South Carolina – RV Travels in Europe and North America

January 6, 2014 Columbia SC

Drove down today from Maryland expecting to pick up our Tiger. When we arrived at 2 PM today, this was the status of the Tiger.

This is what we saw when we arrived more than two weeks after the promised delivery date.

Frankly I was shocked into silence. I expected to see a shiny new Tiger sitting in front of Provan. Instead we were presented with this. When we left on December 23rd we were under the impression that there was very little work left to be done and that they would have no problem at all meeting delivery on January 6. When we arrived today the water tanks were still not installed, some electrical work was still being done under the hood, and much of the cabinetry was not completed. In addition the airbags were not installed and parts were still on order and as of this writing are not on hand. None of the systems had been tested, but at 2 pm we were told they would have it ready by 4pm so that we could camp in it. At this point the credibility for them was very low and I was not going to risk sleeping in an untested camper in 12 degree weather. So once again we are in the Country Inn and Suites, and not in our camper.

Provan has a great reputation for customer service but right now I am not feeling the love. Just to give a quick history. The order with deposit was placed in April with a promised delivery date of June. In June Mark said there were some issues with development of the Malayan and some upgrades he wanted to do and could I wait for the delivery until September. I agreed. In September Mark again asked to delay delivery until late November or the first week of December. After some back and forth Mark agreed that he would deliver the truck on December 19, so we booked flights and as I have said above it was not ready for delivery.

I heard a list of reasons that they were not ready, but I also saw a nearly completed Bengal in the shop that is heading west for the winter shows. The two major issues that were cited as the reasons for the delays (cabinetry issues and wrong brackets for the airbags) were known issues when we departed on December 23rd.) So for them to find out that they again had the wrong brackets on January 5 and the fact that the plumbing system was still being installed today, leads me to believe that finishing up our Malayan may not have been the number 1 priority during the 6 work days between our departure and arrival today.

I hope this is an anomaly and does not reflect future service or the quality of the product, but 3 production delays and 2 missed delivery dates are not acceptable and I hope Mark and his team at Provan will make sure that this does not happen again to any customer.

December 22, 2013 Columbia SC

Since this is supposed to be a travel blog today we will talk about our time around here. Columbia is the capitol of South Carolina. We spent some time Wednesday, Thursday and Friday exploring the town.

On Wednesday we had dinner with Mark Guild, Fred and Denise Cook, and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Nixon at an Indian Restaurant in Columbia. The food was good and the company fun. Fred and Denise were picking up their Malayan so we enjoyed discussing future plans for our Tigers.

The highlight was a visit to to Conquest Brewery. It reminded us very much of the small breweries we see in Portland. We punched the address into our trusty Garmin and we ended up in a dark street next to the University of South Carolina football stadium. Just as we were going to turn around we saw a little industrial park with a small hand painted sign and we had found it! We tried a sampler and the beer was very good. If you are in Columbia I highly recommend it. The highlight beer for us was a coffee infused IPA. We usually are not big fans of infused beers, but this one won us over, nice aroma and just a hint of coffee in the beer did not overpower the hops.

The sign for the brewery is well concealed.

We had some interesting conversations as this is not only a brewery, but a Christian brewery. Later in the night they had a discussion of art and Christianity in the brewery. Talked to one of the brewers and he really he knew his beer. He strongly recommended we visit Asheville NC as they now have more breweries per capita than Portland. Sounds like we will have to make a visit. We enjoyed the place so much we returned again on Friday.

While not having the Tiger ready on time has been a pain, it did result in one good thing. Ton’s cousin Pee Porn lives near Charlotte. If anyone is responsible for Ton and I being married it is Pee Porn. When we met on Okinawa 33 years ago Ton was visiting Pee Porn. We had not seen her in over 30 years. Saturday we drove up and spent the day with her and her husband Richard. We had a lot of catching up to do and it was a great evening. Pee Porn cooked some great Thai food that we ate for lunch. Later Ton mentioned Ron’s love of Carolina BBQ, and before we knew it we were off to a great BBQ joint called Garry’s in China Grove NC. We had a dinner of Carolina BBQ with hush puppies, onion rings, coleslaw, and baked beans. Ron was in heaven, and the price was unbelievably low. It was really nice to see Pee Porn and her family again and we promise that it will not be 30 years before we do it again.

Ton and her cousin Pee Porn in front of a great BBQ joint.

Sunday we headed to Charleston, made the obligatory visit to Costco, then headed to downtown Charleston. We stopped at a coffee bar and taproom and sampled some of the local brews. Nothing knocked our socks off, we then headed towards the market. We were lucky as one Sunday a month they close down one of the main streets downtown. There were all kinds of street musicians, and food vendors on the street. It was a great walk with lots of interesting people to see. We had visited Charleston the year before and enjoyed it then, it is a beautiful old colonial city definitely worth a visit.

December 21, 2013 Columbia SC

We arrived in South Carolina on December 18 expecting to pick up our Tiger on December 19. As you can see from the date we are still in Columbia. On arrival at Provan we met Mark the owner. He said they had run into some delays and were most likely not going to make the delivery until Friday and possibly Monday. When we went out to see the truck it was obvious that delivery was going to be delayed. The build was significantly behind schedule. There were a lot of reasons including problems with mounting the Sterling Unit, delays on the Cook’s Malayan that was being delivered nearly simultaneously, and Murphy getting involved in a couple of the material orders. When we ordered the Malayan we understood that we were in essence working with a custom built prototype unit and some things would be designed as we went. So after some initial panic at the unexpected state of the unit we decided to use the opportunity to learn more about the Malayan as we would be able to see more of the build then we expected.

Mark offered to put us up in a hotel near the plant and let us use the company Suburban for the weekend and if necessary to drive to Maryland. By being there with the build we were able to make some minor tweaks such as adding additional electrical plugs in the kitchen.

Some of the issues that came up.

The Sterling Power Unit. As they were installing the Sterling in the Cook’s unit they began to have some concerns. The Sterling had never been used with a dual alternator set up and the Provan team had some issues with the installation. As a result before we left Oregon Mark had called us and recommended deleting the Sterling. His feeling was that with the dual alternators on the truck we would have enough power to charge the house batteries. While the Sterling would move more power Mark felt that it may not be enough to risk the additional complexity that the Sterling would bring to the build. We decided to let Fred test it on his Tiger and if the results were positive we wold retrofit the Sterling in our unit. As a result we decided to delete the Sterling at this time.

The Cabinet Behind the Drivers Seat. We had initially added this to increase our storage. This cabinet was suggested by Fred Cook and we were excited to have it included in our build. When we received the call about the Sterling Mark also said he would have to delete the cabinet. Due to space issues he needed to use the back wall of the coach to install the Magnum Inverter. When we saw Fred’s Truck I was really jealous as the cabinet looked good and added a considerable amount of storage. On Thursday Marks team realized that they could place the Magnum where we had planned to install the Sterling eliminating the interference that had caused the elimination of the cabinet. This allowed us to install the cabinet, but the cabinet had been deleted and would not be ready in time to install before January. So at this time it looks like we will be coming back in January to install the cabinet.

Water Fill. When we arrived Mark said they were having a difficult time with the water fill for the tank. They were proposing that we fill it inside the coach, instead of from outside. This would have meant pulling a hose into the coach each time we filled the tank. I was concerned that no matter how careful we were filling with a hose there would be a little spillage each time, and over time could cause some problems with water damage, and potentially turn into a mold farm. This was a big problem with me. The issue was that there was no way to position the opening to allow a gravity feed due to the installation of the farings on the truck that you can see in the picture above. After some brainstorming we decided to install a switch valve at the city water connection (where you hook up the water in a RV park)that would allow a pressure fill of the water tank when filling with a hose, and to cut a large hole in the top of the tank to allow as big a target as possible if we were filling with water cans.

Coach Battery Placement. Our coach comes with four batteries to allow maximum time away from the grid. Unfortunately with the addition of the tow hitch there was an interference with where two of the batteries were going to be placed. It was literally a matter of one inch, but as a result two of the batteries had to be located in the rear storage compartment of the Tiger. This is a problem only on the LT model.