Quick Video of Huge Houston RV & Motorhome Show

[JohnGaver]

We are in our final stages of deciding on which Class A tag motorhome to get and we spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at the ALL-Indoor 2017 Houston RV & Motorhome Show. It was HUGE - over 400,000 square feet and it was packed with every kind and size of RV and motorhome, along with all kinds of vendors, most of whom were RV-related.

I shot a short video of the show, walking down the center aisle and walking through the vendor area. It's not just an ordinary iPhone video. OK… It actually was shot on an iPhone, but the phone was on a 3-axis gimbal and 28 inch extension pole. So the video is very stable and above the crowds. It's only 3:24 in length. Check it out on our blog:

2017 Houston RV and Motorhome Show – Full-Timing across the USA & Canada in a Class "A" motorhome

[JohnGaver]

BTW, I forgot to mention in the above post that, after talking with all the manufacturer reps at the show, we are now down to leaning heavily toward either the Newmar Dutch Star or the Tiffin Phaeton.

[jimmy braden]

cool - thanks - good luck finding what you want

[Arch Hoagland]

Thanks for posting, really neat.

I always wonder how bad the fuel fumes are as they bring all the RVs inside. Must take a while to air out.

[vsheetz]

Typically Newmar Ventana = Tiffin Phaeton, and Newmar Dutch Star = Tiffin Bus as counterparts in each companies product lineup. Both companies know for good customer support and good quality coaches.

[JohnGaver]

Originally Posted by vsheetz

Typically Newmar Ventana = Tiffin Phaeton, and Newmar Dutch Star = Tiffin Bus as counterparts in each companies product lineup. Both companies know for good customer support and good quality coaches.

We like the Tiffin and would go with the Tiffin Bus, except for their hokey manufactured box sinks in the kitchen. They are leaks just waiting to happen and they would be extremely difficult to clean, in the sharp corners. That's why we are looking only at the Phaeton, in the Tiffin line. We are willing to step down, to get a decent sink. On the other hand, Newmar doesn't have any show-stoppers in the Dutch Star. Customer support is high in the list of why we are looking at those brands. We like Entegra, too. But they seem to be having some minor growing pains and do not yet have the wide service network.

[Notlad]

John,

From the research I have done the last couple of years both Newmar and Tiffin are great choices. If you have not done so and can before you purchase I recommend visiting the Tiffin factory in Red Bay, Alabama. In addition to their daily scheduled tour at 9 am (if it has not changed) they allow "self guided" tours. I happened to be driving nearby (I live just 3 hours away) while on a business trip a couple of years ago and dropped into the visitor center to check on tours, etc. Imagine my surprise when they said I could do a self guided tour! They gave me safety glasses, instructions to look out for fork lifts and cranes, and then a map and set me loose on the property. It was an amazing experience. The pride and care the Tiffin employees had in assembling the motorhomes made me wish my retirement was then and not a few years away.

[Kiawah]

except for their hokey manufactured box sinks in the kitchen. They are leaks just waiting to happen and they would be extremely difficult to clean, in the sharp corners. That's why we are looking only at the Phaeton, in the Tiffin line.

What brands are you talking about here? We've got no sharp corners or leak prone sinks.

[twogypsies]

Won't Tiffin put in a sink that you want? Newmar will do lots of custom work. We made over 100 changes/additions to ours - some small like adding more electric outlets, more and some different lighting, etc.

We full-timed 8 years in our Newmar Dutch Star and had absolutely no complaints. Warranty issues were less than a handful and small items. As travelers we got those taken care of easily during our next stop. We never had to return to the selling dealer or the factory.

I'd recommend you tour Newmar and see the individual care taken in the build. It's not a fast production line. The workers takes time with anything they're doing. It takes weeks for one unit to be completely finished and in the final testing of all systems and build if something is found wrong it goes back to the person who did the work. The wall construction is excellent. No delamination is possible. Lots of insulation and it's an extremely quiet RV.


BTW: Good video equipment you used!

[Gordon Dewald]

My advice is to get the floor plan that best suits your needs, wants and nice to haves.

Both Newmar and Tiffen make a good coach. However so do other manufacturers. IMO the failure rate, issues per coach produced, are about the same across all manufacturers. While there are stories spread by certain members of owners groups I believe they are simply spreading rumors.

There are good and bad customer service stories for each of the manufacturers. Some experiences are good and some are not so good. That is more to do with the dealer than any other reason.

If you follow the threads on this forum there seems to be more issues reported by Newmar and Entegra owners than any other brand.

[TonyDi]

Great video. Looks very professional. Thanks for posting it.

Before you decide, assuming you have the floor plan you like, take them both for a test ride. Newmars Comfort Drive makes a world of difference in handling and ease of driving. It may make your decision easier.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Blondiega1]

Did they have any American Coaches on display?


We had narrowed down to the Tiffin, Entegra, or Newmar until a little sales guy showed us an American Coach. AC wasn't even on our radar but as soon as we walked in, we knew it was the one for us! Several months later we got a heck of a deal on a 2015 American Tradition, 2 years old but NEW. It had never sold.

[Fred and Bonnie]

Yep, indoor Quartzsite.

Fred

[JohnGaver]

Originally Posted by Kiawah

What brands are you talking about here? We've got no sharp corners or leak prone sinks.

In the Allegro Bus and the Zephyr, the kitchen sink is a weird, rectangular, glued-together sink, rather than a pre-made sink of either Corian or stainless steel. The problem with that is two-fold.

1. It's a truism that even the best glue will crack, if subjected to enough stress and a motorhome is essentially a 70 mph earthquake. Glue is always used in Corian sinks, but it's usually at the top. Like any other glued product, a pre-built sink that is glued at the top will eventually see that glue crack. But since the crack is at the top, it will still stand up to splashes. But the sinks in the high-end Tiffin models are glued all the way down the sides and all around the bottom. That's not to say that the glue will completely break the bond. In fact, I seriously doubt that it would separate at all. But that's a lot of glue that would be under water and even a hair-line crack will leak, if it's under water.
2. I saw a used Allegro Bus a while back and noticed that there was some sort of mildew or other scum in the square corners of the sink. The owner made an excuse, but when I persisted, he tried to clean it and failed. I'm sure that it could eventually be cleaned. But neither my wife nor I want to waste the time to keep those square corners clean. Even square stainless sinks are curved enough at the bottom to make cleaning easier.
3. Those sinks just look tacky. It's like those brick homes, that have wood or hardi-board on the back half of the house. It looks tacky, like they ran out of money for bricks, half way through building. Well those glued-together sinks make it look like Tiffin ran out of money for a decent sink, so they just slapped one together. Sure, I know that's not the case. But that's what it would look like to many of my guests, who wouldn't know a Tiffin from a dog sled. In fact, until about 8 months ago, I had never even heard the name Tiffin. The first time I saw an Allegro Bus, I knew nothing about Tiffin and when I saw that sink, I thought that I was looking at a low end coach. Eventually I learned better. But, the point is that those glued-together sinks just "look" tacky and I would be embarrassed to let my friends see that in my coach. They would surely think the same thing I did.

I'm still looking at the Phaeton, because it's a Tiffin (I like Tiffin) and it has decent sinks. But the Allegro Bus is more in our price range. But those screwball sinks counter just enough of the benefits of the Allegro Bus, to make it not worth the money to upgrade from the Phaeton to the Allegro Bus.

By the time we buy, in the fall (when my wife retires), the 2018s will be out and I really hope that a stainless sink will be an option in the Allegro Bus. We like most everything else about it. Let me be clear. It's not the sink that is the show stopper for the Allegro Bus. It's that I would be paying more for the Allegro Bus and getting a tacky sink, in the process, that would reduce, in our eyes, the over-all value of the upgrade from Phaeton to Allegro Bus.

By the way, our current plan is that some time around May, we will visit the Tiffin facility, to see how the Phaeton is built and then go up to the Newmar facility and see how the Dutch Star is built. We haven't completely ruled out Entegra, but it's falling behind, in our minds. American Coach is not completely out of the picture, either. I think that the trip to the various manufacturing plants will be very enlightening. I expect Tiffin to be very impressive, on that count.