frenchyd said:
SVreX said:
RVs have been a huge part of my family. I’ve been doing it for over 50 years in all different types.
I’ll try not to rant about this, but letting kids wander around an RV while riding down the road at 70 mph is NO DIFFERENT then letting them jump up and down in the bed of a pickup truck at highway speeds. It’s stupid.
With all due respect to everyone who is gonna disagree with me, kids can be taught to be comfortable strapped into appropriate seats. The way you train them does not include letting them run around the coach sometimes, but strapping them when in a car. The way you train them is consistent parenting. Properly belted at ALL times in ALL vehicles.
I have 5 kids. They’ve all traveled extensively. Never had a problem wearing seatbelts.
Your use of the words Wander around is perjuritive.
I believe I understand the point you are attempting to make but I’ve traveled with too many people in RV’s where children are allowed to unstrap and switch seats, etc under adult supervision while moving.
To be fair when I owned my motor homes I did not have my own children, but I suspect I would have followed others in that regard.
I feel like I'm being sucked in, but I just can't resist... When I have my kids in the car, it doesn't go into gear until all seatbelts are properly fastened and those belts don't come off until the ride has come to a full and complete stop. No exceptions. That said, though, when we're in the motorhome, on the Interstate, in clear weather, outside of metro areas, with no weird road conditions or traffic, I have no problem letting them unbelt, walk back to the head, and return to their seat. Is there a risk? Certainly. Is that risk as big as throwing the fam in the back of a pickemup and heading down the highway? I think that comparison is laughable. I wouldn't let folks just wander around the back at all times in any condition, but we're weighing the risk of a trip to the bathroom or the fridge when we're on a divided highway in the middle of nowhere in good weather versus the overall enjoyment of the trip. Do your own math and decide for yourself if you think the level of risk outweighs the benefit. Personally, we've decided that the impact is high but the probability is incredibly low.
One other thing, though, is in regards to the capability of the P platform versus maybe something built on a E450 chassis or something. One thing that I've discovered in my cheap motorhome ownership experience is that as cheap as I am, the motorhome builders are even cheaper. Yeah, the P30 chassis is built as a medium-duty truck forward control chassis by GM (and then Workhorse), but plenty of the components are sourced from the 1-ton light-duty truck parts bin. Much of the front suspension, the transmission, and the engine interchanges with the C/K3500 of the same era and several of the parts are in the catalog as being for model years 1975-1998. That's kind of a good thing in terms of being able to find parts (although figuring out WHICH version of the P30 you have can be a challenge), but don't think that because they also made bread vans out of the running gear that you're getting something that is all that different from a large pickup. The other part to that is if you take your motorhome to the scales and check it against the GVWR printed on the placard you might find that with a full load of fuel, water, food, propane, luggage, and people, you are overweight. Conventional wisdom is that some coaches were actually overweight from the factory, although I've never personally seen a scale slip that backs that up. My experience is with P30s, but I think the F53 platform from Ford is basically in a similar position -- although it may get a slightly higher GVWR. Another problem is that when they drop the house on top of the engine, they don't do much in terms of airflow so the engine and trans tend to run a little bit hotter.
That said, don't think that I'm discouraging the idea. I think you are a little low on your budget number, but if you can kick a few more dollars in and do some very careful shopping, you might be able to get pretty close. I shopped for about 4 or 5 months and put about 3000 miles on my car driving around looking at coaches before I found the one I bought. With mine, I bought it, brought it home, caught it on fire, and drove it 2,000 miles to Oklahoma and back two weeks later. I think I paid $7,500 for it from a private seller and it's a 32' 1993 Itasca on a P30 chassis with a 454. When you're shopping, look at tires and windshields. Tires are going to be at least $175 each, often much more, and I wouldn't go down the road with any tire with a DOT code older than 7 years. They will age-out before they wear out. Windshields are typically two piece and each side is around $950. Because the construction is somewhat... weak, they are prone to cracking windshields when just going down the road or when deploying leveling jacks and putting a little bit of twist into the coach. I found a ton of coaches that needed 6 $200 tires and a $950 windshield just to be able to go on my first trip, but they weren't priced accordingly.
Water intrusion is another big thing. The coment about the one piece roof is a good one. Winnebago (and Itasca, since those are badge-engineered Winnebagos) typically use a one-piece fiberglass roof that will last "forever" versus the EDPM rubber sheeting that gets UV-ed to death and has to be replaced every few years. It's also much harder to put a tear into a fiberglass roof. That said, even a one-piece will need some maintenance, but Eternabond tape will be your friend there. That holds for motorhomes and towables, btw. Watch for delamination on the sides, as well. It can be fixed, and in your price range you'll probably have to accept that you'll have some level of that in a motorhome, but keep it to a minimum. I've got a little bit of a bubble on mine where the stove vent shroud leaked way back when before I owned it. As long as you repair the original damage so it doesn't get any worse and it's a fairly small spot it can be something you live with.
They're much harder to work on since you're not going to be able to pull it into your garage and your aluminum racing jack isn't going to do much for you. You can use the leveling jacks to get it raised up, but don't even think about getting under there without a set of heavy duty jack stands. I got the 12-ton ones from the Hammer Store along with a 20T bottle jack. Parts can be a challenge to find depending on what you're trying to fix. I need a steering arm for mine that doesn't seem to exist any more even though it's a part number that was on vehicles made from 1975-1998! Most of the appliances, however, are from a couple manufacturers that love the parts bin. I've needed to do some fridge and water heater repairs while on the road before and any RV dealer/supplier will usually have parts like burner manifolds, thermostats, and the like in-stock for not a ton of cash.
When I started looking, I originally wanted a towable since I didn't want another engine to maintain and another vehicle to insure. I wound up with the motorhome for two reasons: The first is that I want to be able to use the RV for multi-day rallycross events and I can't tow a racecar behind a towable behind a truck. The second is kind of silly, but most towables that I've seen don't have facilities for an on-board generator. I can start the generator in my motorhome without getting out of bed and by the time I make it to the galley, the generator is warmed up and I can turn on the coffee pot. With a towable, you're probably getting dressed to go outside to start the generator so you can go back in to make coffee. I know that's a crazy edge case, but to each their own, I suppose!
