deltapicker wrote:
Bruce Brown wrote:
This sounds a lot like our old Fleetwood Flair was. Every single time we took it somewhere it ended up back in the shop -EVERY SINGLE TIME. We got to the point where we would make an appointment before we left, the only mystery was what was going to need fixing next.
In our case we DID have it looked at and it had a clean bill of health. The issues were more of what couldn't be seen.
What to do? We turned lemons into lemonade.
Short version of a long story is...
We were camping with friends who had just bought a brand new Winnie, with a slide - man was that thing NICE! My wife and I got to thinking, "they're in about the same income bracket as us, how do they do it" - so we asked them.
They asked how long we planned to keep ours and if we planned on sticking with the RV thing. Our answer was we loved the camping part, we're trading just as soon as we can. We ran the numbers and sure enough, when we added our monthly payment together with our monthly repair bills it was perfectly clear - we could afford new. In fact, between the bank and the shop we were already paying like we had new!
Soon after that we ordered our first new MH and have never looked back. Things have changed a lot since then but the basis of the story remains the same. Sometimes you'll go broke saving money.
My advice - cut your losses now and move on to something newer and better. And as my brother often says, "I'm not asking you to do something I haven't already done myself".
Good luck.
So I take it you've had much better luck with your newer model? I keep going back and forth on that. I've heard horror stories of brand new models being in the shop a dozen times and then I just can't imagine how those could all be major issues that require professional attention. There has to be a much greater chance of general reliability with a later model motorhome.
Correct. We ordered our first new motorhome in 1999, a 2000 Newmar Dutch Star. In the 3 years we owned that one the display on the radio went out and the plastic on the front skirts yellowed - that's it, and Newmar took care of both issues under warranty.
In 2002 we ordered our 2nd new MH, a Newmar Kountry Star diesel. In the 5 years we owned that one the only 2 issues were the stepwell cover motor and the heat/AC blend valve. Both were covered under warranty, my dealer supplied the parts, it wasn't worth the 4 mile drive to their place to have them changed, I did that myself.
Our current one was ordered in June 2007, came home in August 2007, another Newmar Kountry Star DP.
With this one we had an AC unit go, replaced under warranty, and a bad Atwood Jack, also replaced under warranty. The cooling unit went out of the fridge a year or 2 ago, Like many othwrs, I replaced that with an Amish unit.
Maybe we've just been lucky, maybe we've bought the right brand, or both. In any case we have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed (3) virtually trouble free motorhomes - and that's OK, we had enough problems with our Fleetwood to last us a lifetime. :B
