--- title: "RV Repair Questions and Answers | OCRV Center FAQs" description: "Straight answers on cost, claims, turnaround, size limits and what a written estimate buys. The questions the front counter hears every single month." focus_keyword: "rv repair questions and answers rancho santa margarita" canonical: https://ocrv.me/faqs/ kind: simple updated: 2026-07-29 source: OCRV Center --- # The Questions Owners Ask Before They Bring a Unit In > The same questions arrive every month, so here they are answered once. Most reduce to three things: **who pays**, **how long**, and whether the unit physically fits through the door. ## What do most owners ask before booking an RV repair? Who pays, how long it takes, and whether the unit fits. OCRV Center answers all three the same way for Rancho Santa Margarita owners: coverage depends on cause rather than damage, turnaround runs days to weeks by job type, and the Yorba Linda floor takes coaches up to forty five feet. - Coverage turns on cause, not on how bad the damage looks - Days for a seal, weeks for structure, paint or a supplement cycle - Full length Class A coaches and fire apparatus both fit - Every estimate is billed and credited to authorized work ### Key facts | Item | Value | | --- | --- | | Questions answered here | Twelve (Grouped by money, coverage, timing and capability) | | Body and paint rate | $210 per hour | | Written estimate | $150 (Credited in full against an authorized repair) | | Longest unit accepted | 45 feet (Full length Class A coaches and bus conversions) | | Carriers billed directly | 16 | The front counter takes roughly the same twenty calls every month, and about fifteen of them can be answered properly in writing. Doing that here saves you a call and saves us repeating an answer that deserves more nuance than a phone conversation usually allows. Where an answer is long enough to need its own page, there is a link. Answers are grouped by what you are actually worried about rather than by department. Money first, because that is what nearly everybody opens with. ## Money, and what is decided in advance Four rates cover the whole shop and they are set by department rather than by vehicle. Body and paint is $210 per hour, mechanical and electrical $260, diagnostics $285 with a one hour minimum, detail $95. Materials bill from hours, parts carry a published markup, and sales tax applies to parts and materials rather than to labor. All of that is checkable against a finished invoice. What is not decided in advance is the total, because totals come from hours and hours come from the unit. The honest version is that hidden damage found at teardown is the largest variable on any recreational vehicle job, and nobody can see through a bonded wall from outside. Anybody quoting a firm total on a delamination repair before opening the panel is guessing. ## Coverage, and the line carriers actually draw Coverage turns on cause, not on severity. An event is covered: an impact, a storm, hail, a falling limb, vandalism. Time is not: ultraviolet chalking, seals that took a compression set from age, a rail that wore through eight seasons of use. Most contested RV claims sit where the two meet, which is a storm that got in through something already tired, and how that splits depends almost entirely on what was documented before a panel came off. One legal point worth knowing before your first call. In California an insurer may not require you to use a particular repair shop. Section 758.5 of the Insurance Code puts that choice with the policyholder. A carrier may recommend, and may tell you a shop is on its direct repair programme, and that is the end of its authority on the question. ## Timing, and where the days actually go A seal replacement or a single panel is a few days. Structural work, a full repaint, or anything that runs through a supplement cycle is measured in weeks. The two steps that add the most calendar are parts lead time and supplement approval, and neither is fully in our control, which is why both get disclosed at authorization rather than explained later. Parts is the one that surprises people. A Lippert rail or a Dometic control board is days. A discontinued fiberglass cap, a window frame for a nineties coach, or a formed composite section from a low volume builder can be months. Where that is your situation you will hear it before you sign, along with the fabrication alternatives and what each costs in hours. ## Capability, size and what happens off site Size is almost never the limiting factor. The floor is 35,000 square feet, the booth takes a full length coach in one piece, and the bay doors clear a high roof unit. Fire apparatus, transit buses and tandem axle fifth wheels all come in. What limits a job is drivability and booth scheduling, and both are conversations at intake rather than surprises at day four. Nothing happens away from the building. We do not offer mobile repair and there is no roadside option, because refinish needs a booth, structural pulls need anchoring bolted to a floor, and containment is a licence condition rather than a preference. If your unit cannot move, it gets towed in, and the tow may be covered depending on your policy. ## If your question is not here The insurance section carries twenty nine topics written as a reference, and the service and vehicle pages carry their own question sets aimed at that specific work. Between them most things are covered in more depth than a general page can manage. The glossary is worth a look if the sticking point is a word on an estimate rather than a decision. Failing that, call. A question asked twice at the counter usually turns into a page here, so asking it is genuinely useful to the next owner as well as to you. ## Questions and answers ### What should I have in front of me when I first call you? The claim number and adjuster name if a claim is open, the year and model, the floor plan if you know it, and a rough description of where the damage is by side and height. Photographs help enormously even if they are poor. Five minutes of preparation turns a vague call into a bookable appointment. ### Can I turn up without an appointment? Insurance walk ins are accepted during posted hours and so is a quick look at something you can describe. What a walk in cannot get you is a bay, since long units need staging and a booth slot is blocked out in advance. Call ahead and the visit is worth considerably more. ### How do I know whether an older unit is worth repairing at all? Compare the scope to what the unit is worth to you rather than to a book value, because a paid off coach you know is often worth more than its trade figure suggests. Where the answer is genuinely marginal we say so. Parts availability decides feasibility more often than money does on anything from the nineties. ### I have five unrelated problems. Should I bring them all in together? Yes, almost always. Teardown labor is shared, so addressing a roof seam while the front cap is already off costs a fraction of a separate visit. The exception is when one item requires a long lead part, in which case we split the work so the unit is not sitting in a bay waiting on a shipment. ### Do you charge to keep my unit on the lot while parts are on order? Not while a job is progressing. Storage becomes a conversation only when a file has stalled on the owner's side, for instance an authorization that has not come back for weeks. On insurance files carriers pay storage while a claim is moving, which is one more reason documentation quality matters. ### Can I supply my own parts to save money? For some items, yes, and we will tell you which. Appliances and consumables are usually fine. Structural and bonded body parts are not, because fitment and bond compatibility have to be verified and an owner supplied panel that will not bond becomes an expensive argument. Labor rate is unchanged either way. --- Source: [OCRV Center](https://ocrv.me/faqs/). Last verified 2026-07-29.