Vehicles OCRV Center Repairs, Sorted the Way They Are Built
Written by Structural Repair Lead, Structural and Frame Lead, OCRV Center. Reviewed by Fleet Account Manager
In shortConstruction decides the repair. This index sorts eighty eight unit types into nine families by wall system, roof system and chassis, because a vacuum bonded sidewall and a stick built one fail differently.
What kinds of vehicles does OCRV Center work on?
Motorhomes, campers, fifth wheels, trailers, vans, commercial trucks, buses and municipal apparatus, electric and specialty units, and mobile business builds. Owners across Rancho Santa Margarita bring everything from a teardrop to a 45 foot diesel pusher, and the 35,000 square foot floor is what makes that range possible.
- Nine vehicle families, eighty eight documented unit types
- Full length Class A coaches up to 45 feet fit the booth
- Fire apparatus, transit buses and refuse trucks accepted
- Wall and roof construction determines the repair method
- Vehicle families
- 9From motorhomes to mobile business builds
- Documented unit types
- 88Each with its own construction and failure profile
- Longest unit accepted
- 45 feetFull length Class A coaches and bus conversions
- Facility
- 35,000 sq ftFrame rack, downdraft booth, heavy lift capacity
- Written estimate
- $150Credited in full against an authorized repair
Last verified
Two units can carry identical damage and need completely different repairs. A rock through the lower sidewall of a vacuum bonded fifth wheel is a delamination job because the impact broke the bond line behind the skin. The same rock through a stick built travel trailer with an aluminum skin is a panel job, because there is no bond line to break. Same hole, different repair, different price.
That is why this site sorts vehicles by how they are built rather than by brand. Find your family below, then the unit type, and the page will tell you what fails on that construction, what it costs to correct, and how it fits our bays.
Schedule of work
Why construction matters more than badge
Three things determine almost everything about a repair. The wall system, which is either laminated over Azdel or lauan, or aluminum framed and skinned, or stick built with wood studs. The roof system, which is EPDM, TPO, laminated fiberglass or a one piece cap. And the chassis, which is either a ladder frame the body sits on or a unibody shell that is itself the structure.
Those three answers set the method. A laminated wall gets injected and vacuum pressed. A framed wall gets opened and reskinned. A unibody Sprinter gets pulled on the rack with factory anchoring points. A body on frame coach gets the frame corrected first and the body reset on top of it. Knowing which you own is the difference between a repair that holds and one that comes back.
- Laminated sidewall: fiberglass or filon bonded to Azdel or lauan over an aluminum cage
- Stick built: wood framing, thin skin, repairs that follow the studs
- Body on frame: correct the frame first, reset the body second
- Unibody: the shell is the structure, so straightening is measurement work
RVs and motorhomes
The largest family and the one with the widest spread in build quality. A luxury diesel pusher on a Spartan or Freightliner chassis is a different animal from a gas Class A on a Ford F53, and the difference shows up first in how the sidewall is bonded and second in how much of the coach comes apart to reach anything. Bus conversions from Prevost and MCI shells sit at the top of the range and take the longest.
Common work in this family is front cap fiberglass, slide mechanisms, roof membranes, full repaints on units past a decade, and structural correction after a low speed hit that moved a body mount. Twelve unit types are documented here.
- Class A gas motorhome, Class A diesel pusher, luxury Class A motorhome
- Class B camper van, Class C motorhome, compact Class C, Super C
- Off road and expedition RV, vintage and classic RV, custom converted RV
- Bus conversion on a Prevost or MCI shell, and skoolie conversions
Campers and truck campers
Truck campers carry loads no other RV does, because the entire unit sits on a bed floor and rides every input the truck takes. The wing walls crack, the jack mounts pull, and the roof to sidewall seam opens first at the front corners. Pop up units add a lift system and a soft wall that has its own failure list, and hard side pop ups are a third category again.
Ten unit types here, and the disambiguation matters at intake. A tent trailer with canvas bunk ends and a hard side pop up with rigid lifting walls share a nav category and almost nothing else.
- Slide in truck camper, flatbed truck camper, pop top truck camper, lightweight truck camper
- Pop up tent trailer, hard side pop up camper, A frame camper
- Rooftop tent camper, overland and off road camper, modular and collapsible camper
Fifth wheels and travel trailers
Towables take their damage in two places: the front, where the pin box or the A frame concentrates every load the truck puts into it, and the corners, where a turn that was cut too tight meets a fence post. Bunkhouse and multi slide fifth wheels carry the heaviest rooms in the industry, which is why rail and gear pack wear shows up sooner on them than on anything else.
Sixteen unit types across these two families. Toy haulers deserve their own note: the ramp door is a structural member, and a ramp that no longer seals is usually telling you the rear wall has moved rather than that the seal is tired.
- Fifth wheels: standard, bunkhouse, toy hauler, luxury destination, multi slide, ultra lite, park model
- Trailers: travel trailer, toy hauler travel trailer, teardrop, expandable, hybrid
- Trailers continued: off road trailer, destination trailer, mobile tiny home, utility and cargo trailer
Vans and camper van conversions
Vans are unibody, which changes everything about collision work. There is no frame to pull independently of the body, so straightening is measurement against factory control points and pulling in the direction the damage came from. Mercedes Sprinter, Ram ProMaster, Ford Transit and Mercedes Metris all have their own anchoring requirements and their own aluminum content.
Conversions add a second problem. A build with a lithium bank, a roof array, a Webasto heater and cabinetry is worth far more than the shell it lives in, and carriers routinely value it as a bare cargo van because nobody documented the build. Eight unit types here.
- Mercedes Sprinter van, camper van conversion, cargo van, extended cargo van
- High cube van, low roof van, armored van, modular upfit van
Commercial and heavy vehicles
Commercial work is measured in downtime rather than in dollars. A box truck out of service is a route that does not run, and the operator is paying for the truck either way. That changes how a job is sequenced: parts are ordered before teardown wherever possible, and the unit comes in when the parts land rather than sitting in a bay waiting for them.
Eight unit types, and the range runs from a beverage body with roll up doors to a full tractor. Reefer boxes add insulation panel work that nothing else on this list requires, and DOT reflective marking has to be restored correctly on anything that carried it.
- Semi truck, flatbed truck, box truck, curtain side truck
- Beverage delivery truck, parcel and furniture delivery truck, refrigerated reefer truck, dump truck
Buses, emergency apparatus and municipal fleet
Public fleet work runs on documentation. A city or a district does not authorize a repair on a handshake, it authorizes against a purchase order that references a written scope, and the scope has to survive an audit. Fire apparatus adds a compliance layer on top of that, because a body repair on an engine cannot compromise a compartment, a ladder mount or a pump panel.
Seventeen unit types, the largest family on the site. Transit buses, school buses from Blue Bird and Collins bodies, ambulances on Type I and Type III shells, and the whole public works list from street sweepers to bucket trucks.
- School bus, transit bus, shuttle bus, paratransit van
- Fire engine, ambulance, police vehicle, municipal fleet vehicle, tow truck
- Refuse and recycling truck, street sweeper, utility truck, bucket truck, snow plow truck
- Water and sewer maintenance vehicle, traffic signal maintenance vehicle, forestry and parks maintenance vehicle
Specialty, electric and mobile business vehicles
Electric vehicles change the sequence rather than the skill. High voltage systems get isolated and verified before any panel comes off, and structural adhesives and rivet bonded joints on a Rivian body are not interchangeable with steel welding practice. Battery enclosure proximity dictates what heat can be applied and where.
Mobile business builds are the other specialty. A food truck is a commercial kitchen bolted into a body, and a repair that ignores the hood, the LP lines or the health department layout will fail an inspection even if the bodywork is perfect. Seventeen unit types across these two families.
- Rivian R1T, Rivian R1S, electric delivery van, hybrid fleet vehicle
- Food truck, mobile coffee shop, mobile event and catering truck, mobile retail truck
- Mobile medical clinic, mobile pet grooming van, mobile hair salon and spa
- Mobile office, mobile workshop, mobile command center, mobile photography studio, mobile tool sales truck, mobile tech repair van
Will your unit actually fit
This is the question we get more than any other, and the answer is almost always yes. The floor is 35,000 square feet with bays sized for full length coaches and a downdraft booth built for RV refinish rather than for automobiles. A 45 foot Class A goes in the booth. A tandem axle fifth wheel goes on the rack. A ladder truck fits under the door.
What does limit a job is not length, it is drivability and scheduling. A unit that cannot move under its own power needs a tow, and a booth slot on a full coach repaint has to be blocked out in advance rather than fitted between other work. Both of those are conversations at intake, not surprises at day four.
Appendix: questions and answers
- My unit could fit two of these families. Which page do I read?
- Read the one that matches how it was built, not how it is registered. A conversion on a bare cargo van belongs with vans even if it is titled as a motorhome. A factory Class B belongs with motorhomes even though it looks like a van. The construction is what determines the repair method.
- How old is too old for you to take on?
- Age is not the limit, parts availability is. We work on coaches from the 1970s regularly. What decides feasibility is whether a discontinued cap, a specific window frame from Hehr or Kinro, or an obsolete appliance can be sourced or fabricated. We tell you which of those applies before you authorize anything.
- Do you specialize in particular manufacturers?
- We work across Winnebago, Tiffin, Newmar, Thor, Jayco, Forest River, Keystone, Grand Design, Airstream, Lance and dozens more. Manufacturer matters less than the components inside, since almost every builder uses the same Lippert chassis parts, Dometic appliances and Carefree awnings.
- Can you handle several units from the same owner at once?
- Yes, and for fleet accounts that is the normal arrangement. Units are staged so an agreed maximum are down simultaneously and the rest keep working. We build the rotation around your operating calendar, and a single point of contact carries all of the files rather than one per unit.
- What if the unit cannot be driven to you?
- It gets towed in. For anything over thirty feet we recommend a heavy duty operator who has moved RVs before, since a low approach angle and a long rear overhang will damage a unit on a standard flatbed. Whether the tow is covered depends on your policy and we help you find out.
- My rig is a one off build. Is there a page for it?
- Read the closest construction match and treat it as the baseline. Custom converted RVs, expedition builds and owner finished vans all have their own pages, and each of them assumes the build documentation is thin. Photographing your build before anything happens to it is the single most useful thing you can do.
- The trailer and the tow vehicle were both damaged. Can you do both?
- Yes. A hitch separation or a jackknife usually damages both, and repairing them under one file keeps the documentation consistent. The trailer and the truck may sit under different coverage parts of the same policy, so we scope them separately even when the work happens together.
Open a file on this repair
Tell us the vehicle, what happened and whether a claim is open. We will tell you what the scope looks like and what it takes to get you back on the road.
Or call (949) 799-3387