Neighbor broke off mirror arm

[MarkMaxPayne]

Gotta love when your neighbor takes out your mirror arm as they don't pay attention to their tail swing. Receieved a call from the owner of the storage facility I store me RV at with this photo. Something I have to fix before my scheduled service appointment in two weeks. Left message with the owner of the rig that nailed me... Ugh...

-Grumpy Mark

 

[Neal]

Ouch. Hopefully only damage is mirror, no paint or issues from mirror impact. RAMCO I believe is the manufacturer of the mirrors but Newmar parts has them as well.

 

[Oregon Camper]

Gotta love when your neighbor takes out your mirror arm as they don't pay attention to their tail swing. Receieved a call from the owner of the storage facility I store me RV at with this photo. Something I have to fix before my scheduled service appointment in two weeks. Left message with the owner of the rig that nailed me... Ugh...

-Grumpy Mark

A friend of mine recently had his Tuscany Coach stolen from an RV storage. They cut the fence, broke a window in his Coach, hot wired the dieselengine, cut the chain on the gate opener and drove away.
They found it 30 miles away 2 weeks later full of garbage and 3 tweaker in it.
They should have to change the sign to Semi Secure Storage.

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

I have a call into the Newmar dealer. I need a repair within next 2 weeks in order to drive the rig to my scheduled service appointment with them before my 1 year is up on my warranty (I have a list <grin>). This is one I think I'll have to do myself in order to make that deadline...

I figured out the 8" arm with integrated turn signal lamp. Newpar wants over $1K for it, but Ramco only wants $388. Now I'm trying to figure out the mirror head. Unfortunately it is cracked and the wire harness is also now cut in about 3 places where the sharp edges of the arm cut into it as it dropped then swung some. Asked dealer if they can verify the actually part #s on the mirror head (remote controlled & heated) as Newpar has "discontinued" and a substitution listed and Ramco has a couple of options which are not clear to me as to why, but the part # I pulled off the mirror head assembly doesn't match anything I can actually look up. Ramco is off early for the holiday weekend so I may have to wait until they are back on Tuesday so I can talk to a live person.

Paint-wise it looks like the mirror hit the driver side camera when it dropped down and chipped off some paint (about 1/4" in diameter) down to the metal. I'm thinking some touchup paint / clear will be fine.

The guy who parks next to me feels awful about it, is much older, and it is a much older rig. In parallel he's still chewing on the option of either paying me to do it myself if the Ramco parts are indeed correct or to submit to his insurance and do that dance depending on the $ difference between that and his deductible.

Best,
-Mark

 

[Neal]

We all make mistakes, how we handle them, and things caused by others, makes us better people. I learned about tail swing in my first year trying to relocate the power pedestal at Naples Motorcoach. I'm always amazed at how many spectators I had. Good thing I was leaving...nothing a credit card can't fix, the RVers motto...

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

I was able to talk to somebody at Newmar as using my coach id to look up my mirror head part # wasn't working for me in newpar. They were quite helpful in telling me the part # for the mirror head (turns out I guessed right), but... they were out of stock on the 8" arms used on the driver's side. In order to have a chance of fixing in time for my service appointment and saving my neighbor $898, I ended up ordering from their OEM supplier, RAMCO instead. Thanks @Neal for that RAMCO pointer!!! That's what the community is for!

Newpar:

• 8" driver side arm w/turn signal: https://newpar.newmarcorp.com/instance1/servlet/WebDispatcher?mode=pic&item=07721
• Mirror head: https://newpar.newmarcorp.com/instance1/servlet/WebDispatcher?mode=pic&item=130767A

RAMCO:

• 8" driver side arm w/turn signal: https://shop.ramco-eng.com/products...-light-8-between-seams?variant=39271028817963
• Mirror head (expedited): https://shop.ramco-eng.com/products...-306-crm-1703cchr?_pos=3&_sid=35bf1f7fb&_ss=r

Fingers crossed. I should be able reuse the electrical connector off the original to adapt the ends of the two wire harnesses for the Newmar connector stashed in the bowl of the mirror mount. Now I wait...

Best,
-Mark

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

Wow! Look what arrived today! Looks like I have an RV project this weekend. Storage neighbor even Zelled me the $ yesterday.

Best,
-Mark

 

[MarkMaxPayne]

So the replacement of the mirror arm and head went perfect while saving my storage neighbor almost $1K in parts by going straight to the OEM (Ramco) and probably another $200+ in labor doing the work myself. I did want to note a couple of interesting observations with what Ramco shipped me.

First of all Ramco ships the mirror with a protective harness to slip the wiring cable through. I don't know if they fail to ship these to Newmar or if the factory just ignores them and tosses them asside when they mount the mirrors. My factory installed mirrors lacked this protective harness. As you can see in my photos, my original wires where chewed to bits by sharp edges inside the arm so I made sure to install the protective sheath around my mirror wires.

The next thing is that Ramco makes connecting to the coach wiring harness a breeze. They ship the mirror with all but one of the wires preconnected to the pins that insert inside a plastic 6 pin connector. The only wire they don't preconnect is the one that also gets crimped with the white wire from the turn signal in the arm. They also supply you with 2 pins such that you can crimp the open orange with white stripe wire to the white wire from the blinker light. The 2nd pin is then for the black wire from the turn signal. Finally, because the pins are not inserted into a connector it gives you the option of using the connector they supplied with the mirror or perhaps reusing the connector body from your damaged mirror if a different type or pinout configuration. The connector was the same as what Newmar used so I just inserted the pins into the right holes in the connector body they supplied making sure the colors matched up with that of the damaged mirror.

The hardest part was removing what remained of the arm from its mount at the coach. Even with the bolt removed I had to soak the previous arm socket with generous amounts of WD-40 and then hit the remaining arm just right to break up the corrosion inside the socket at the rig so I could remove the remainder of the old mirror arm. That was nerve wracking as I didn't want to hit it too hard as that would transfer too much energy to where the mirror mount attaches to the fiberglass front cap.

So, in all it was about a 30-45 minute job; most of the time being spent trying to remove the remains of the broken arm from its mounting socket due to corrosion.

Best,
-Mark

 

[Rich W.]

Interesting info - great write-up. Thanks.