New 2018 r179 owner

Please don't give up on it so quickly. Almost any new one will also have problems. They also have opportunities.

For the broken part, it is under warranty. Get with your dealer to get these issues addressed. It is a weak point, and could have been made stronger. These trailers are a trade-off between strength and weight. To keep them light, compromises are made to keep the weight low. You could have bought some other brand, but you would be looking at the same type of issues. If you want Airstream quality, then be prepared to pay Airstream prices. At its price point, the R-Pods are quite good. They aren't perfect, but they are still quite a value.

For the "storage" area, I agree that there is much wasted space. The frame is one that would be used for a dinette. The foot well is the "storage" area. Much of the year, you could use it. Only when you need to run the furnace does it become useless. However, if you take and put a divider in that space, you can make a storage compartment. I did that. I put a hinge on the mattress support board so I can lift it for access. I am thinking of putting a door on instead so I don't need to lift the mattress. It was easy when I had the original mattress, but more difficult since I replaced that mattress with a 10" Zinius memory foam mattress which is much less flexible and much heavier.

One of the things that broke on our first trip is the panel under the refrigerator. The screws holding it into the aluminum frame are not the best. I have since replaced them with toggle bolts. I really need to be careful though to not have anything in the way because the toggle bolts will not allow for any flexing of the panel. One of these days, I will replace them with a hinged panel.

Do you most often camp with shore power or do you dry camp? If you use shore power most often, get an induction cooking unit. They are quite cheap now. Clean up is easy also. Your stove probably has a glass cover. Mine didn't, so I made a cover out of a cutting board using some scrap oak pieces to make legs to support it over the gas burners. When we have electricity, the induction unit sits on that. Otherwise, it is an additional prep area if needed. We also have a Coleman Grill-Stove. On our last stay in Green Lake state park in Vermont (no shore power), it got a lot of use and the inside stove got almost no use.

Many of the mods I have done on our 2016 RP-179 were made to address what I perceived as shortcomings. I looked at this as an opportunity to make the R-Pod our own, customizing it to be what I wanted it to be. When we went to pick it up from the factory from being repaired after an accident, I got a lot of positive comments about my modifications..

Bottom line--Don't give up on it yet.

Hey! I agree with the other commenters. Don't give up yet. We also bought a 2018 179 a few months ago and couldn't be happier. We have camped in it 6-7 times already so it's getting some use. I love the kitchen and stove but I do only use it for boiling water for coffee in my perculator. I could see cooking food on it would be hard to clean up but I find cleaning any gas camping stove to be time consuming. We cook food outside on the fire or in the convection oven. The storage under bed works for us since we never plan to use the furnace. For the price we paid for our Pod the quality is good i think.

VolPod,
All new RV's, be it motorhome or trailers like ours has it's up's and downs. I will agree with you that the factory quality control is less then ideal on our Pods and please do write them and let them know! Though I have found most "issues" to be easily resolved and fixable without to much trouble. All in all though very happy with my Pod.

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful responses. I won't give up on it, I have purchased an outdoor camp stove to mitigate the interior stove, (it does percolate the coffee well), and I am looking at ideas to fix the storage area and its weakness. I will use the furnace quite a bit, so I will try the compartment divider idea from StephenH, thank you for that. I am thinking that the rPod is like a jeep, pretty customizable. Today I replace the faulty wood with a much beefier piece, so that won't be happening again. I did purchase locally, like supporting that aspect of commerce. Thank you again for your reasoned responses to my post. Have a good week

I am glad you are not giving up on it I learned so much in this forum and have used ideas I learned here. I also hope some of my mods (see link in signature) have been useful.