We got suckered by the "half-ton" name, ended up having to upgrade to an F-250.
We love the floorplan, esp. the recliners and the king bed, neither of which we had in our previous rig.
I love the inCommand (some people hate it, not me) and the power awning.
We love, love, love, the hydraulic leveling system.
Unfortunately, my trailer has been to the service department way too many times for factory defects:
- Three times for inop furnace (first time was known recall on Dometic HVAC gateway, other two were sail switch fouled by factory sawdust and styro debris.)
- Four times to three different shops for inadequate braking on the F-250 (turned out to be grease on the trailer brakes, or so we are told).
- Bolts cross-threaded on spare tire hanger, required replacement of entire hanger assy. and wheel.
- Rear door filon pulling out of frame, required whole door replacement.
- Odd bulge/wrinkle on the slide siding since day one; Keystone claims it is accidental damage and would not repair, despite both we and dealer refuting it.
Badly designed water routing caused
toilet flush to fail after every leg of a trip. Same defect also affected flow on sink cold water faucets. Turned out to be anode sediment migrating from the water heater into the cold(!) line. I may or may not have fully remedied this yet (I have a check valve in reserve just in case). Had to solve this problem without dealer because it didn't happen until we hit the road, as it is caused by travel motion.
We were appalled that the factory closed off 1/3 of the pantry just to run a few wires through the space. I re-opened it, re-routed the wires properly around the surfaces (plenty of slack) and built a small false wall insert to shield the rear of the TV-area wallplates, increased pantry by 50%. (DW put her foot down, you don't stint her pantry, she's a hardcore prepper.)
The storage box under the foot of the bed bordered on flimsy until some L-brackets were added to the frame.
The tires, as on most RVs, are low-cost China Bombs as shipped and should be swapped out before aging much.
We didn't get the fireplace we expected; instead, we got the swing-down rear stairs which we were going to add on anyway. Unfortunately, it's harder to add the fireplace later than the stairs.
We've taken two cross-continent journeys with it, plus a couple shorter local jaunts (nothing last year due to lockdowns), and we really enjoy traveling with it and living in it. But I will have to say that our last trailer was more or less "everything just works" for 20 years, and compared to it, waiting for the Cougar to develop its next issue occasionally has us walking on eggshells.