2005 era arctic fox silver fox 990's

Trust me, Lance camper was my first search criteria lol

But finding one within our price range was pretty much nil. Must be the quality..... Its all in the name ;)

Lance buying an Artic Fox? Anyone see the humor? Ha ha ha.

I have one of these for now. We are getting something even larger soon because we full time. That's the only reason I'm considering selling it. It's been extremely reliable.

There is absolutely nothing wrong structurally with it. Nothing. They are very well built for an RV. Very low maintenance. The aluminum frame is holding up just fine. The slides are going to give you trouble on anything this vintage so definitely be ready to fix it.

It has has standard maintenance issues like any RV but the structure seems like it'll last forever.

Family of 4, we can easily fit a week's food in the fridge and camper. And we eat well, lol.
Have done a few multi week trips and plenty of room for all our gear etc. Have kicked the kids out into a tent now thougn, but they're too big for the dinette and overhead beds pretty much anyway.
And less water than the 50 gal or whatever the tank is would be a pain. Nice having water!

Had an 05 and now an 03. Both were in good shape and had been stored under roof or cover most of the time I believe, so no rot, not much oxidation etc. Both were and are pretty much trouble free. No slide issues at all and really not much more than a set of batteries and minor repairs.
I would never buy a "project" of any sort structurally or mechanically, any brand though.
There's enough campers that aren't pieces of sht to buy one that is. You don't have to spend a lot more for one that isn't a problem.

burningman wrote:
Slides are guaranteed trouble, and a 12-15 year old camper with a slide... I dunno man, I wouldn’t do it.

I've had my 2010 AF811 since fall of 2009. It's had been totally trouble free. I love it. There's been many time where I've wanted an 865 non slide model, but I can't bring myself to part with the roominess of the 811.

Mods to my 811

Thanks for the info, I'm a mechanic by trade, and do all my own house renos. So unfortunately for me having the ability to fix almost anything gets me into trouble finding "projects" that I can get a newer unit with more options for less $. Kind of like buying a boat with a cracked block on purpose last summer. hahaha

I would like to keep my Kodiak k99, but the reality is for now, that my family of 4 needs more space....the last few camping trips have become "cramping" trips. On more than just the interior space, we have outgrown the fridge and holding tank capacitys as well lol

Nothing special that I can think of. Even with aluminum framing it has to have maintenance.

There can still be delamination if the previous owner didn't do maintenance.

I picked ours up at what I thought was a good price because it had some delamination. Planned on repairing it all, but did a temporary seal up and have been using it since(about 6 Years I think).

I repaired a couple of issues with damaged plywood under the battery slide, under the gas bottle compartment, and the cover on the bottom of the basement. I replaced the marker lights across the front which were leaking.

The damage under the battery slide and gas bottle compartment was due to engineering issues. They didn't seal the bottom edge of the polyethylene underneath the gas door and there was no drain for water. Battery compartment had the bottom lip removed from the door frame, I assume to allow Hydrogen to escape, which allowed water to run in around the door and then there was no seal between the polyethylene battery box. In addition, the tech who cut the opening for the battery compartment door made a 1/2" mis-whack with the router and the upper left corner had a 1/8" hole that wasn't even caulked.

I about forgot another issue. This issue was not an AF. The company that made the slide was bought out by Lippert. So lippert didn't design it and of course they certainly wouldn't and didn't help with any information on fixing it.

The slide mechanism is a jury-rigged contraption that was a cheap mess back in '05 when designed.(Which turned out to be a blessing.) It is heavy duty except for the rollers. They used closed cap bearings as rollers. They aren't made to be rollers so can't handle the 2-300 pounds of the slide. They will crack and break and there are 20 of them. The blessing is that the mechanism is so simple that you can replace them with any generic cam-followers. And compared to the prices for "Brand Name" slide parts it cheap to rebuild. I bought my cam-followers on ebay for 3 or $4 each. Has worked great since. I didn't need it but found the gear reduction motor new on ebay for $30.

All this said, I can do this type of work and enjoy it. If you don't work on them(any kind of camper), it becomes kind of like a boat. You know, a hole in the water that you throw money into.

With this said, I don't think that the build is any worse than any others. I love our 990. Would do it again if I didn't have this one.

For quite a while I had my eye on an Arctic Fox... that full-wall slide makes it a very roomy camper, it’s really nice. It’s one of my favorites. But the more I investigated, the warier I got.
I ended up going with a new Northern Lite... the newer “after the fire” ‘16 and later models made from the new molds are amazingly roomy for no slide. But even the mid-2000s, of the same era Arctic Fox you’re considering, are pretty cool. You had a few earlier models, I’m sure you know about them.
Slides are guaranteed trouble, and a 12-15 year old camper with a slide... I dunno man, I wouldn’t do it.

There was a batch of delamination issues around that time. Look very closely down the sides for issues.