Help with identifying delamination / water damage

I would move on and keep looking. Too many used rv's out there to buy a problem one. Yes, it looks like delamination to me and a lot of it.

RUN!

Move on.

If you see bubbling like that...walk away.

Thanks bob213, wolfe10, phillyg, & valhalla360 for sharing your wisdom! It's sad to hear, since we were so excited about finding such a cute little RV within our price range, but really reassuring to see a consensus here. We are learning a lot very quickly. We'll walk/run away from this one and move forward with our search with a little more caution... We were so close to buying this one - I didn't even notice this bubbling until the last moment. Scares me to think of what else I missed. We'll probably consider a professional pre-purchase inspection in the future (we only had a vehicle safety inspection done so far). Anyways, really appreciate you four taking the time to help educate me! :)

PS: Also figured out that this must have been an old Cruise Canada vehicle, based on the footprint left from the old decals. No idea if that's good or bad, but interesting to know!

NorthernMarshPanda wrote:


PS: Also figured out that this must have been an old Cruise Canada vehicle, based on the footprint left from the old decals. No idea if that's good or bad, but interesting to know!

Just another reason to leave it be.

The images in your pictures do look like delamination however, sometimes there are support pieces under that can also look that way. So, not every "bubble" is delamination, look for supports when you see that first before you run. Mine had a water leak so when they took it apart to fix, this caused some delamination. It is fine and doesn't leak, but it has that look in a place or two. The problem with the materials that are used to build these things, this happens. It would be great if we all had an open check to buy a rig, but some of us are on a budget and have to look beyond the fist sign of trouble. Delamination on my trailer has not caused any other issues, we fixed the source of the problem and it hasn't come back. This was about 5 years ago, so it is fixed and there have been no other issues. Trailers are built really poorly so often they have to be fixed. A sale price should reflect these issues, then you have to decide what it is worth to you and if the problem is truly fixed.

Run do not walk away.

Thanks shum02 and pianotuna, for your additional feedback. It seems the overall consensus is to leave it.

shum02 - Would genuinely love to hear more about why buying an old Cruise Canada / Cruise America vehicle is a bad idea. My partner and I were conflicted as to whether or not this was a positive or negative thing. Con: Has had more usage than a privately owned RV; Pro: Perhaps has been better maintained by a commercial entity? (e.g. like buying a used car from a rental is often a good deal)

Thermoguy, you are the only one to provide an alternative perspective and I wonder if it's because like us, you also have a more limited budget to work within. Thanks for sharing this! Even though I think we will walk away from this one, it gives us something to think about when we are looking at other options.

I'll add that the seller is pretty firm on his asking price, which is the top of our budget, and there is no history of a leak fix in the vehicle's maintenance records (which seem fairly thorough).

NorthernMarshPanda wrote:

- Would genuinely love to hear more about why buying an old Cruise Canada / Cruise America vehicle is a bad idea. My partner and I were conflicted as to whether or not this was a positive or negative thing. Con: Has had more usage than a privately owned RV; Pro: Perhaps has been better maintained by a commercial entity? (e.g. like buying a used car from a rental is often a good deal)
.

The problem with "rentals" is there is a lot of "drive it like it was stolen" attitude buy the renters. The words "gently used" typically are not applicable to anything rented.

Just because it was owned and maintained by a "commercial entity" also does not mean that the commercial entity has done better maintenance and repairs to it either.. The commercial entity is buying and renting in order to make a profit, therefore much of the maintenance will be for keeping it in some form of road worthy operation up to the point of the repairs exceeding profits and value of the vehicle and it will be done as cheap as possible (scavenging used parts comes to mind).

I personally would never consider buying a commercial rental car or RV as a "good deal", your getting highly worn out vehicle that most likely not only will require considerable outward appearing work but a lot of other mechanical parts like front end steering, suspension, brakes and even perhaps electrical and engine/transmission repairs. There could be even a lot of hidden repairs and fixes that will never get reported to carfax or other reporting places since much of the work is almost always done in house.