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We bought our ACE 30.1 last summer. Its an upgrade from the 24ft Keystone Travel Trailer we had. After a couple of years with the trailer and a two+ week trip to the Tetons/Glacier, we realized that we needed something that had a bit more room and didn't require as much set up. I was able to also get rid of the Nissan Armada we had a tow vehicle and replace it with a Mini Cooper S (Big to small and I love the Mini. I think my 2 year old grandson likes it more). We bought an American Tow Dolly for the Mini to tag along.
The ACE was just the right length for us. We wanted something that would let us get into National Park campgrounds, so anything longer was out of the question. We started looking at Class C's and somewhat by chance looked at few Class A's and really preferred the bigger space. We looked at Georgetowns and F3's and didn't see anything that made them preferable. The fact that the ACE is considered to be "entry level" isn't really a problem and we knew that improvements and modifications were part of the deal.
We took a trip from Denver to Northern California in late Sept-early October. Drive wasn't too bad, but we found the ACE to be really sensitive to winds (real white knuckle trip down the canyon east of Grand Junction in 40 MPH winds whipping up the canyon.) Also quite a push from trucks passing me. I got to where I could time the steering corrections.
The Mini towed just fine with the dolly - I have to keep checking the rear view camera to make sure its still there. I got ACD the brake controller with the dolly which we found to be quite sensitive. The dolly brakes were locking up on gravel and very touchy at slow speeds. I dug out my old Tekonsha brake controller and have set the dolly up to use the in-cab controller so I can adjust the sensitivity of turn it off without having to get out and go back to the dolly.
We haven't any problems that have taken me back to the dealer for warranty repair, though I've had a couple of fix it yourself items such as the cable connection and power wiring errors described below.
Since the trip west, we had the alignment re-done, which made a significant difference just in the drive back from the Ford dealer to our storage location. Also had the TSB done on the transmission to fix the Tow-Haul downshift problem. When we made the California trip, we really had some hot brakes coming down the west site of the continental divide and the west side of Vail Pass because the tranny wasn't downshifting properly. Going up was slow at times, but as bad as it was pulling the trailer with the Armada.
I have a Super Steer Track Bar and a set of Koni shocks sitting on the floor of my office waiting for some clear weather to do the install. I have high hopes that these will make an even better improvement. I'm thinking about SumoSprings, but that might be a next year addition once I see how the Track Bar and shocks work out.
We put a Safe-T-Plus on before our first trip and had Tyron bands put on the front wheels when we bought the coach, so stability on a blow out is less of a concern. The Safe-T-Plus seemed to help and added some firmness to the steering.
Other mods so far are fairly minor. I added a small 300W inverter to the TV cabinet - tapped into to 12V awning switch to route a 12V supply to the inverter. I don't yet see the need for a bigger inverter, but time will tell. Also took out the Wineguard antenna connector/power and installed a Winegard switch box I found on eBay (long out of production, which seems strange as its something that is pretty useful). Now I can independtly switch signals to the 3 TV's. The old Wingard connector was really flakey when I tried to connect to RV park cable. Had to pull if off the wall to get a good cable connection.
I just finished upgrading the WIFO converter with a Progressive Dynamic 4-stage converter. The swap went well, but I did find that Thor had mis-wired the converter AC circuit. They'd swapped wiring between one of the two circuits for the water heater and the converter. I had a conversation with Thor about it and it took me about 5 mintutes to fix the wiring error.
Other modification in progress is DW is replacing the pleated shades with curtains. Two sets - one set of shears and one set of black out level curtains. The front curtains are also part of the replacement as they are a bit light.
Not much else on the wish list other than Spring so we can get out again. Longer term might be the SumoSprings and 5-Star Tune, but from what I read, the 5-Star improvements aren't quite as large an improvement on the 6 speed F53 chassis as people get with the earlier 5 speeds.
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