RV recall lookup
A recall notice arrives, or you hear about one, and there is no single place to ask whether it covers your unit. Put in a VIN, or a year and a make and a model, and this reads the federal recall and complaint records and shows what has been filed. It is free, there is no account, and nothing is sent anywhere except to the two federal services that answer it.
Your VIN goes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and to nobody else.
What is your VIN?
How to get it: the sticker in the driver's door jamb on a motorhome, or the front of the trailer frame near the tongue on a towable. Every place it is printed is set out below. It is 17 characters and never contains the letters I, O or Q. It is decoded by NHTSA's federal VIN service, and nothing is sent anywhere else.
What a recall lookup can and cannot tell you
A recall is filed against a range of VINs, not against a model year. So a list for your make, model and year is a screen, and the only way to know whether your unit is inside the range is to check the VIN with the maker. This tool does that when the maker publishes a lookup, and it says so when the maker does not.
The other half of the answer is the complaint file. A complaint is an owner's report rather than a finding by anyone, so a single one means little. A cluster of them on one component is sometimes what a recall is eventually made of, which is why they are shown beside the campaigns rather than hidden.
Why a motorhome's VIN is not the coach
This is the fact that makes a plain RV VIN lookup unreliable, and it is worth two minutes before you use the tool. A motorhome is built on a chassis somebody else made, and the VIN belongs to that chassis. A Winnebago on a Ford E-450 decodes as a Ford, with a body class the federal service calls Incomplete - Cutaway. The recalls attached to that VIN are Ford's recalls, not Winnebago's.
The coach builder files its own campaigns under the coach make, and those are found by a make-and-model search rather than by the VIN. So a motorhome owner has two checks to make, and a trailer owner has one: a trailer's VIN is its own, assigned by the maker that built it.
Winnebago says this on its own recall page, which states plainly that it does not cover towables and does not cover the chassis. Forest River says the same thing about motorized units. The independent RV VIN decoders describe the split too. It is not a fringe concern.
Reading a result
Each campaign comes with the hazard read out of its own wording, and the hazards are counted at the top of the list so you can see at a glance whether any of it is a fire or a brake before reading through the summaries. The counts are also the filter: pick one and the list shows only those campaigns.
That reading is ours and not the agency's. NHTSA publishes the component and a consequence sentence and no hazard type, so the tags are derived from that text, which means they are a sorting aid rather than a verdict. The campaign's own words are always shown underneath the tag.
A result is also a link. Once a lookup has run, the address carries your VIN, so you can send somebody the exact list you are looking at, and a link you are sent runs the lookup by itself.
Where a campaign number leads
Every recall has a campaign number, and it is the thread that runs through everything else: the federal report, the maker's notice, and the repair instruction the dealer works from. The number NHTSA publishes looks like 21V685000, and the first six characters identify the campaign: the year, the letter V for a vehicle campaign, and the sequence number.
The deepest federal document is the Part 573 report, which the manufacturer files within five working days of deciding a defect exists. It carries the defect description, the chronology, the production dates, the VIN range and the remedy. It is a PDF, it is public, and the campaign number is how you find it.
How to find your VIN
On a motorhome it is on a sticker in the driver's door jamb, and on the chassis frame rail under the hood or the front of the cab. On a travel trailer or a fifth wheel it is on the front of the frame, on the road side, near the tongue. Every one of them is also on the certification label, which is the sticker carrying the weight ratings.
The label is worth photographing while you are there. It is what a dealer, an insurer and a parts counter will all ask for.
What this does not cover
Appliances. A refrigerator, a water heater, a generator and a portable heater are consumer products before they are RV parts, so their recalls are filed with the Consumer Product Safety Commission rather than with NHTSA. The recalls and bulletins page links that register alongside this tool.
Service bulletins, too. A recall is a safety defect; a service bulletin is the maker telling its dealers how to handle something, and the federal government collects those alongside the recalls. They are indexed on the same page.
And the Canadian database is a snapshot rather than a live query.
Where to go next
The furnace carbon monoxide guide covers the recall that matters most on a furnace. RV tire replacement covers the tire recalls and the age rule behind them, and the recalls and bulletins page is the federal file this tool searches. If the recall work needs a dealer rather than an owner, the directory lists RV service by state.
Sources
- NHTSA, the recalls API and its use policy: the endpoint this tool asks, and the rule that the API is not to be used for bulk VIN lookups, which is why it checks one unit per request
- NHTSA, Check for Recalls: the federal lookup itself, where a campaign number finds the full report
- NHTSA, vPIC VIN decoder: the service that decodes the VIN, and the source of the body class that tells a cutaway chassis from a complete vehicle
- NHTSA, vPIC standalone databases: the monthly full catalogue, which is where the make and model lists come from
- NHTSA, the SaferCar VIN lookup and its questions: the VIN-specific surface, and what it says about a VIN that returns nothing
- NHTSA, a Part 573 safety recall report, campaign 24V826: an example of the deepest federal document, carrying the defect, the chronology and the VIN range
- Transport Canada, Motor Vehicle Safety Recalls Database: the Canadian system, searched by make, model or year
- Transport Canada, the recalls feed: the only machine-readable surface Canada publishes, and the source of the snapshot below
- Transport Canada, recall record 2026-460: a Canadian record in full, carrying the motor vehicle safety standard the recall is filed against
- Winnebago, recall VIN lookup: a maker lookup covering recalls from 2004, and the clearest statement that it excludes towables and the chassis
- Newmar, safety recalls and VIN lookup: a lookup by VIN or by a six-digit coach number
- Brinkley RV, service campaign history: the three campaign types named separately, which is what tells an owner whether a notice is a recall at all
By OriginRV. Last reviewed on Nov 2, 2026.
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