knowmadically wrote:
rjxj wrote:
Dont be in a hurry as there are tons of them out there. Remember WATER DAMAGE WATER DAMAGE. People and DEALERS dump them on unsuspecting people all the time. Spend HUNDREDS for inspections but dont let anyone burn you with water damage.
You can blow and engine or trans and eat the price of that but at least you then have a new eng or trans in a decent rig. When you have water damage you are stuck with it. Very hard to repair.
Come back here as you shop as many of these people have been doing this for a long time. Again, if you spent a thousand dollars on inspections and threw up your hands and said the heck with it all that's still better than having your foot go through the floor 6 months after you buy something.
Interesting. Thanks for these tips! Where can one find such inspection services?
I assumed you were talking about a used class C. Even if it is new I would still be concerned about water damage but not to the same extent. from time to time there are people on here with new rigs and water damage. It seems there are often times when rigs are a few years old people are posting about water leaks. It's probably not that they just started leaking but that they have just started seeing the damage.
Either way here's more ramblings.:)
Well finding the good inspector may be the tough part. Others may post with services that they have utilized but I have inspected the 5 rv's I have bought. I would say that you need to find an RV dealer that is going to put the effort into doing it correctly but I will also say that you need to learn how to do it yourself.
Like anything else how do we know if the dealer is good or not? I have met dealers who were wham bam get your money and tell you anything. I have also met guys who had their heart in it and would do a great job. I stopped to browse a dealer in Frederick Michigan, and told him I was looking for used FW. He said the new are over there, the used units are over there and the water damaged ones are to the back of the lot. I said wow you come right out and tell people that they are water damaged. He laughed and said what good would it do me to sell you something that had water damage? That's the type of guy you are looking for and is worth paying his price.
On the other hand I visited a dealer in a much larger city near there and looked at a few rigs that had severe water damage yet the sales guy was passing them off as nothing wrong. They know perfectly well that they are bad but just pass it along to the person who isn't careful. By the time some people would notice it's too late.
You need to read on here and other places about what to look for. Odors, wall paper damage, filon delamination, rusted fasteners, soft roofs, soft floors, soft corners on the roof, soft areas around items on the roof, soft corners in slides or behind couch or dinettes.
You then need to start looking at all the rv's you can. Look at rv's you have no interest in. Look at FW, TT any of them. Don't listen to the owner yapping about it. Go in and smell it, feel it and look everywhere. I had an awl that I poked through the carpet in the slide corners to check for softness. A combination of you doing the foot work and narrowing it down and then following up with a true professional dealer or RV mechanic inspection. You may try someplace like Craigslist or some other way of finding an RV mechanic or other mechanic. Someone in here that is near you may be able to recommend someone or work something out to help you.
When you look at a certain model and and year come back or search for problems that pertain to it. Again, there are old timers in here who have owned all of them and know this stuff inside and out.
YES, it's all going to be a pita.
Also think about these RV'er sayings......There are two types of RV's, those that have leaked, and those that are going to leak.
When it comes to owning an RV either have a lot of money or be very handy.
