My Family’s Camper Is So Broken That It Still Needs Work After Spending $7,500 On Repairs

One of the most accessible ways to get into RVing is buying a used camper. RVs depreciate like luxury cars, and units that aren’t even that old can be a bargain on the used market. But buying used is always a risk in that the price you pay may just be a down payment to future pain. In 2016, my family bought a 2007 Adirondack 31BH, and my parents have since spent so much money keeping it alive that they could have bought an entire second camper. Most recently, structural and electrical repairs sidelined the camper for a year. Yet, despite all that time and $7,500 zapped from existence, the trailer is still broken.

Every year, Sheryl and I descend into Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to enjoy the EAA AirVenture Fly-In for a whole week. To us, one of the greatest parts of the experience is camping. It’s dramatically cheaper than going to any local hotel – even cockroach specials are charging nearly $400 a night right now – and Camp Scholler is simply an amazing place. I feel like going to AirVenture without going camping is missing out on much of the fun.

Thankfully, I come from a family of lifelong RVers, so I always have access to one of two travel trailers that my parents own and maintain. My usual pick is the 2007 Adirondack 31BH, which was originally built by Thor Industries. This trailer is smaller and lighter than the family’s 2022 Mallard M33, and I also like its features a whole lot more. Sadly, the newer trailer is also much more unreliable. Seriously, my parents recently looked up how many trips the Mallard’s been able to go on since they bought it new, and they calculated that it’s been on no more than seven or eight trips total. That matches my math. To put it into other words, on average, the Mallard is able to go on two trips a year before having to be sidelined for months for repairs.

Both the Adirondack and Mallard are very traditional builds. The Adirondack is an old-school wood-frame construction with a rubberized roof and fiberglass skin slapped onto the sides. It was built during a time when the RV industry seemingly forgot how to bond fiberglass to plywood, leading to panel delamination, water leaks, and rot.

The Mallard features newfangled Azdel composite walls supported by an aluminum structure. This is great because even if water gets in, the Mallard’s structure should hold up as there’s no structural wood in the design. Instead, in the Mallard’s case, it’s everything else around the structure that’s been falling apart. Shoot, the frame had concerning rust on it when the trailer was delivered new.

But don’t let my assertion that the Adirondack is more reliable fool you. This trailer is still built like crap, just crap that can actually be slept in for a long time between required repairs. When my parents bought this trailer in 2016, the signs of water damage were already there. The fiberglass siding was already delaminating, and one part of the floor seemed a bit softer than the rest. It’s kept breaking ever since, and my parents have ignited another $7,500 to keep the trailer alive.

Why Stick-Built Campers Break

Traditional RV walls are built like sandwiches; they feature aluminum or fiberglass siding that’s bonded to a tropical lauan plywood backer, insulation, the structural wood, and then the interior panels. Water has a nasty way of getting into these sandwiches, breaking up the bonds and causing delamination. By the time you notice it, the damage has likely already been occurring for years.

In 2022, the Adirondack burst at the seams, literally. The water damage had gotten so bad that the bathroom wall rotted out and buckled, forcing the outer fiberglass panel to break open. The floor had become so soft and rotted out that it splintered under your feet. My parents paid $7,500 to rebuild the bathroom wall, repair the bathroom wall leak, stabilize the rotting floor, seal it, and cover it with new wood.

Then, we started using the trailer again. Little by little, it began falling apart some more. Signs of water damage began appearing in the primary bedroom, namely the warping of the wardrobe and delamination of the interior wall panel. The floor near the entry door went soft. The awning rotted out and detached from the trailer. The awnings above the slides began getting jammed after their retractor mechanisms failed. The trailer’s suspension and bearings got worn out, the battery cut-off switch stopped working, a slide opener switch shorted out, and the air-conditioner started blowing warm air.

The issue that made my parents decide to get the trailer repaired was the water damage to the rear slide. Water had gotten its way into the structure of the slide and rotted it out. Water then traveled along the damaged slide, entered into the trailer, and rotted out wood inside, too. To call this a disaster would be an understatement. The slide was losing structural integrity and, had it been left alone, the new floor that was installed just three years earlier would have been destroyed.

So, the Adirondack spent all of 2025 at a Camping World shop to get as many of these items addressed as possible.

It’s Slightly Less Broken Now!

The camper has finally emerged from its multiple surgeries, and there’s a lot of good news and some bad news. The shop easily knocked out a lot of the little stuff. The slide switch had gone bad, so it was replaced, as was the battery cut-off switch. The trailer’s suspension and bearings were replaced as normal wear items. The air-conditioner is blowing cold again after the removal of years of built-up grime.

Even some of the bigger items weren’t as big of a deal as anticipated. The slide awnings are operational once again after their retractor mechanisms were replaced.

Unfortunately, the awnings themselves are getting threadbare, so it’s likely that they will fail soon. The trailer’s main awning was not replaced during its time in the shop, so that still needs to be done one day.

The big item on this repair visit was the slide’s water damage. To repair the slide, technicians had to rip the lower structure out of the slide, rebuild it, and reseal it. Check out the wood framing:

I’m not the biggest fan of this repair job. It doesn’t look factory, and unlike the intact front slide, the repaired slide makes no effort to protect its structure anymore. When the slide is open, that wood is sitting there, exposed to the environment.

Here’s what the other slide looks like:

To fix the leaks inside, both slides got entirely new seals. My folks were told the roof and seams were serviced and resealed, too.

The techs performing the restoration work gave my parents the option of skipping the floor repairs. In their opinion, the floor still has some years left in it before the soft spots actually need to be addressed. So, my parents elected to pass on fixing the floor for now.

For a finishing touch, the techs reattached the headboard in the primary bedroom, which had fallen off the wall after water damage weakened it. The cosmetic interior water damage was not repaired at all, so even if the water itself is not coming in anymore, you can clearly see where it was getting in.

That brings us to today, where I’m already writing a list of things that should be replaced in the near future.

My first concern is the floor. I get that the techs say that it doesn’t need to be replaced right away, but its condition is rapidly getting worse. In 2024, only the approach to the door was soft. This year, nearly the entire floor next to and in front of the door has many soft spots. No cracking yet, but the damage is clearly spreading pretty fast. A shocking amount of floor is going to need to be replaced in the near future.

Then there’s the tongue jack. In the past, this jack was fast and strong. It lowered and raised the trailer three times as fast as the newer jack on the Mallard. This year, however, it’s slow, and it sounds like the electric motor is on the verge of failing. Thankfully, there is a manual override crank, so I’m not worried about getting stuck somewhere. But it’s going on the future repair list.

Also going on the list is the water pump. In the past, the pump quietly purred in the background. Now, it’s louder than a generator! Seriously, the trailer sort of shakes when it runs. Sheryl says it sounds like a dying targ.

The trailer also needs new propane tanks, as the ones that are on the trailer were made in 2006 and expired back in 2016. The tires also need to be swapped out. They have great tread, but the oldest tire is getting a bit too old for my comfort. All of them are getting old as it is.

Finally, if my parents choose to do so, I also recommend fixing the visible water damage inside the camper. This would purely be for cosmetics, but I also know how much they love this camper. I know I’d be bothered by looking at warped boards everywhere. Amusingly, I was right on the money when, in 2024, I guessed that my parents would spend another $7,500 on the structural damage in 2025.

Truth be told, everything I’ve listed here is either a time-of-life failure, a consequence of owning a stick-built camper, or maintenance that was unintentionally deferred. Still, it just goes to show that whatever price you pay for a used camper is really just the start. My parents say that they paid either $7,000 or $27,000 for this camper back in 2016. I’m more inclined to believe the lower number because campers just don’t hold onto value unless they’re something like an Airstream.

But regardless of what they spent to buy it, they have put some $15,000 into structural repairs alone, and the camper is still broken. They have spent more on other parts over time, including a new kitchen sink, a new water heater, a new electrical panel, and more. I started tracking repair costs in 2022, so there is a whole six years of repairs that I’m not even accounting for.

Still Fun

Still, every time I kick back and watch a sunset from the camper, I smile. For everything that sucks about RVing, it’s still great fun. Yes, I still prefer this madness over any Holiday Inn. Just don’t do it as my parents did it. Don’t just buy the pretty one with cool features. Try to find one that’s built well. Used Airstreams and fiberglass campers remain my recommended picks.

This is why I never write about the countless old stick-built campers for sale on the Internet right now. You can score one of these campers for a few grand if you look hard enough, but don’t let the low price of entry fool you. If you want to use it for more than a couple of years, you’ll need to put money into it, and a lot of it. But if you do have the money, I suppose you can make one of these things last. You’ll just be opening your wallet so much that you’ll eventually be spending multiples of your original purchase cost. I don’t recommend that, unless you really want that specific camper for some reason.

That said, I do think those old campers have some great uses. A few years ago, I saw a real beater of a motorhome roll up to my favorite local campground. Once it parked, some six or so college friends stumbled out of it. All of them pitched in some cash, bought the motorhome, decorated it, and went on a cross-country summer road trip. That was awesome. Who cares if they only get a year or two out of it when the memories they’re creating with it will hopefully last forever? One of our readers, Shop-Teacher, used an old and tired pop-up tent camper for years.

So, the crazy cheap campers out there do have their place, but temper your expectations. If you plan on keeping it for a while, expect to cough up some heavy dough. But whatever you camp in, have a great time! I sure am.

All photos: Mercedes Streeter