Inside the Shop: Capability, Equipment and Scope

Work is organized around the sequence a job actually follows rather than around departments. Intake and assessment, teardown, structural, composite and panel, refinish, systems and electrical, and reassembly and verification. A vehicle moves through those in order and can sit in one of them for weeks while a carrier reviews a supplement or a part crosses the country. The building is set up so a coach can be left apart safely and under cover for that long, which is a bigger constraint on this kind of work than most people expect.

The vehicles themselves drive the layout. Class A coaches, fifth wheels with a garage, and box trucks all need clearance, height, and approach angles that a car shop does not have to think about. Everything from a teardrop trailer to a full-length diesel pusher comes through the same intake process, and there is currently a 1959 Flxible VL-100 in the shop alongside current-year Sprinters and Rivians.

Certified welding on steel and aluminum is performed here and is not sent out. That covers frame rail straightening and section replacement, cracked weld repair and reinforcement at stress risers, outrigger and crossmember and suspension hanger work, subframe correction on motorhome and van chassis, and cage racking correction on both laminated and stick-built coaches. Steel and aluminum are welded to different procedures. Aluminum structure welded with a steel approach cracks at the heat affected zone, typically within a year.

Fabrication sits in the same area, because on these vehicles repair and fabrication are frequently the same job. Custom bumpers, racks, carriers, skid plates, hitch and receiver work, equipment mounting for fleet and mobile business vehicles, and cargo tie-down and E-track installation are all built here. On vintage units, forming a discontinued panel in shop is often the only path available and is treated as routine rather than exceptional.

This is the capability that separates a specialty shop from a general one. Full-depth fiberglass layup with correct glass schedule and resin selection, gelcoat repair and fairing on compound curves, molded cap repair and full cap replacement, laminated sidewall rebuild with correct core and adhesive, and vacuum-assisted resin injection on contained delamination with sound substrate. Assessment on all of it is done by tap mapping and moisture metering rather than by eye, because the separated area is routinely several times the size of the visible symptom.

Aluminum skin work runs alongside it. Panel replacement on stick-and-tin construction, riveted shell panel work on Airstream and similar monocoque trailers where the skin is the structure, rivet removal and correct rivet specification on reinstall, corroded fastener replacement with galvanic isolation, and seam sealing with proper butyl at every lap. Coastal Southern California units come in with fastener corrosion that is frequently a larger job than the damage that brought them here.

Refinish work on a coach is a different scale problem than on a car. Panels are large, curves are compound, substrates within a single vehicle can include gelcoat, fiberglass, aluminum, steel, and previously repaired filler, and each of those takes primer and paint differently. Color is matched against the actual panel under multiple light sources rather than against a code, because fifteen years of Southern California sun moves a color further than any code accounts for.

Graphics are the part owners underestimate. Factory schemes go out of production quickly, and on most units more than a few years old the original decal simply cannot be purchased. The scheme then has to be reproduced in masked, multi-stage paint, which is significantly more labor than a decal and holds up far better under UV. We document the discontinuation and quote the reproduction as paint labor so it survives carrier review.

Roof work covers EPDM, TPO, and fiberglass roofs, including full membrane replacement, decking repair where the substrate has gone soft, penetration reseal, and recoat on sound membranes. Slide work covers Schwintek and rack-and-pinion and hydraulic systems, room removal for rail and mechanism access, geometry correction on racked openings, and wiper and bulb seal replacement done after the geometry is right rather than instead of fixing it.

Window and windshield replacement and resealing, awning fabric and arm work, water damage and subfloor replacement, mold remediation on affected structure, flooring, and interior panel and cabinetry work all run through the same area. Electrical and low-voltage work at $260 per hour covers 12 volt house systems, shore power and transfer switches, inverters, converters, lithium and lead-acid banks, and the wiring that gets disturbed during structural repair. Diagnostics bill at $285 per hour with a one hour minimum, refundable against an authorized repair.

Any Sprinter, Transit, ProMaster, Rivian, or late-model chassis under a Class C or Super C carries cameras and radar aimed to a fraction of a degree. Replace a windshield, change a bumper cover, or correct ride height, and that aim is no longer valid. The system will frequently not set a fault. It will simply be inaccurate, which is the more dangerous failure. We scan pre-repair so existing faults are on record and not attributed to the repair, and we scan again after.

Static calibration is performed on a level surface to the manufacturer specification for the platform, with dynamic road calibration where the platform requires it. A calibration report goes into your file and into the carrier file. Every structural and water job also ends with a water test at the repaired area and at every penetration that was disturbed, and every slide is cycled under power before delivery.

We do not perform engine work, drivetrain work, or transmission work. We do not perform DOT inspections. Those are separate trades with separate equipment and separate certifications, and sending you to someone who does them properly is a better outcome than doing them adequately here. If a job needs chassis mechanical work alongside body and structural repair, plan on two providers and sequence them, because a coach cannot be in two places at once.

We also do not offer mobile, field, or fleet route service, and we do not dispatch technicians. All work is performed at our Yorba Linda facility. Structural repair requires measurement, controlled spray and cure conditions, and covered space to leave a vehicle apart for weeks. None of that travels, and a laminated wall rebuilt outdoors is a repair that will be done a second time.

We are licensed by the California Bureau of Automotive Repair under ARD00288521 and registered with the EPA under CAL000367879. Both numbers are published so they can be verified independently. Hazardous material handling is billed as a $45 flat charge on jobs that generate it, which covers the compliant disposal of paint waste, solvent, and materials removed during structural and water repair.

Documentation is treated as part of the job rather than as paperwork after it. Photographs of substrate condition, structural correction, welds, and bond lines are taken while those things are visible and go into a record you keep. That record is what supports a claim during review, what answers questions if something is disputed later, and what a knowledgeable buyer will want to see if you ever sell the unit.