Question about running a carfax report on an rv.

Ok, it's me, the original poster. Well, we jumped in and bought the Sunstar. I had called Winnebago in Iowa and asked if they had a record of any warranty repairs and there weren't any! We've had it now for about 6 weeks and we don't have any problems with it that we have found, so i guess you just can't judge by how many owners a coach has had. We did buy the extended warrant though just in case.

They are not under any mandate to report to carfax. It is NOT a end all be all way to check a vehicles history.

Some states like California smog stations do have to report it but again not all states do the same.

If something shows up it's a bonus to have the info that's all.

i've never heard of any RV having a CarFax, unless maybe a motorhome.
are CarFaxes done on RV's?

Watch the Car Fax commercials. They gloss over the fact that it covers repairs reported to them. If you are old enough to remember when they started they advertised that if they didn't have the incident in their report they would pay for the car. That didn't last very long as the got burnt very quickly.

CarFax works best when the vehicle's owner uses the dealer's service center (and that dealer sells the brand they are servicing for the customer). Those guys want to be using CarFax to sell their used inventory, so they'll go to the trouble to make sure the service team is reporting everything.

And some premium brands (like Lexus) will act as that conduit between gathering the information and forwarding it to CarFax.

With RV's there is almost no incentive for a shop to report back to CarFax, so that's probably why you aren't seeing any reports.

Thank you, souraider. I was thinking the same thing. For example, we adopted a cat, who on paper would look like a huge risk. We were her 7th owners! But she has been the best cat we've ever had. No issues whatsoever! Just bad luck on her part. Gorgeous and perfect manners. So I guess you can't go by that.

That being said, we do plan to investigate further.

I think it is natural to think the worst in this situation, but why not see if you could get an independent RV tech to look the unit over. If you have a mobile RV tech in your area see what they would charge to give it the once-over. If it is something you like, it may be worth it.

While it seems fishy that this unit would go through 3 owners in two years, there could be other reasons. I have seen instances where buyers take the motorhome plunge just to find out it was way more than they had bargained for. They end up trading out very quickly. Sometimes the buyer will realize after a few trips that the floorplan absolutely doesn't work for their needs. I have seen folks go from a C class to an A class quickly also.

While this unit could definitely be something to run from...maybe not.

Wow! Thanks for the replies. If we've only signed the preliminary paoerwork, can we get our money back and get out of the deal?

I recently traded a vehicle for a new one and yesterday saw my old one listed for sale by the dealer. Out of curiosity, I checked their website and it said they had Carfax on my old vehicle. Having never used Carfax, I was curious as to what it said.

The Carfax wasn't even right on what city I bought it in! It didn't show an accident last year ($9500), nor did it show the routine factory scheduled maintenance performed at the dealership. All it showed was oil changes.

So much for Carfax innacuracies!

I'm a manager in a GM dealership and we traded for a 4 year old Dodge Truck that had a major accident 2 years prior too us trading for it and it had been in accident to the tune of over $15,000 and car fax nor auto check showed it when we checked it. It was a fluke the way we found out about it. It went straight to the auction after we found that out. There are a lot of omissions on both of those reports.