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Congrats! "1/2 of an hour looking?" Heck it takes me 45 minutes to stop sweating and calm down after seeing the sticker prices on most new units, let alone being able to actually make a deal.

Is he talking about a Newmar Kountry Star?

Thanks Blake, got it now. Took me a new minutes and another cup of coffee but I figured it out.

I'm not seeing any information on coaches in folks signatures. I see comments like "I travel part time" or "I travel with pets" in signatures, but not much else except locations. Maybe I don't have something turned on in settings.

Kitchen slide comes in against kitchen island, thus blocking stove/oven/microwave. Can get to frig but that is it. We had the same situation on our fiver. So "Roger" never had an RV but had a bunch of opinions?

I know this is an extremely old post. But I just couldn't resist responding since we did a few years full time traveling in a 39' fiver. 1. You are correct, you have to get out and unhook. 2. You are incorrect, unless your friends had 15 year old fiver. Unhook, chock tires, press auto level button, done. 3. You are correct. 4. You are incorrect. While a fiver needs a place to stop, most can use their own restroom while traveling. 5. You are incorrect. We can't cook without opening one slide on our MH. Except for having air conditioning we use the frig in the fiver for lunch breaks just like our MH. 6. Have towed my fiver through 45mph cross winds using 2 fingers on the steering wheel. With my MH I would be sitting out those conditions. 7. The one you watched roll away must have been on a 10% grade covered in ice. A 20,000 pound fiver sitting on landing legs with the tires chocked ain't moving my friend. Maybe this poster was only making reference/comparison between TT (travel trailers and motorhomes) instead of comparing 5th wheels and motorhomes. I can only speak to fivers from experience since I have never owned or camped in a travel trailer.

Wow, our experiences with USPS (United States Postal Service) sure has been different from some of the above information. The last couple of years we have had our mail forwarded from our Florida home to our son's home up north. We travel for 4 or 5 months but he manages all of our mail that comes to his residence. We simply go online and set everything up with USPS and it costs $1.00. They forward all first class mail, including our magazines. They don't ever "box" mail up together and send it on a certain day, it just gets forwarded as it comes into our Florida post office. When we are a couple of weeks from getting back to our Florida home we go online and put a hold on our mail, that way nothing ends up getting sent up north after we are gone. I think the rules are pretty straight forward with USPS when doing it online. You can only have it forwarded less than 6 months. Now there may be some type of "Premium" plan they offer but we have just used their run of the mill paid-for-with-our-tax-dollars forwarding service and it has worked great!

Studebrucer, any progress? We got a signed contract on the house last night. Suppose to close in 33 days. Probably start selling some furniture and moving a little stuff into small storage facility but can't move ahead with too much until we actually close. Looks like November will be busy.

I checked with USAA a few years ago for my RV and a vehicle. They were extremely high priced at that time so I have never gotten quotes from them since. When we change coaches in the near future I may give them another shot, but usually when someone is 40% to 50% higher on something I don't revisit.

George, I have been following your post on the damage. Unbelievable! I hope you guys are not full timers. Keep us posted on how you make out with repairs and insurance.

Even though I had my Safe T Plus installed on my 39' gasser, and not a DP, I agree with everything Wolfe10 said. To improve my handling I had to have the front end aligned, properly adjust my psi in all tires, and have Sumo springs installed all around. The Safe T Plus helped me re-center the steering while driving and made me more confident I could keep from rolling over in the case of a steer axle tire blowout. I would estimate that every modification I did leading up to the Safe T Plus install improved the handling of my gas coach 60%, then adding the Safe T Plus maybe improved it another 10%. I was going from Florida to Illinois last spring to start our summer travels so I made an appointment at their factory outside of Atlanta. There was no waiting and they completed the install and road testing in about 90 minutes.

I think Hank164 makes some good points. After being full time in a fiver and now considering being full time in a DP my perspective on coach selection is slightly different. The floorplan is extremely important and your perception of how reliable the coach will be is ultra important, or at least it is to me. While traveling full time in our fiver I was more concerned with making sure my F350 never broke down. If something had to be repaired on the fiver and it had to be in a shop for a couple days or longer we always had the truck to load some stuff into and go find lodging. Now when considering being full time in just a DP puling an enclosed trailer what if it has to be in the shop for a few days. I would have to find a secure place for the enclosed trailer plus we would be very limited on what possessions we could take with us in just our Mini Cooper. A much more uncomfortable situation to be in with a DP compared to a fiver. Now it becomes extremely important for me to search out the most reliable higher end brand of used DP I can afford. That doesn't mean there is any guarantee I won't have issues with a used Newmar or Tiffin, but maybe my chances will be a little less than compared to a used cheaper brand.

I checked into both the bigger rear trac bar plus putting on a 5 star tuner. The suspension mods I did made the coach handle about 75% better so I decided against the trac bar but was still considering the tuner. Of course when we made the decision to return to full timing and change coaches the tuner came off my RV wish list.

The original OP may have gotten tied up dealing and/or taking delivery on a coach. He may have had some type of medical emergency, or a family problem. Heck, unless someone knows him personally, for all we know he may not speak English very well and has a adult kid or grandkid post questions for him. There could be many things that keep him from lurking on this site every day. I don't care if he comes back or not and no one else should either. I certainly am not going to bad mouth him for not making a follow up comment.

From your signature it looks like you are full time. I am assuming that means you travel a lot but I can't tell how tall your rig is. Do you ever concern yourself with height issues? How about weight, length, or width restrictions on certain roads? Have you ever approached an area where you were restricted because of a 100 gallon propane tank on board? Or how about a major street in a city where any type of large vehicle are not allowed (Chicago). These are all reasons I use a Truckers/RV GPS to aid in my navigation plus consult a truckers atlas if visiting a new area of the country.

Benny, pretty good information already provided. I will just add some additional advise on dumping the black tank. First of all, while using your black tank make sure you flush with tons of water each time. Hold the pedal partially open and fill the bowl at least twice after each use. Leave the bowl with 2" or 3" of standing water which will keep the seal working properly. I don't use the black flush feature that comes on RV's. Most of them have a back check valve built into them and they have a habit of failing. They are usually just designed to spray water into the black tank in order to rinse it. This is what I have always attached to the end of my sewer boom: http://www.valterra.com/flush-king-reverse-rv-flush-valve/ With the Flush King I can attach a hose and back flush my black tank (after closing the gray). It flushes it from the bottom up and I have found it works much better than most OEM installed black tank flushes. In addition, I can close my black tank after cleaning and open my gray and back flush it the same way. You would be surprised how much junk (food particles, hair, etc.) gets into your gray tank and never runs out.

When I bought my 2012 F350 I was a little freaked out about the whole new DEF issue. After towing with it for over 40,000 miles the whole DEF issue is nothing more than an extra fluid to keep track of IMHO. Maybe Cummins or one of the other diesel makers had additional issues I am not aware of when it came to diesel exhaust fluid, but Fords new 6.7 was okay.

We won't make it to Perry. Got a lot going on right now with the house just hitting the market. Just got lucky today and got a super site in a local campground for the winter months, they had an early cancellation already.

Good info Bill, and thanks. My estimated 4,000 pounds of towed weight would be the Mini and Harley total, not inclusive of the trailer weight. I'm not sure how I will be limited by having a Mini Cooper and a Harley as our two modes of general transportation? We have just officially listed the house with the signs going up Friday. Depending on how quickly that goes will determine how quickly my search for a coach increases. I will probably reach out to you with more questions.

Bill, are you sure about that? With my Verizon account when we use our I-phones for navigation it seems to chew through our data. I would suspect if we were driving all day in our car and kept our I-phone navigating we would use at least 1/2 gig.

Thanks Bill, I resent an email to you, still trying to get used to a new computer with windows 10.

Actually my Harley is a FLHTCUTG, which to non-Harley buffs is a Triglide, you know, a tricycle. You "drive it" instead of riding it like a motorcycle. It is more like my convertible except with 3 wheels. It has full navigation and blue tooth so I can display or play about anything. But getting back to the original question of GPS units. I guess my feeling is that I would never feel comfortable going down the road in a vehicle that is anywhere from 40' to 65' long and close to the height limits following google mapping or Waze. Any GPS guidance I have is going to have my length, height, and other factors programed in so I will have a better chance of not getting into a bind. We will use Waze and other applications on our phone and tablet but not for navigation. For example when traffic comes to a stop we may pull up one of those other apps just to see what is happening and try to determine if there could be an alternate way around it. I could care less about knowing where the general public is reporting a police officer sitting in the median. Come on, are you serious, I'm either pulling or pushing a vehicle that is 30,000 to 50,000 pounds down the road, its not like I'm driving 20mph over the speed limit or drinking a six pack! I'm more worried about that 10'8" overpass.

Go to Lazy Days site and look at their current DP for sale. There are new ones, even 2018's, reduced 35% and more. Here is how I look at their pricing in general. The manufacturer produces a coach for example (labor/material) at a cost of $150,000. They want to make a little money so they sell it to dealers at $225,000. The dealers get to place a MSRP of $450,000 on these coaches that actually cost $150,000 to produce. Now they discount it $299,999 and the customer thinks he just got a huge deal. In reality the dealer made a cool $75,000 off the sale. But remember there will be tons of buyers who will pay in the neighborhood of $230,000 to $240,000 for that same coach. If I was in the market for a new coach, and that will never happen, I would get the nationwide average MSRP of the model I was looking at and start offering 40% less. When I found a dealer that would deal at that price point I would throw in an extended 5 year warranty just before closing.

Looks like Manholt already provided the definitions for you. As far as considering yourself true "full timers" or "long timers" is doesn't really matter. Some folks don't have a house (sticksnbricks) and travel full time in their RV. Generally speaking they are true full timers. Then there are folks that don't have a house but live in an RV up north for 6 months and move it to a warmer climate for 6 months, with no travel in between, they also will claim they are full timers. I don't really care what I am considered or called. We are selling the house and will travel anywhere from 8,000 to 18,000 miles a year depending on where we want to go and how long we want to stay there. We will probably sit in one location during the winter in Florida for maybe 4 months. No matter if you return once and awhile to your home, if you are traveling and pulling a lot of weight IMHO a DP would be the only way for you to go.

There were two things I had a hard time getting used to with my Challenger. Number One was finding places to get in and out of easily for gas. I only pull a small aluminum trailer with my Harley on it but it is still sometimes a challenge to fuel a 38' coach pulling anything. The Number Two problem was that F-53 chassis. If I wasn't paying attention when a big truck passed me I could easily end up on the shoulder. I weighed it, properly aired the tires, had front end aligned, did the CHF, and had Sumo springs put all around. After that $2,000 plus of improvements it is much better but as soon as that V-10 sees a little hill up ahead it starts screaming at me! I certainly miss my 6.7 Ford diesel and would not go full time without a diesel coach.