I found an RV that I wanted to buy, so I began my buying process, but it failed inspection. This cost me a grand total of two hours and $0 of my time, across three different visits to the same dealership.
I found an Open Range 320RES that I liked, and it fit the specs I need. When I looked at it the first time, it was sitting in the back of the lot, not hooked up, and nothing worked.
The dealer called me up a week or so later to let me know it had been brought up to the front and plugged into shore power, so I took another look at it. With the slides out and the A/C running, I wandered around it asking myself, ‘Would I hate staying in this?’. I couldn’t say yes, so I decided to buy it, which started my buying process.
When I came back for a third visit, I had plenty of time to perform a full inspection, so I started at the back and worked my way through. Found some little issues with the taillights, a little concern about the faded paint, and then went up the ladder. After a few minutes of looking around, I found a 4′ long by 1′ wide section of the PVC roof that looked ‘bubbled’, so I pressed down on it with an open palm, and heard the ‘rice krispies’ crunching indicative of dried out water damage. That crunching noise is actually the wood fibers that have been soaked, dried, separated, and are no loosely piled up, waiting for some poor soul to cut open the ceiling below so they can dive-bomb the face of the person foolish enough to cut into the ceiling.
For me, water damage is a hard pass because I don’t have the time to properly tear down and repair an RV, and water damage can easily extend several feet in any, or every, direction!
The dealership people were very nice, and understood my concerns, but that means i’m back to searching again.
If you’d like to learn about my buying process, you can read my post on it here.
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