I Appreciate Our Solitude Vs New Horizons

[Steven@147]

Man do I appreciate our Solitude S Class. We are staying at this campground and renewed our friendship with a couple we met last year at the same CG. They are fulltimers also in their mid to late 70s. Great couple enjoying their later years exploring the US. Last year I was helping them with a few repairs to their DRV. The Guy can't get around to a lot of things on their RV and getting up on the roof just isn't going to happen.

Anyway they traded in their DRV for a brand new New Horizons Majestic 40 ft 5er and thought they were set for the rest of their later year adventures with a quality great rig that they wouldn't have a lot of problems with. Let me tell you about their rig, It's beautiful! I looked up their coach on the NH web site. These things are base price $276K, wow! Has two large solar panels on the roof and room for a 3rd, a quad lithium battery set up and I saw a huge Victron controller inside the storage compartment. Looked like a great installation inside the storage compartment. Hydraulic levelers and slides. The rig has triple axles 8K each, all H rated tires, IS and disc brakes, and has a GVWR of @ 28,000# with an UVW @ 23000#. The pin weight estimate is 4850#, and the CCC is @ 4300#. The guy showed me the NH data sheet he got that listed the weights but I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea of the weights.

The guy was a little concerned about the weights and his tow vehicle and was asking me how you weigh at a Cat scale, that's why he showed me his rig data page. He has a newer Ford F350 dually and I showed him the payload sticker on the door jam. It was 5430 or there about.

Now, lets just say they are not happy with their rig. I was helping him yesterday by crawling up on a ladder to tape up four windows that are leaking really bad during a rain storm here. The caulking job and installation of the windowless frames was atrocious. A least maybe he can get it back to Kansas to have them fixed. He said there is a recall on the windows anyway because the hinges for the windows are glued to the glass and are pulling loose. I got up on the roof and took a bunch of pictures for him so he could see what it was like. The sealing job they did was not the best, I was not impressed. The hydraulic system for the leveling and slide system started blowing hoses. You could see where the hose just blew right out of the connectors. The crimps were terrible and I suspect its like a flex hose to pex connection, the hydraulic hoses may not be the right size for the connectors. He had a local hydraulic shop make all new hydraulic hoses and we helped install them. Just from what I have said you get the idea of the quality build of this $276K rig.

Makes me really appreciate our 2019 Solitude S Class that we paid $58K for. GVWR 16800, pin 3550#, 37 foot and just the right size for us. Yes it has had its problems but nothing, nowhere near like what our friends are experiencing. I would be just sick to have paid that much money and have their kinds of problems.

Price does not equate to quality and it makes no difference whos name is on the outside of the RV. The industry is just sloppy, give a crap attitude, quality is just a word the industry throws around. But we keep buying them, what choice do we have if we still want to enjoy the freedom of RVing.

[Canyonlight]

Steve - thanks, for sharing this only too often story over the last few years. This is truly unacceptable where manufacturers and most dealers do not care. The buying public is just getting a terrible level of over-priced "trailer trash" in way too many instances.

I heard it directly from a top RV executive (not a GDRV person) and in a video a few weeks ago where Bill Fenech said what has been built for sometime (and may stilll be) are "shi! shacks."

We want to buy a new one but with the huge price increases and subpar build quality, Carol and I are questioning the timing for sure.

Dan

[Gronk1]

Ron Nash left Thor in 1993 to start Northwood Mfg. (Nash, Arctic Fox etc.) in La Grande Or. because of the junk Thor was putting out. To many private coach makers are retiring & selling out to the corporations that are get 'em out the door fast, at the lowest possible cost, with workers not given the time to do a decent job.

We had a '13 AF 27-5L until 2018. Not a single problem, save for a blown GY tire. No trim to put back in place, no screws to replace, nothing. They make their own frames. They were/are heavy.
Don't know if the quality is still there since Nash's passing.

[Steven@147]

snip

We want to buy a new one but with the huge price increases and subpar build quality, Carol and I are questioning the timing for sure.

Dan

Dan, Tami and I have talked about how long our RV will last, how long we think we will stay fulltime or what RV would we get if we had to replace ours because of a loss. That would be a really hard decision to make.

Our rig just hit the 4 year mark and was built in the fall of 2018, and 18K miles later, that is about the time more things start to go wrong, between 4 and 5 years old. We keep after it to make it last as long as we can. We love fulltiming so much, discovering new places and meeting new people, we just can't see going back to traditional S&B living. At least not for a long while.

Our neighbors have a new Momentum TH and he is as busy as I am getting maintenance done and checking things out. They just had the IS and disc brakes installed and are from Minnesota. Other neighbors have a Solitude 344 the same age as ours, but it really hasn't moved since they bought it and are Texans thinking about a trip up to South Dakota. Then our dear friends with the New Horizons. We kind of commiserate together on the state of the RV industry.