Miscellaneous

New Versus Old

As we were driving down I-75 shortly after leaving home on this trip we saw a new motorhome in front of us. It was shorter than ours, and appeared to be a Class C. But it was really nice looking. It looked like it was on a large diesel truck frame. Joyce and I talked about upgrading and I began looking on the internet to see if I could find the name and a rough price. No luck.

While camped at Kansas City, Missouri, we stopped at an RV dealership to buy silicone spray and noticed an RV in the lot. It was there for service and we pulled over to look at it. It looked to be the same type we had seen earlier. We got the make and model and went back inside to talk to the dealer about it. They gave us a brochure and we briefly discussed the price. $250,000 base price. It was a hauler - designed for towing.

Our motorhome was pretty much a top of the line gasoline powered Pace Arrow when we purchased it new in 2002. It's now eleven years old and just over half paid for. I had been complaining about many of the problems that we were having with our current RV - needs brake work, needs work on the front jacks, needs a new carpet (or at least a good carpet cleaning), needs work on the Onan generator, perhaps new shocks. The electrical system is 30 amps, not the 50 amps in many of the newer units. While we have two air conditioners, we cannot run them both at the same time. Nor can we run one air conditioner and the TV and the hot water heater at the same time without popping a circuit breaker. I would like to convert to 50 amps, but that might be a bigger job than I could handle. And the Pace Arrow division of Fleetwood had been shut down during the last recession so it might be difficult to get a decent AC wiring diagram.  A lot of little things.

I had already been making modifications to the interior. I built a new rectangular table to replace the inconvenient round table. I had replaced the stand-alone wrought iron chairs with aluminum folding chairs. Removed the TV from the overhead compartment up front and built a new TV stand which sits on a cabinet opposite the couch (much easier on the neck). Bought a new HD TV set and replaced the manual satellite dish with an automatic HD capable dish and ran all the associated wiring to the new TV location.

I built shelves in the old overhead TV space for spare maps and travel books. Removed the bedroom TV and modified the space to hold spare blankets.

But the thought of "new" remained. Until we started driving on the west coast. Everywhere we looked we saw older motorhomes. Some slightly newer than ours - but many more were much older. And very rarely did we see any of the new expensive ones.

Joyce and I had long discussions about new versus old. Although we needed work done on it, we had been slowly reshaping the Pace Arrow to fit our needs. And while new would be nice, we would have to begin anew to make it fit our personal needs and make it ours.

I guess the bottom line is that it will cost us much less to have a little professional work done on occasion than it would to purchase new. So we will probably wind up sending a few thou to make the V10 engine a little more efficient, not quite so much on carpeting, and maybe we can look into a shock absorber upgrade.

By the time we get home we will have put a little over 5000 miles on it from this trip and will have only 56,000 miles total on this 11 year old vehicle/home.

I'm guessing we will keep it at least until it's paid for in 2022.