M21 trailer fixes and improvements

JanRooks

Member
All of the 4 stabilizer jack safety nuts holding the feet were on only hand tight. The thread of the bolt has to be thru the plastic of the safety nut. (I had to return one stabilizer because of misaligned hex drive and paint falling off.)

5 of the aluminum angles on the left side of the cabinet were loose and had to be drilled and screwed to the rear supports in both bath and kitchen cabinet.

All of the bottom edges of the table and counters have very sharp edges. Vendor should be reminded of “No Sharp Edges” in PO. If with the customer they can be sanded with fine sand paper.

The wires to the bath room exhaust fan were connected backwards, making the fan blow air in instead of out. Fan direction should be checked with all light operation at final inspection. The screen can be taken down and the lead clips switched to change the fan direction

Cut away ½ inch opening on one side of the shower hose holder so the shower head could reach to clean the tub and toilet etc.

The hold-open bracket for the storage door in the outside of the slide-out will not reach the open door and should be deleted. The customer can hold it open with his head if necessary.

The door deadbolt will not go to full lock position without drilling a recess into the trailer frame behind the strike plate with a ¼ or 5/16 drill.

Some of the window latch catches are positioned to far inboard making them difficult to latch. This can be corrected by removing the long mounting screws and moving the catch outboard and slide slightly sideways and drilling new pilot holes and remounting the catch.

The black water holding tank label is called gray tank 2 instead of black or waste water like in the Hartland maintenance manual.. (Eric said he was going to mail me a decal).

The City Water connection nut is made out of rubber and expands in bright sunlight and sprays water all over. The older connector design with a brass female hose nut is what should be used. A 2 inch hose clamp around the nut will squeeze the nut sufficiently to stop the leak.

Design Improvements

The M21 safety chains are much larger than our Trailmanor 3023 chains and their ball is 2.0", not 2 and 5/16, reducing both would save weight and cost.

There should be a way to have just one 20 lb. propane tank (weighs 37 lbs). We have a 2 lb. bottle strapped to a board with an adapter replacing one of the tanks.

The propane piping from front to back of the M21 is ½ in. black or bare steel pipe. Suggest flexible 3/8 in copper to save weight (like the Trailmanor).

The outside faucet door can not fold down because of the bumper housing and will not hold the nozzle out straight. Its hose gets tangled under the bath cabinet. Suggest moving it to the right rear of the trailer where its hose will be in the dead spot in the bath cabinet. Saw 2012 M219 with the outside faucet behind the tub.

The queen bed mattress should be full length in the M21. We put 3 swimming pool noodles tied together at the front of our mattress under our memory foam topper as a filler for our queen fitted sheet.

The wardrobe closets on either side of the bed are about 3 inches to long making it difficult to reach items on the night stand shelves. The bottom of cabinet in between the closets could also be a couple of inches up or to the front to improve head room when getting in and out of bed.

The 3 door cabinet in the slide out does not need the notch in the interior to miss the window shade housing. The sides of the shade housing might need to be shortened by a 1/2 inch to clear the bottom of the inside floor of the cabinet.

I added a ¼ inch thick screen molding to the edge of the opening above the refrigerator to keep the dish rack and toaster from sliding out during travel.

I just added a 24 x 12 inch opening to the side of the bed and covered it with an additional cabinet door. It holds 2 large 17 x 23 inch plastic storage bins for quick access to more stuff without lifting the heavy bed.
 

Hodge-M22

Member
Well it looks like there is no need for design improvement it appears that they have dropped the Edge product line. Unless this was their response to dealing with defects. :)

That was very disappointing because barring a number of the same defects that you pointed out I really liked this model and have been very happy with my Edge. Prior to my Edge I owned a Forest River Rockwood Roo, it had it's own fair share of defects from the get go.

I believe that to be an RV owner you must also be fairly handy in doing repairs, otherwise you'll be spending a lot of time returning to the dealer.
 

pegmikef

Well-known member
Wow, it looks like you got a different trailer than I did when I bought my 2011 Edge M21 in April 2010. Everything worked right and fit correctly. In fact I was kind of impressed that it did. I had a very good PDI and they pointed out some of the things they had fixed. The only two issues I remember dealing with was raising the hanging bars a few inches in each of the wardrobes so a shirt would actually hang correctly and making drawers for the useless open space under the nightstand tops. We liked our edge, but it just got too small so we moved to the NT.
 
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