural and house systems shop. That covers collision, laminate and cap repair, roofs, slide outs, awnings, interior work, 12 volt and 120 volt electrical, LP appliances, plumbing and generator service. Engine and drivetrain work belongs at a chassis specialist, and we will tell you that plainly rather than take the job. ### Can I bring my coach in for an estimate without an appointment? Collision estimates are written at the shop and insurance walk ins are welcome during business hours. For house systems work covering slides, awnings, water, electrical and generator issues, there is an estimate charge that is credited against an authorized repair, and calling ahead at (949) 799-3387 helps because those inspections take real time on the vehicle. ### My coach leaks but I cannot find where. Can you locate it? Yes, and it is worth doing properly. We isolate leaks by section rather than by guess, using controlled water testing on the roof, the cap seams, the window frames and the slide openings one at a time, with moisture readings taken inside the wall cavity. The stain you see inside is usually several feet downhill from the actual entry point, so chasing the stain wastes sealant and time. --- OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. Phone (949) 799-3387. All work is performed in shop at the Yorba Linda facility. We do not run mobile, roadside or fleet route service. Ranges are planning figures, not a quote. Final numbers come from a written estimate on your vehicle.