Shopper

I believe you posed a valid question here, but to avoid getting banned you are going to have to use some kind of euphemism rather than saying lemon. I appreciate the heads up CWorthy but don't anticipate having the occasion to say the L word again-- -My question here has been answered and thanks to some great recommendations have booked a flight to Lazy Daze to make a purchase Just for fun you should visit their forum-- https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lifewithalazydazerv/info Everything is relative and on the LD site a "major" problem is a squeaky windshield wiper. Incidentally that site has no restrictions concerning the L-word law and apparently they don't have to worry about that--sort of tells you something doesn't it?

What is it that you consider a catastrophic failure? I believe this is best defined by the lemon laws and so far I've found 44 class As that the manufacturers had to repurchase and none in the other classes. Obviously I wouldn't want my parents exposed to this major ordeal, but also wouldn't then in the lesser ordeal of two years of working out "bugs" which even the fan's of class As concede is part of that program--I would much rather buy something where the manufacturer makes sure that there aren't bugs for us to wrestle with.

Bill I appreciate your input ,but for the benefit of any other would-be RV buyer reading this I need to say that nothing in my research supports the contention that buying an RV is just a "crap shoot" for which ones will be reliable and which will be troublesome. All indications are that the purchaser of the 5 models recommended, particularly the Lance and Lazy Daze will likely never see the interior of a repair facility, but that the purchaser of a Fleetwood or similar Class A should invest in an extended warranty, become good friends with his local RV mechanic, and consider buying a tow truck. Elk, I appreciate your comments also: "Whether its a $250,000+ Class A or a slide in truck camper they both have very similar components with the same problems." I agree the camper setup does perform the same task as the 250K unit but the evidence is the camper does this with no problems and the high dollar unit has lots of problems.

Shopper, for the least bells and whistles why not consider a Roadtrek? We travel in an 08 Lexington (B+). Buy a Lance tuck camper or a Lazy Daze class C. The Freightliner cab & chassis is about as bulletproof as they come. I'm grateful for these suggestions and they are exactly what we're looking for--each of them seems to be the leader in their field for trouble free RVing. The sizing was interesting with Roadtrek maxing @23' and no slides, the Lexington @ 28' with 3 slides, the Lance @21' and two slidse ,the Lazy Daze @ 31' with no slides, and the Freightliner @ 32' with one slide. Our original thought was that 31-32' was the optimum size, but we hadn't thought much about slides which obviously would compensate for reduced length. I hope this thread did not cause ruffled feathers amongst the class A owners. We certainly appreciate the prestige that must come from owning one of these units but even their most ardent supporters concede that these come with lots of "bugs" or "kinks" to work out and frankly we would much rather RV like Carrol and their companions where they are not on a first name basis with their RV mechanic. Best, Shopper

Well this is certainly a spirited and informative discussion. One post hit very close to home: My father used to say that he would not have an automobile with power windows because "that was just another thing to break". My father also thought power windows were a poor choice because the benefit of being able to operate a widow with a button rather than a crank was trivial, but the idea of the widow being stuck down in a snowstorm was a significant detriment. To use this analogy I think the best choice for our family would be the "manual window" of motorhomes. I'm encouraged that Lance and Lazy Daze seem to offer this in the smaller units and hope to find the same qualities in a larger unit--Are there any specific brands someone could suggest?

Huffypuff, I appreciate your reply but do not understand this portion of it. You will never get a buy back on a class C or super C because it's a modified chassis with two manufactures involved, one for chassis and one for the RV. High end Class A build their chassis from the ground up for their intended purpose. It seems the C classes have two manufacturers, and also that the As do also according to Wolfe10's last post, but regardless of how many manufacturers are involved my understanding of the lemon laws is that if the manufacturer(s) cant get it fixed in a reasonable # of attempts they have to buy the unit back. I do not see how the manufacturers of the C classes would fare any differently under this law.

Again, I'm grateful for all the thoughtful input. I hadn't considered the ride, but it makes sense that the medium duty truck would ride just like the medium duty trucks that I drove working on a farm one summer and it probably makes sense that they would enjoy similar reliability, I share the concerns about relying too much on what a salesman says, but it seems his steak dinner offer was well founded--I've found several lists of RVs that manufacturers have been forced to repurchase and they were all the A class configuration. Maybe this is boiling to to a choice between a smooth ride and a reputation for reliability?

Sorry to hear of your bad purchase and hope you come to a decent resolution. Our family is in the market for a MoHo and were are trying to figure out what the best predictor is that a particular unit will be a lemon. We Googled "Bad Motorhome" and the first 17 pictures looked very similar to the image we found for your model, the Fleetwood 28F. It seems that a person could draw 3 possible conclusions if this kind of motorhome is the poster child for lemons: 1) Stay away from entry level models 2) Stay away from Fleetwood 3) Stay away from Class A's

Wow, I am grateful for all the thoughtful responses. We spent the day visiting a few more dealers and have probably ruled out the Class Cs because the chassis seems a bit petite if the manufacturer makers it into a 33' so we have probably narrowed it to the A Class and Super C Class. A salesman at a dealership that sells the Super Cs built on the Chevrolet 6500 chassis made an interesting offer--He will buy steak dinner for 4 if we can find any motorhome other than a Class A that a manufacturer has had to buy back because of lemon laws--He claims that the Chevrolet portion of the motorhome he's selling is identical to millions of other medium duty Chevrolet trucks in use and that a breakdown is extremely rare, and a breakdown that the Chevrolet mechanics can't repair is unheard of. If anyone can refute his claims the steak dinners are all yours.

My parents are in the process of buying their first (and probably last) motorhome to make a tour of the United States and have asked me for input. The salespeople I've talked with are totally focused on all the bells and whistles the different units have. But what I'm really interested in is reliability, and limiting the possibility that my parent's tour is from one repair facility to the next. The size they feel comfortable with is 32 to 34 feet, which we've found in Class As, Class Cs and Class C pluses. One RVer I talked with said if we eliminated the A class from consideration, we would virtually eliminate the possibility of a ending up with a total lemon -- that we could expect minor difficulties with the C classes, but not the catastrophic failures associated with the A's. Any thoughts on this RVer's advice?