Need advice on motorhome purchase please

[BOSTONBERNIE]

Having owned a Fleetwood Bounder i can say they are as said a good starter coach. But....as said they are only as good as the brand name products installed in them.i can say i did have a routinely amount of head aches with owning a class A but not anything out of the ordinary. $13000.00 may be a good starting point again C.... Condition and pride of ownership of previous owner is a big part of the game.if you are new to class A*s definitely have an experienced person look it over with you,as a new owner you would not believe what you can miss! Good Luck and *Welcome*

[rats52]

My Wife & I did the exact thing you are talking about . We bought a 2001 FleetWood SouthWind 35r 3 years ago from her friends . They were original owners 😊 that can mean a lot . They took good care of it !
Try and get Maintainence logs if the owner kept any .
An RV is a new learning curve . Be prepared to do repairs . Age of tires and battery’s are very important.
But there are many little things to consider (appliances, Generator, plumbing AC & furnaces )
17 grand sounds like a decent entry level gamble To me . Just be aware thing will need maintenance and repairs ..... continually 😊

[mlpeloquin]

You need a RVDA certified technician to go over it and advise you. You can look for soft spots in the flooring, water stains, delamination, and the smell of mold. If you do not know about RV roofing, the RVDA tech will. Mechanical and appliances are one thing, water is another.

[beedub]

The first and foremost item that every RV owner comes to realize is that no matter what you spend or what type of RV you buy, they all need repairs of some type through their lifetime. Paying more, or less is no guarantee that this will change. If you enjoy fiddling with and repairing stuff, owning an RV is for you. There is an excellent five day course advertised in Work Camper News that give you an introduction to RV systems and how to trouble shoot and perform minor repairs.
I know this sounds daunting but most of us actually enjoy doing certain jobs on our RVs and leave the complicated items to the specialists.

Good Luck!

[Paule_m]

Love my Bounder

Good advice here already.

I bought my 1994 Fleetwood Bounder 32’, F53 Ford chassis in 2014 from the original owner with 70,000 miles. I paid $7,500.

It’s My first motorhome.

It had a sticker of a map of the US beside the entry door. It had been everywhere in North America including alaska. I peeled off all the states and provinces and started over. Filling it nicely.

It needed attention when I purchased it
Here’s my list of what I did first.
- Tire’s all around
- windows all around. The the original double paned ones etched.
- brakes
- water pump
- LED lights all around
- entry step repair
- sealed roof


Here’s a list of repairs and upgrades over 6 years of ownership

- Transmision
- radiator
- new LVT floor to replace rug
- commode
- batteries
- starter
- clean water tank plastic repair
- generator exhaust repair

Maybe this is a long list. I don’t know. I don’t compare with others.

I spend more time and money on my Bounder than my cars. I probably have about $20k in it so far.

That said, I wouldn’t trade my experiences at all.
Every trips an adventure. Shared them with my wife and 2 children.

Made 2 trips to Florida, 2 trips to the west and a bunch of trips close by.

Love my Bounder

Good luck!

[Mded40]

If you are handy, and can troubleshoot mechanical and electrical you can handle it, if you not and would be relying on an rv service center you should buy newer. It all comes down to time and money take your pick.

[Gerryl]

Originally Posted by Sonic

It all depends on how they're maintained. The RV Geeks as an example are full timers who take meticulous care of their tires and just changed their Michelins out at the 10 year point. The tires were still in decent shape.

“It all depends on how they're maintained”
About 5 years ago we bought a 2000 34’ National Sea breeze motorhome. It had 48,000 miles on it and was in perfect shape. It had always been garaged other than the 3 months a year that the P O spent in Florida. They had also taken a trip to California. The previous owner and I have taken meticulous care of this coach and I would challenge anyone to find a 2000 motorhome that looks as good as ours. Times we were parked around other campers, invariably we would have other people comment on how “like new” it looked. We only used it a few times a year and is always garaged in the pole barn we built for it. We have put about 5,000 trouble free miles on it, and I would feel confident in taking it across country tomorrow.
I am very handy and love projects so I enjoyed weekends tinkering and changing various things to make it fit us. The only thing I had to have someone else do, was re-upholster the dinette.
Unfortunately, our friends who we used to go to the Dover Race with decided it was time to give up their motorhomes, so we have decided to sell ours come spring. We lucked out and bought a ‘well maintained’ motorhome and loved every minute of it.
AGAIN It all depends on how they were maintained.

[stuccosteve]

[QUOTE=TonyMac;5111426]A motorhome is easy to drive, an F-4 is easy to fly, once you know how to. A motorhome is easy to learn to drive,

I like your analogies, where do I get someone to let me give an F-4 a whirl, I think I am a quick learner. Just kidding, I think, the rotorcraft were like learning Iraqi with a Farsi dialect, but once you figure it out it kinda comes natural.

Take that rig out to a big paved area and bring along 5-6 cones and a 100’ tape and practice pulling through and stopping in progressively narrow lanes and making 90deg. Turns to a lane. Then start backing in to similar lanes and stopping parallel to your cones. Do that and drive on moderately empty 2 and 4 lanes roads until your not flattening curbs.

Then you may get your pilots license.

[Ken Thompson]

Originally Posted by Paule_m

Love my Bounder

Good advice here already.

I bought my 1994 Fleetwood Bounder 32’, F53 Ford chassis in 2014 from the original owner with 70,000 miles. I paid $7,500.

It’s My first motorhome.

It had a sticker of a map of the US beside the entry door. It had been everywhere in North America including alaska. I peeled off all the states and provinces and started over. Filling it nicely.

It needed attention when I purchased it
Here’s my list of what I did first.
- Tire’s all around
- windows all around. The the original double paned ones etched.
- brakes
- water pump
- LED lights all around
- entry step repair
- sealed roof


Here’s a list of repairs and upgrades over 6 years of ownership

- Transmision
- radiator
- new LVT floor to replace rug
- commode
- batteries
- starter
- clean water tank plastic repair
- generator exhaust repair

Maybe this is a long list. I don’t know. I don’t compare with others.

I spend more time and money on my Bounder than my cars. I probably have about $20k in it so far.

That said, I wouldn’t trade my experiences at all.
Every trips an adventure. Shared them with my wife and 2 children.

Made 2 trips to Florida, 2 trips to the west and a bunch of trips close by.

Love my Bounder

Good luck!

How much money did this cost?A bounder is a entry level,coach at best. Something that’s that old will require a lot of repairs. Walk away! For what you are going to spend on it, you could stay in the nicest hotels for weeks at a time.

[Airizon]

Originally Posted by leslie1988

Thank you everyone for the advice. I decided to go with a 2000 damon intruder 36ft. I got a better deal on it. It also only has 60,000 miles on it. How hard is a motor home to drive? What is the best type of gas to us? Is regular ok or should I use mid grade or premium?

Congrats on your purchase of your Damon. I hope you took everyone's advice about having it inspected prior to purchasing. Especially checking the age of the tires. As far as driving it, as others have said, take it to a industrial area or campus on Sunday with cones and practice all aspects of driving. Its easier to take out a cone than side swipe someones car or a light pole turning a corner.

Tell us more about it, what chassis does it have? Power plant? Miles, hours on the generator etc.

Good luck and Happy Trails.

[SurfsideGolfer]

Paule_m has it right, “every trips an adventure “. Without that perspective, RVing is a foolish endeavor that I’ve loved for 40+years. I would not take the money back to give up the memories, my children at Disney, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Niagara Falls. No references to money on a tombstone, hard to advise anyone on this. Like one golfer asked me”how much does it cost to do that?” My answer was “ALL YOU GOT”, enjoy.

[Sunniday]

Hello; Congrats on your purchase. We bought a 30 year old Winnebago that had been in a shed for ten years. After much cleaning, including the rust out of the gas tank and a new water heater, we are pretty happy. We have about 9 thousand into it including tires. It has about 59,000 miles on it. NO DEBT!! Hope you have good luck with yours. Happy trails.

[leslie1988]

Here is some pictures of it.

[Wwdnet]

Nice!!