Welcome to the world of old RVs. We have a 1990 Winnebago Warrior.
One thing no one has mentioned is that you should immediately install at least one propane and one carbon monoxide detector in your rig. Yours, like mine, is so old that they were not required equipment (maybe they did not even exist in 1980!). Because of the rig's age, the possibility of worn-out connections or exhaust manifolds is very real. So it is easy to have an exhaust leak in any of your propane devices or your generator or even the engine itself. And of course propane leaks.
In my rig I installed a hard-wired combo propane/CO detector near the furnace, and I installed two batter-powered CO detectors - one in each sleeping area.
I agree that fixing up an old RV can certainly be more cost effective than buying a new rig. We've priced out what we would want in a newer rig and even used it would cost us $40K. You can do a lot of RV repairs for 15 years of RV payments.
One thing I would caution is to resist the urge to start "ripping things apart", unless you want to find yourself in the middle of a full-blown restoration project which means you will be spending a lot of money and not have an RV for many years and when you are done you'll still have an old RV.
Some things, you may decide, are simply best left alone. For example, our RV roof evidently leaked at one point. The previous owner's solution was to coat the roof in Heng's Roof Cement. This means that every piece of hardware that holds down the roof vent covers, TV antennae, and everything else, is now burried under hardened roof cement. Our RV had leakage around the shower skylight, which got into the shower walls. Really, the entire roof should be replaced, but it would be a huge job to get the old roof cement off, remove all the interior cabinetry, and replace the roof. It's just not worth it on a 30-year-old RV. So I went up on the roof, found any areas where the old sealant had cracked, and daubed in more sealant. I ended up gutting the shower and rebuilding the walls. The leak had spread across the ceiling to the toilet room wall, and likewise I had to rip out that wall and replace it.
My RV has "delamination" in that the RV windows leaked water down the inside of the sides of the RV. I've decided I'm not going to try and fix it. We now leave the RV in covered storage to try and minimize its exposure to rain.
It is *very easy* to pull apart something and discover more things wrong so you end up pulling out more and more to fix the "whole thing". It is like pulling on a piece of yarn on your sweater - before you know it you'v unraveled the whole thing!
Try to minimize the scope of each repair.
You'll want to sanitize your fresh water tanks (google it) and even then you probably don't want to use it for drinking water.
Also, and this is MOST IMPORTANT: Get yourself a Good Sam RV roadside assistance membership. With an old RV, the odds of you breaking down and needing a tow are very high. Our Good Sam membership has paid for itself just in towing costs the 3 times we have had to be towed.
Welcome to the RV club!
