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Old 01-16-2010, 05:17 PM   #1
Home away from home
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Sault Sainte Marie, MI
Posts: 4
First Brand new Camper

Hello everyone, my name is Bob, and I bought a brand new 2008 Montana 3000RK. This is my third 5th wheel, but my first brand new one. This is also the biggest one I've ever owned as well. Here's a schedule of camping trips that we took and issues we've had:

We bought our camper on July 28th, 2008 from a dealer located in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario Canada. I'm in the Military stationed just across the border in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan.

About a week after we bought the camper, we took it to a local campground to work out the bugs, check everything out, and basically just become familiar with our new camper. We had no major issues, and the camper performed well.

The very next weekend, we had a trip scheduled down to Govenor Dodge state park to camp with family from IL. The trip down was uneventful, and the camper worked well in the campground. On the return trip home, we had a couple issues pop up. It rained heavily most of the drive back home, so I didn't think much about it when I noticed the first step inside the door was soaked. I thought it was from a bad seal on the bottom of the door. We got home late that night, so we parked the trailer in front of the house and left it until the morning. The first thing I noticed the next morning was that both passenger side tires were balding, the front on the outside, the rear one on the inside. I called the dealer, and set up an appt to have it looked at. It took them a couple days, but they found that the bolt holding the leaf spring pack together on the rear axle had sheared the head off, which held the axle in place. This caused the rear axle to slide backwards on the passenger side, which caused the tire wear. The dealer had told me that this was NOT covered under warranty, and that it would be over $1000 to fix it. Not satisfied with this answer, I contacted Keystone and was notified that they WOULD cover the repair, and that the dealer had never even checked to see if it was covered. Even though the repair was covered by the manufacturer, the dealer still tried to pass his shipping fees from the tires on to me (he had them shipped to the US, and had to pay import fees to bring them across to Canada to finish the repair, and he never even contacted me to see if I would bring them across). I told him while I would not eat the import fee, I would split it with him just to be fair. It was after this I pulled his dealer stickers off my camper and vowed never to go to him again, I would rather drive 3 hours to the next closest dealer.

We camped a few more times on the weekends at a nearby campground before winter hit with no more major issues.

Winter: I winterized the trailer myself, blowing all the water lines out, draining the hot water heater, putting antifreeze in the drain traps, turning off the propane, and even buying 8 5lbs bags of desiccant to keep things dry. I left the camper plugged in all winter, and kept an oil filled radiator style heater inside on low. I climbed up on the roof to remove snow several times.

Spring: Pulled out all the desiccant, flushed the tanks, and turned everything back on. I noticed right away I had an issue with the water pump. I overlooked this putting it into storage, but it was a simple fix. I had not drained the water from inside the pump, and it caused damage. One new water pump later, and we're good to go. On a side note, I was kinda disappointed that the stickers on the front end cap started peeling off in spots.

We used the trailer 3 times locally to go camping with friends and check for bugs. It was on one of these smaller trips that I learned when dry camping, one battery will NOT run a furnace all night long. I woke up to a very slow running furnace fan. Simple fix, I now have 2 big deep cycle batteries instead of the stock one.

We also took the camper on a trip down to Saginaw, MI, so the fiance could go wedding dress shopping. This was only the second major trip the trailer, but the first one with no issues.

Summer trip: My wife and I were married in June of 2009, and we decided that we wanted to take the camper to Disney World for our honeymoon. We started off from a Chicago suburb (where we got married) and made it to southern indiana before we stopped for the night. We hit some of the WORST rainstorms I've ever seen driving through the last half of Indiana and Kentucky. We managed to push through the storm, and pull over at a rest stop to check on the trailer. This is where we first noticed water leaking towards the back of the camper, somewhere around the rear of the slide. We managed to dry things out as best as we could and hit the road again to stay ahead of the storm. We stopped in Nashville for the next night, deciding it would be better to let the storm pass us by than try to race it to Florida. I spent most of the evening with a hair dryer pointed at the carpet by the slide, trying to dry it out. We had no other issues on our trip south, and enjoyed our stay at Disney. The trip back home was uneventful.

We used the camper one more time after our honeymoon before winterizing it. This time, I remembered the water pump, disconnecting it and draining it. Unfortunately, Ever since that one leak while driving south, I can't seem to get that rear corner dry. It seems to be leaking still, but I can't locate it. At first it only seemed to leak while driving, but now it seems to leak non stop. I've checked the roof, the back side of the fridge, and the slide seals, and am still unable to find where it's coming from. There's no sign that it's coming down from above, as only the floor and bottom edge of the wall seem affected. It's gotten bad enough where I might start getting water damage, if anyone else has seen this, or can help, please shout out. My wife and I plan on living in this after I transfer, but may not be able to with water intrusion. That's my ownership experience in a nutshell.

Bob
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Old 01-17-2010, 10:11 AM   #2
antiqfreq
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Soperton, Georgia
Posts: 1,540
Thanks for the info/update/and camping stuff....

Congrats on the wedding &

Welcome to the forum!

Jo
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