B+ motorhomes

[Daniel_C_]

I just bought a Trail Lite B+ 211s with 8.1 Chevy
engine. This is my fifth motorhome (others range
from an old 20' Vagabond, and three Winnegagos, from 19 to 32'. This vehicle is fantastic. I am
using it as a mobile office (and sneaking in a fun
journey from time to time). It gets about 9.5mpg
and I believe I could pull a bus behind it if I wanted! I paid low $40's which is about what I had expected to pay for a five or six year old Chinook with a nicer interior, but fewer features
(slide). I am delighted thus far.

[cheeze1]

Following Dario's advice, I also put in the winterizing kit. Made things SO much easier. Definitely worth the 20 min or so to install it.
Burl, I agree with Reno regarding the ext. warranty.

[Reno3]

Gene, I put a "winterizing kit" in ours. That way can pump the "pink{ stuff directly from the bottle into the lines and can winterize ours using less than a gallon. We were always advised to not put the pink stuff in the water tank because you'd never get the taste out of the tank. I just leave the drain open and even if some water is left in the tank and freezes it at least has room to expand. In the spring just throw the switch the other way on the winterizing kit and flush out all the lines.

Burlmart. In my experience "ext. warranty's" aren't worth the paper they're written on. They have too many loop holes to avoid paying for expensive things.

[burlmart]

Thanks Gene. I am emboldened now to go ahead and risk a ring pull. I have also wanted to drain tanks in the hot summers when several weeks go by w/o using the RV to forestall any serious bacteria buildup, so this will be of double help.

Rodger, I too am sorry for the divergence. With so many people only conversant on the weather, we B+ owners who use this forum should feel pretty good about having so much more to discuss!

Anyone have thoughts on getting the Good Sam's extended warranty called CSP which covers appliances and chassis drivetrain in tandem with and then beyond the manufacturers' warranty?

[Gene_in_NE]

burlmart - I'll try to answer your question on the steel finger sized rings for opening the low point drain. On my unit, it is spring loaded so pull a little hard, but so far have not broken. My unit only has one. I usually do not worry about that short section of water tubing between the fresh water tank and the pump. I drain my holding tanks, the fresh water tank, the water heater, set the bypass valves on the water heater, dump 2 gallons of pink RV antifreeze into the fresh water tank, turn on the pump, open each of the faucets including the toilet until nice pink antifreeze flows. The "P Traps" are thus protected as well as a little protection for the holding tanks.

[agoaliemom]

I'm sorry. 😮

[My_Roadtrek]

Let's get back to discussing B+'s.

Thanks,
Rodger

[burlmart]

True of Louisiana as well: the cold is so wet that it feels worse than the thermometer says. The high humidity worsens low winter temps as well as the high summer temps guaged by the 'heat index'.

[agoaliemom]

Also--many parts of the country have a much damper cold than we do here in Duluth. I was raised in Southern California (gag) and I remember when +40º was cold because it was such a damp, straight-to-the-bones, type of cold. I prefer our dry cold.

[burlmart]

I am chuckling too because I lived in the Cities for 2-1/2 years and I do know how relative such concepts are! I often walked to the U on winter morns and returned late on winter nites at temps literally at -30 deg F when my beard was frozen with vapor from breathing.

To call several hours below 32 deg F a hard freeze does, by comparison, seem pretty weak! But when it gets in the mid to low twenties for a nite or two once every couple of years or so, it really does come as a shock by comparison to the normal lows of the mid 30's.

Architecturally, we are not set up for the "hard freezes", and they do damage that you never see in MN even at -50 deg. Poor preparations and planning and code development on our part.

[agoaliemom]

I always pay to get our unit winterized and dewinterized because I want to make sure it's totally done correctly (since our winters are so long), so I know nothing about drain rings. I don't mess with them at all.

I must admit I'm kind of chuckling over your definition of a "hard freeze." Up here we think a hard freeze is when it's about -25º for a few weeks. 🙂

[burlmart]

Thanks Agoaliemom and Gene for the advice. I would feel better if I do use a heater on hard freeze nites for added insurance, I kind of wanted to get a small electric space heater of some kind for light winter camping anyway...any good recommendations?

Also still concerned with pulling up on one of those rings that supposedly attach to popup drain valves for HW and FW tanks. Thee things do not look very stout. Do they pull open well w/o any distress to the mechanism? I really sense that they might break if pulled on, but this is fear based on zero prior experience with such a valve.

Burl

[Gene_in_NE]

burlmart - As agoaliemom alludes, I would not worry about a few hours below freezing. Your choice b) should give you piece of mind. Be mindful of where you travel in the winter conditions, you stated you plan on using it all winter.

capehank - You should not have any problems with the shorter B+ units. It is all a matter of weight ratings. The one ton Chevy chassis has a 16,000 gross combined vehicle weight rating. My unit weighs right around 9,000 lbs, so it has the capability to pull a maximum of 7,000 lbs. The closer your tow weight gets to that 7,000 the slower you will go up and down hills.

[Reno3]

Don't know if you mean class B or B+ ?? Anyways we have a B+ on a one ton Chevy chasis and we sometimes tow our Saturn car with it without any problems.

[capehank]

My husband and I are thinking about purchasing a class B MH. The big question for us is, can a class B tow a car safely?

We also are interested in towing our ATVs on a trailer with this size motorhome.

Any advise would be welcome.

Thank you.

[agoaliemom]

We have had the 213 B+ since March, and I got to thinkin about whether we should winterize the RV here in Baton Rouge, where we typically encounter only a few nites where the temp stays below 32 for more than 5 or 6 hours (a hard freeze) all winter.

I can't tell you what to do, but here is our experience.

We live in Northern Minnesota. We've already had it get to the high 20's when our unit wasn't winterized. We did get ours winterized this week, but it isn't crucial for us to do it until we know that it will be in the teens for a long time. Typically, we get at least two weeks of -30º, so we want it winterized before then, of course.

Water expands, obviously, so you want to make sure that the pipes don't freeze and crack. Around here, 32º isn't considered anything out of the ordinary, and if our temps hovered around the 30º's, we wouldn't do a thing. We've never winterized our units until the high temps were in the 30's, so we're early this year. If I lived where you do, I wouldn't winterize--but I am absolutely not giving you advice, only mentioning what we do. 🙂

PS--we had water (black, fresh & gray) when it hit the high 20's.