
We've heard about Master Tech RV Service in Elkhart, Indiana for many years. We've seen their booths at major RV shows and rallies, and we've heard great things about them and not-so-great things about them.

The online reviews seem to be mostly excellent with a few terrible reviews here and there over the years. They have 100 reviews on RVServiceReviews.com with an average rating of "Excellent". Now Master Tech also does RV remodeling/renovation, painting, and collision repair, so those reviews are mixed in with the service/repair reviews.
The Better Business Bureau gives them an "A-" rating and shows only one complaint in the last twelve months. They have been on Angie's List since 2010, but there isn't a single review there.
Note: We have the Premium membership with Angie's List. The "Plus" and "Premium" memberships allow you to search for service providers nationwide. And those levels of membership include "health & wellness" searches so you can search for doctors, dentists, chiropractors, clinics, hospitals, labs, etc.
RVillage, the RVing social network with 35,000 members, shows they have only one recommendation.
To be honest, we are skeptical about pretty much all RV service centers until we go there. But with a couple of potentially large issues (our hydraulics and generator) we thought we'd give Master Tech a try for the first time.
We made our appointment a few weeks ago for today, Tuesday, October 13, and told them we had until Friday at the latest. Our experience with RV repair facilities is that it almost always takes longer than estimated, so we try to plan for that.
We pulled in late yesterday afternoon, and parked at one of their many sites around the building that have water & electric hook-ups.

Interestingly, we were the only trailer, although they said they had others inside having some interior restoration done.
We met James Borum, who takes care of scheduling, customer service, and many other duties. He's only been with Master Tech two months, and he doesn't officially have a title yet. But he was with Forest River for 10 years, and his goal is to improve processes and customer service.
One of Master Tech's weaknesses, not unlike many other repair facilities, has been that they haven't done a good job of getting work done timely on rigs that are dropped off. The vast majority of RVers aren't full-timers and they tend to drop off their RVs for repairs, service, remodels, etc. with no urgent need for the work to be completed. That tends to lead to procrastination on the part of repair facilities and a failure to keep the customer informed about progress.
As full-time RVers that need to get work done timely on our homes, we can better stay on top of things. So, while we have the time to be patient and pleasant, we can make sure we aren't ignored.
James left us with a form to complete overnight. It included basic stuff like our personal information, rig information, and then a section for the work we wanted to have done. Linda listed our two high priority items - generator & hydraulic system - and then three or four other low priority items.
It's great that Master Tech has several RV sites, but their location is very near a busy rail yard. The loud, high-pitched, piercing squeal of rail cars being moved and positioned goes on all day and night.
After a not-so-good night's sleep, we were up early this morning. As long as the weather cooperated, our work would be done right at our spot. At 8:00 a.m., our tech, Jim, knocked on our door and was ready to get to work.
He started with the generator. We had it serviced by an Onan tech at our 2014 Fall Rally, but after that we had problems. In the Everglades Flamingo Campground in January we started the generator, but then it cut out when a load was applied. After that, we could start the generator, but it would only stay on a few seconds before it died.
Just before our Reunion Rally in May, we had Tom Johnson RV in North Carolina look at it and they couldn't find the problem. They wanted us to pull into their service bay so they could remove the generator, but we didn't have time for that.
As a side note, I've told the story many times that a master certified tech told us in the first seminar we ever attended on the technical side of RVing that "It's always the batteries" when there is problem. It's an exaggeration, but not by much. Every tech we've talked to in ten years starts with "it's probably that your batteries are low". Of course, knowing our systems like we do, and being able to monitor our batteries and keep them charged, we can usually rule that out pretty quickly (although some techs, including Jim today, still stubbornly believe it's our batteries until they test them).
Jim, primed the generator just like I had done and just like the tech in North Carolina had done. And then the generator started right up. Well of course it did.
We let it run for a half hour or so while Jim started looking into our hydraulics issues.
For years now, our hydraulic system hasn't been powerful enough to lift the front of our rig high enough in cases where we have to raise it pretty high to hitch up. We've gotten around that in a couple of different ways.
Sometimes, just me pushing up on the kingpin while Linda presses the front landing gear button is all the extra it needs. Sometimes, removing our propane cylinders or emptying our fresh water tank has been required to remove enough weight so that the landing gear will raise the front end high enough.
Jim found a damaged hydraulic hose on our driver's side landing gear. It wasn't completely ruptured, but there was a small leak. The hose needed to be replaced, but I wasn't convinced that was the main problem.
The other issue with our hydraulics was that our slideouts, especially our largest slide, kept tripping the thermal auto-reset 12-volt circuit breaker when Linda would bring them in. The slide would come in a few inches, stop, come in a few inches, stop, etc. This had been a problem for over a year, but it was getting worse.
Eventually, with the generator still running, Jim had Linda bring in our big slideout. The slideout stopped and, at the same time, the generator cut off. Hmm. Clearly there was an electrical issue between the hydraulic system and the generator. That helped narrow the focus.
After Jim got the new hydraulic hose installed, he tested our auto-reset breakers while Linda ran the slide in and out. It took awhile, but he eventually figured out the wiring was such that we weren't getting the full benefit of the 50-amp auto-reset breakers.
In our generator compartment, we have three thermal auto-reset breakers that look like this.

The breakers limit the current through the wiring, and they trip as they heat up too much. But, as they cool, they auto-reset themselves in a few seconds.
We have a breaker for the generator starter switch, the slideouts, and front landing gear. Jim determined that the various connections between the breakers weren't correct. This was causing the breakers to trip prematurely. So, with a simple change of one wire, that problem was fixed.


We're not sure who mis-wired or when, but now the slides all come in without tripping the breaker, the generator is not cutting off, and the front landing gear is working better.
So, it took most of the day, but our major issues were resolved.
The rest of the day, they replaced our broken outlet, fixed our back-up light on the fifth wheel, and installed a new ceiling fan.
Some will recall that our original ceiling fan had a couple of blades broken when service folks brought in the slides without making sure the blades were out of the way. Apparently, those instances also bent the blade arms because one of them broke off.
So, Linda went in search of a new ceiling fan. She found one at Lowe's but we determined it would hang too low, so she found this one at Menard's: Turn Of The Century Camden 42' Low Profile Ceiling Fan.

Now this is where we had a little problem. When Jim took the old ceiling fan down, he had a couple of wires that confused him. When he wired in the new fan, we were going to give it a try. Rather than turning on the main breaker outside, I told Linda to just turn on our inverter.
When the fan was turned on, we heard a nasty sound and our entire 12-volt system went down. Yikes.
Unfortunately, Jim mis-wired the fan and blew our 400-amp catastrophic fuse between our batteries and inverter. Fortunately, we had the fuse.
He re-wired the fan, replaced the fuse (their cost), and all is now working properly.
We decided not to add the light since we never used the lights on the other fan. And this fan is tighter to the ceiling than our other fan, so the slides clear the blades easily when they are brought in. One less thing to worry about.
So, everything we needed to get fixed got fixed and it was all done in one day. Most of the labor was in diagnosis, and there was only one part we needed (the hydraulic hose). The good thing about getting service and repairs done in the Elkhart area is parts are readily available and there is no waiting for them to be shipped in.
Our experience with Master Tech was mostly positive. I'm not sure I'd give then an "Excellent", but they fixed our issues and did it more timely than we expected. Of course, we thought the repairs might be more difficult than they really were. Still, I'd give them a "Very Good" and we appreciated having it all done in one day.
Now that they know us, and I see efforts from James to improve some of the little things that I noticed could be better, I would certainly return to Master Tech. Perhaps next time we'll be able to rate them as "Excellent".
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