What would I be missing by buying a 15-20 yr old RV?

Matt_Colie wrote:
Don't ask me, our coach is 44 now, and it does everything we need and want.

We have good house electrics and plumbing. HVAC is the same as anything newer. I did have to add a microwave as they were not yet common household items. (They were included in the same builds a little later.)

Many have put in newer engines and gained nothing but a newer engine with little improvement otherwise. I could go for a system with OBDII, but I am not about to pay what it will cost.

This coach has no structural wood, so when I don't get a window leak fixed right away, nothing rots.

I'm not sure I would could find anything this solid and nice that was much newer.

Oh, yeah, not monthly payments and it is now on an historic vehicle plate, so not annual license fee.

Matt

But Matt, you own a motor home in a class of it's own. All I can say to you is......Good For You! Enjoy that GMC.

Don't ask me, our coach is 44 now, and it does everything we need and want.

We have good house electrics and plumbing. HVAC is the same as anything newer. I did have to add a microwave as they were not yet common household items. (They were included in the same builds a little later.)

Many have put in newer engines and gained nothing but a newer engine with little improvement otherwise. I could go for a system with OBDII, but I am not about to pay what it will cost.

This coach has no structural wood, so when I don't get a window leak fixed right away, nothing rots.

I'm not sure I would could find anything this solid and nice that was much newer.

Oh, yeah, not monthly payments and it is now on an historic vehicle plate, so not annual license fee.

Matt

Jedidad wrote:
Assuming an RV has no mechanical issues (engine, tranny and brakes good), what do late model RVs have that older ones don't?

Are there "must have" features now? What about build quality? Are newer models built better now?

Better engines and transmissions?

Better appliances and sub systems (water, electrical,etc.)?

Thanks.

Doing your research is a good thing. Buying a 15-20 year old coach sounded good before you do any research. The first thing you give up past 10 years is bank financing. I have had older coaches and they tend to be money pits even more than newer coaches. Less storage smaller holding tanks not as good driveline. No slides, once you have slides you will not go back.
Where are you located and what are you looking for? Go to RV shows and look and sit in different coaches see what floor plan works for you and the wife. Now after you have looked at a bunch you will have a better idea of what you want.
What is your budget range? Are you going on extended trips or just occasional use?
Bill

You will find wood wall & ceiling framing in many older units, aluminum in the later ones.

As of late, the preferred flat sheet flexible fiberglass has become more popular for roofing. Higher maintenance rubber and TPO roofing was more popular in years past.

The "spark plug popping-out" issue in the Fords was resolved mid production in 2003. 2002s surely have the problem. 2004s surely don't.

Fuel economy will be noticeably worse in Fords prior to 1997, and the GM/Chevys prior to 1996. If you go way back when carburetors were used, your fuel economy worse yet, and performance greatly reduced. I think carbs dropped out around 30 years ago.

You will get something extra good if buying a brand new motor home built on a 2017 Ford chassis. The new 2017 Ford E350 and E450 are getting a brand new transmission with one more gear for a total of 6 for improved fuel economy and driving behavior.

Last Feb. we bought my signature listed rig, it is obviously 14 years old and the biggest improvements for us/me are slides, levelers(not common in "C"s), the fuel injected engine and less exterior plastics that disintegrate under constant exposure to UV rays.

I like stuff I can repair on the road if it fails, the newer appliances and features like levelers are harder to repair with the limited number of tools we carry. It's not really bad it's just something you learn to live with.

The V10 engine and better trans are to me the best upgrade mine has. They are also the one big thing that is really changing and it seems for the better. Better mileage due to public demand and smoother and more effective transmissions, read that as more gears and computer controlled shifting patterns than my old four speed with vacuum shifting control.

All in all there isn't much difference other than those I mentioned above other than that the cosmetics are higher quality. Now if you go back to 60's through the 90's, you'll miss a lot of stuff used in the new models.

If you buy a well cared for, higher quality rig, with the floor plan you want, 15 years doesn't mean much.

"tatest" said it so much more eloquently than I and I wish I had read it better the first time. X 2 on what he said would be all that was needed.

You won't take a major beating on depreciation like you will with a new RV.

Differences will mostly be in the chassis, rather than house construction and appliances.

If Ford, 1997 (chassis model year) gets you into the fourth generation Ford E-series with Triton engines, some engine improvements over the years and chassis improvements around 2001 (E-450 or E-350 Superduty) and 2008 (front end restyling brought front axle upgrades).

If Chevrolet, 1996 gets you into the Express/Savana, GM's first body on chassis van series, replacing the Chevy Van. Engine upgrades from classic small-block V8s derivative from 1955 and L29/L18 big-blocks to the new 4.8/5.3/6.0 small-blocks came 2003 model year, with six-speed automatic for the 6.0 starting in 2010.

Also, 20 years will get you into Dodge platforms for Class C, although by then they were fairly rare, as Chrysler was supposed to get out of the medium-duty truck and motorhome business as the condition of their Federal bail-out in the mid-1970s.

Go back more than 20 years, things are more different. Ford chassis C motorhomes will be using the Windsor V-8s from early 1960s or the 460 big block from the late 60s, and the further back you go, you lose things like fuel injection, computer-controlled transmissions, and far enough back, overdrive. Similarly for Chevrolet, when pre-Vortec you lose port injection and go back to throttle body injection, then carbs, with similar issues on transmission tech.

House construction changes over time vary more by manufacturer. Winnebago started using laminated panel wall construction in the late 1960s, other manufacturers were still doing stick-built houses into the 1990s. A couple of specialty manufacturers still build with wood and steel framework, and probably do a better job of it than mass market manufacturers assembling RVs from laminated panels.

So there is a lot more to this than age. If you find something 20 years old that was built exceptional well and taken care of, it might last longer than anything you can buy brand new.

We are just now seeing major changes in type C motorhomes, with the introduction of global market chassis like Sprinter, Transit, Ducato/Promaster with lighter capacities, new appliance and systems technologies in the house, and smaller sizes and lighter weights for substantial improvements in fuel economy and thus operating costs.

The Ford "spitting sparkplugs" issue is a 1:100,000 to 1:1,000,000 problem across the total production of 5.4 V8 and 6.8 V10 engines installed in pickups, vans and SUVs, and tends to be related to the second set of plugs installed at 80,000 to 100,000 miles. It is worse on vans than pickups and SUVs because the mechanics replacing plugs find the rear plugs on vans more difficult to properly install.

Setting aside the problems of owning an old RV, The best advancements that you miss in my opinion are a long slide-out, basement storage, and a modern computer-controlled fuel-injected engine.

The Ford V-10 prior to about Year 2007 had problems spitting out their spark plugs. See this for more info - https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ford_spark.html. I believe there are a small number of 2,350+ on this website.

In my opinion, there is remarkably little that has changed and improved. I should perhaps also say I have a '98 motorhome and am quite content with it, so I may not be entirely unbiased in my opinion.

The typical RV appliances have not changed a lot over this time period. Stovetops, absorption fridges, gas RV ovens, water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners, generators, and water pumps are largely unchanged over this time period. Microwaves may be slightly more powerful or more likely to be microwave/convection combo units. Cabinets and furniture and fixtures are generally similar, though perhaps differently styled. Decor in RVs seems to consistently be ten years or so out of date.

The Ford E-series chassis has not a lot of change over this time period, either, beyond a steady but slow series of improvements to the engine and transmission. The newest 6 speed transmissions are, at least on paper, a more significant improvement than most of the previous ones, with a significantly nicer gear spacing. (The difference between the four and five speed units is basically just adding a gear between first and second and, probably more importantly, improved programming.) Older Ford engines have a design issue that make them comparatively prone to ejecting spark plugs.

What is likely to be different and possibly of importance are the entertainment systems, the number and size of slideouts, and the availability of a few features. Older televisions, without a digital tuner, cannot receive most all of the television broadcasts today, and CRT based units are much bigger, heavier, and more power hungry than modern LCD units. Replacing them in an older RV makes a whole lot of sense. (The antenna systems still work.) In the newer features, perhaps the most common are outside kitchens and outside television sets.

Build quality is probably roughly the same on average, though it does vary from make to make and model to model and is often none to excellent. Newer units may have the advantage of having less chance for poor or missed maintenance. Some early slide mechanisms (and some not-so-early ones) were not as trouble-free as might be hoped.

If you want a unit on a newer chassis such as the Sprinter or ProMaster, it obviously can't predate when those were available.