My experience with Basecamper mirrors was not a good one…read more
In particular:
1) After taking delivery of the van and starting our trip, the rooftop tent ripped off the top of the van while driving down I-15 at 80MPH. After pulling over and calling the owner, Matt, he pointed me to an item in the list of things he had supposedly trained me on, marked in the document as "need to know."
2) I never received any instruction to drive the van at 65MPH, which is significantly under the speed limit. I did receive training on how to set up and take down the tent, but nothing else regarding speed. That is indicated in the section I initialed, however I never received any verbal training or instruction to drive that slowly. I have driven with multiple roof racks, ski racks, etc. and have never been aware of a speed limit restriction, certainly not one that is 10-15MPH under the legal speed limit. Matt did tell me that he was "tired" from having to drive to Capitol Reef the previous day to deal with another vehicle issue related to his fleet.
3) From the damage, it appears that the right rail failed, in particular the right front attachment to the top of the van, a Yakima roof rail. It appears to have completely torn off from the van, causing the rail to snap and the tent to fly off. In addition, it seems that the tent was in no way secured to the two rails perpendicular to the Yakima bars, as there were no bolts of any kind attaching the tent to those rails. If those bolts were present, the roof rail would have never snapped even if the Yakima attachment failed.
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4) The above statements indicate to me that the tent was not attached to the roof of the van in the recommended way. Based on my inspection of the other vans in the Basecamper fleet and others I saw while on our trip, as well as my own experience, the tents are attached directly to the roof rails (Yakimas) via the standard connections you see on a Thule or other roof rack. I have never seen an attachment set up like the one on this van with two additional perpendicular rails that are not secured to the tent.
5) Based on 4), it seems that the tent was attached in some sort of way to accommodate the vent, which I believe is not consistent with how it was supposed to be installed. Matt insisted it was industry standard, but as I stated I've seen and used multiple rooftop racks and attachments and there is never a set of wood blocks involved.
5) Additionally, there were other issues with this van, it overheated while idling for less than 10 minutes and I had to put a quart of oil in after the engine started knocking. Additionally, a cabinet door came off the hinges and there were issues attaching propane canisters to the tube connecting them to the camping stove. I only point these out as they indicate a pattern of issues with the van that support the statements made above.
In summary, I don't think the issue was a result of my driving at a legal speed, it seems more an issue with the tent not being installed properly. Yakima roof bars should never fail if installed properly, and given how the tent was installed it's a pretty logical conclusion that those had issues as well.
This was not only an inconvenience for our trip, but a very dangerous situation if the tent had hit someone's car on the highway when it flew off.
In my dealings after the fact with Matt, he has come across as very defensive and argumentative. Given the gravity of the potential consequences, I would think every effort would be made to ensure that each requirement that the driver needs to know is explicitly called out and delivered to the driver so that there is no chance for something like this to happen.
The attitude I've been getting in my dealings with Matt does not give me any confidence that they are committed to doing everything possible to ensure a safe trip for their customers. I don't think the van I rented (Tan Campervan) is suitable for customer rentals.