2001 Safari Zanzibar

[DJBSDB]

Considering purchase of 2001 Safari Zanzibar, 330 HP Caterpillar. Pros and Cons appreciated. We have heard Caterpillar had head gasket problems on some of their diesels We love the coach, and understand Monaco discontinued around 2003. Thanks in advance for any information.

[Skip426]

Purchased my Cat powered coach 4 1/2 years ago ; 52,000 then 79,000 now; only issue was a rather persistent oil leak , that I hopefully cured with genuine Cat parts this winter. Aftermarket parts failed consistently every 3,000 miles.
Haven't heard about head gasket issues on the 3126B , like I have.
Maybe a browse through the Caterpillar section of the " Powertrain " forums would answer that question.

[DtBt]

AFAIK the Zanzibar was all SMC built as Monaco did not purchase SMC until 2002. That means it is not on a Roadmaster chassis. Hopefully someone with the same coach will chime in. You might want to check out SafariFriends and SafariCoaches Yahoo groups.
My Safari was built on the same assembly line as Monaco Executives and Signatures on a Roadmaster chassis and only maintained the Safari name.

[Pusherpilot]

We had a 2000 Zanzi bought new in 2000 that we used 4 yrs and 50k mi. I had no issues with the Cat but the coach was built light with aluminum sides rather than fiberglass and the flush mount slide had a tendency to pop its rivets while driving due to chassis flex. Full body paint on that aluminum does last a long time tho as I still see them from the 90s looking really good. The Zanzis also had a cavernous open storage bay in the basement that was great for odd sized stuff. Placement of the Onan QD generator in a bay in the rear rather than a slideout in the nose was inconvenient and was really noisy back there.

Our rear radiator setup overheated regularly till they installed a "heat kit" that consisted of a new shroud around the fan, a new set of louvered doors and a large vent in the rear bumper, a seven bladed fan and smaller pulley to drive it faster took care of that problem. While climbing long grades we had to stop and run the engine at high idle for a few minutes to get the temps down.
Find out which chassis it has. Safari built a few on the Velvet Ride system by Firestone. It was a torsion bar set up that didn't use air bags. They also had a Air Over Hydraulic braking system rather that the more traditional air brakes found on most diesel coaches.

I suggest you take the advice of finding a forum devouted to the product for more advice.
Ron

[DJBSDB]

Thanks

[Twomed]

Had 155k on my '99 Safari with that CAT motor...zero issues. They were great motorhomes as evidenced by the number that survive. As mentioned check out Safariinternational.org and other Safari groups...a wealth of knowledge out there.