The agency involved is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and they have a handy database that keeps records of recall campaigns clear back to 1966. If you're seriously looking at a given unit, you owe it to yourself to look at the NHTSA recall database to check and see if the rig you're interested in has any listed recalls. It's simple and easy to do.
Log on to the NHTSA data base (at www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchVehicles). Simply input the manufacturer name and the model year of the rig. You don't need to have the specific model. Press the "GO" button and the system will send a list back of any hits.
What information might you find? We input our rig's model year and manufacturer, and sure enough, we got back two recalls, one of which was for our particular rig: A wiring harness issue could lead to pinched wiring, which could end up in brake failure. Since our unit is an "orphan," the company out of business, we quickly checked on our own to make sure the problem had been repaired. The system will also list "complaints," "investigations," and "service bulletins."
Our own experience points to an issue that many RV shoppers are dealing with: What to do if a manufacturer has gone out of business? It's a situation where you have weigh outcomes. In our case, the company was not only out of business, no other company had "picked up" responsibility for a fix. Had we been shopping for this trailer and found the problem, we would have had to weighed in the added cost of getting the problem fixed. It's a leverage point when negotiating a sales price. Is the seller willing to get the problem fixed, or will he adjust the sales price accordingly?
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