DeltaDonnie Report post Posted August 7, 2010 First Post, so excuse my learning process. Interested in upgrading to 2008 or newer coach. Have experienced small cracks (checking) in the dark colors of my coach. Has this been improved over the last 10 years? I certainly want to purchase something with an improved fiberglass. My boat is hand laid and never have experienced any craking like this, though other boat manufactures use a spray-on approach, which fails quite often. I was told Country Coach Magna and Affinity series are both hand laid fiberglass? Any others to consider? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wolfe10 Report post Posted August 7, 2010 Don, Welcome to the FMCA Forum. It is actually a little more complicated than that. Many coaches use gel-coated front and rear caps and a different material on the sides. The caps may be some/all chopper gun or may have some hand la-yups. Usually small gel coat cracks are the result of overly thick gel coat (gel coat is very hard, but brittle). Clearly, if there is flexing of the substrate deeper cracks can develop. I am not aware of any hand laid up side material. There are sure different grades though, ranging from Filon with exposed fibers visible to quality gel coated products. It sounds like your eye is "trained" to look. May start by looking at older coaches of the brand you are considering and then finding out from the manufacturer if they are still using the same materials/process. You can also ask questions here as you narrow down your search. Brett Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DeltaDonnie Report post Posted August 8, 2010 Well, thanks, Brett. I was hoping others may have experienced this and knew of manufacturers using a superior product. You're right, I do have the trained eye for details. I'm going to the Redmond FMCA Rally and plan to dig deeper on this subject. Thanks for the reply. Why are the posting times off? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tbutler Report post Posted August 8, 2010 Times are off until you select your time zone... At the top of this page below the two FMCA (brown) menus is a menu of your options. Click on My Controls and it takes you to a page where you can set a variety of functions. On the left side of the My Controls page is a long menu. Near the bottom of the menu is a heading "Board Settings." Click Board Settings and the top of that page will have the time zone settings. That should correct your settings - I'm set for central time but it doesn't compensate for daylight saving time (yes I have selected the DST option) so the -6 hours from Greenwich Mean Time gives me the correct time for the Mountain Time Zone where we are now! I figure I'm close with the Central Time Zone wherever I go and don't worry about changing it for an hour or two. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
