Hopefully these are good questions?

[dkoldman]

If my questions are off the mark please let me know, I may cry a little; but I can handle it. Besides you won't see me cry anyway.

1.) With respect to slides, motors etc. Is the reliability better for a unit with single full wall slide versus units with 2 smaller slides for bedroom and living area?

2) Assume a bedroom slide where if you extend slide out half way; 18 inch's or so; where the bed can be fully extended. Is it a no no, or damaging to continually extend slide half way or so, and retract without going out all of the way?

3) For the standard Norcold Refrigerators that are electric / propane. Assume you have coach with inverter and AGS. Why wouldn't you wire the electrical side of refrigerator with switch so it can gets power through inverter? It would effectively be Electrical, Propane & Battery.

4) I have seen few units with two ACs where both units are in main coach. The bedroom can only get air through the ducts if opened. This seems clever to me, but is it really advantageous?

5) If you have unit with Outdoor kitchen (small refrigerator and small sink)... how practical or valuable is that for you? I am trying to rationalize when I may actually use and if I will need to move drinks in and out of the house to go outside? I don't know if you actually leave on all the time even while driving? I guess if you stop to get gas you could go get a cold coke without having to go back in the coach?

All responses are welcome, just reference the question #

[Bob Denman]

Good questions!
Slides... Those full-wall slides do put more of a strain on things.
I don't know how the statistics look; but I avoid them, and woulda prefer two slides.
The refrigerator...
Mine is a 3-way unit, and it chooses it's own power source.
Air Conditioners...
They might not put a unit over top of the bedroom, in order to isolate the sleepers from the noise.

[Squerly]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

3) For the standard Norcold Refrigerators that are electric / propane. Assume you have coach with inverter and AGS. Why wouldn't you wire the electrical side of refrigerator with switch so it can gets power through inverter? It would effectively be Electrical, Propane & Battery.

I did this on my coach and it works well, except you will need a large enough set of coach batteries to keep it fed.

The Norcold will eat up 30 amps an hour, every hour. Run it off the batteries for 24 hours and you have effectively eaten up 720 AMPs of battery power. That's a bigger hit than most of us can take.

And don't forget the overhead of running an inverter all that time. Mine eats up 5 amps an hour, so that's another 120 amps.

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Squerly

I did this on my coach and it works well, except you will need a large enough set of coach batteries to keep it fed.

The Norcold will eat up 30 amps an hour, every hour. Run it off the batteries for 24 hours and you have effectively eaten up 720 AMPs of battery power. That's a bigger hit than most of us can take.

And don't forget the overhead of running an inverter all that time. Mine eats up 5 amps an hour, so that's another 120 amps.

With the switch you could easily turn Battery on/off ,and with AGS it would fire up generator automatically if battery power got to low.

Your response made me add a 5th question.

5) If you have unit with Outdoor kitchen (small refrigerator and small sink)... how practical or valuable is that for you? I am trying to rationalize when I may actually use and if I will need to move drinks in and out of the house to go outside? I don't know if you actually leave on all the time even while driving? I guess if you stop to get gas you could go get a cold coke without having to go back in the coach?

[Squerly]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

5) If you have unit with Outdoor kitchen (small refrigerator and small sink)... how practical or valuable is that for you? I am trying to rationalize when I may actually use and if I will need to move drinks in and out of the house to go outside? I don't know if you actually leave on all the time even while driving? I guess if you stop to get gas you could go get a cold coke without having to go back in the coach?

It's a matter of allocating resources and when you use some from one area you will need to replace them from another.

For my first couple of adventures, I kept a log tracking the AMP's used vs. AMP's created (via generator), and, among other things, I decided it's easier to run the Norcold off of propane and keep the drinks in an ice chest.

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Squerly

It's a matter of allocating resources and when you use some from one area you will need to replace them from another.

For my first couple of adventures, I kept a log tracking the AMP's used vs. AMP's created (via generator), and, among other things, I decided it's easier to run the Norcold off of propane and keep the drinks in an ice chest.

Let me make sure I follow. From your experience you are saying that even though you have outdoor kitchen refrigerator.... You run your main unit inside of coach on propane and use ice chest for any drinks that you may want outside?


The reason why this is so important to me is that I have been in love with 29.3 with outdoor kitchen for a while, but the Windsport/Hurricane has taken me by storm. Pun is intended. But the 29M is too long for me so I am going looking at 27B but it has no outdoor kitchen (refrigerator).

[Squerly]

Originally Posted by dkoldman

Let me make sure I follow. From your experience you are saying that even though you have outdoor kitchen refrigerator.... You run your main unit inside of coach on propane and use ice chest for any drinks that you may want outside?

Sorry dkoldman, I got sidetracked and was trying to multitask. I suck at multitasking! So I deleted that last response and I'll try again.

I don't have an outdoor refer, but if I did, I would use it to store other things besides drinks. I would put my drinks in an ice chest, use the melting ice to create cold water for the dogs, and run my interior Norcold on propane.

Hope this helps?

[Jegdrum5050]

Full wall slides are great, I have 25 k miles with no issues. Also have more room because of the full wall. Most people that don’t like full wall slides have never had one. That said the 3 travel bars on the slides are important.

I use my out door kitchen all the time, it’s great. The fridge holds drinks, food or whatever is overflow from inside.

Jerry

[be happy]

1) I have had units with 3 slides and now my ACE 29.3 has only one full body slide. I think for reliability it would make no difference on the number of slides. I have liked both of my units.

2) I am a believer that the slides are either in or out there is no middle of the road. I guess a lot of that would depend on the mfg. guide lines for the slide.

4) To me the only advantage would be you could run both without the noise in the bedroom.

5) I have gotten to love my outside kitchen. With the small frig able to hold a 12 pack beer and full case of water I am never without a cold one. It takes the pressure off filling the inside frig. up. Yes I have to bring water from outside to in but them I go in and out enough. If I was looking at a different unit and the frig was large enough to hold stuff the outside would not be as important.

[Pete'sMH]

FWIW, I had a full wall slide rig and liked it fine but eventually decided that having the kitchen in the slide required too many moving wet parts. Never actually had any issues and one supposes the engineers are smarter than me but when I changed coaches I opted for two smaller slides with no moving wet parts and I like this fine as well.

I believe stopping a slide partway out is asking for trouble. The slide motors can get out of synch and make it hard to bring the slide back in. Somewhat related, I had a Freedom Elite with a bed slide and folding bed and it’s slide extended about 30 inches. This seems like a huge amount to me and actually made the whole coach lean when it was extended. Again, I suppose the engineers know what they are doing and I never had any issues with mine but again, I chose my latest coach to have a bed that I can use without extending the slide and a slide that has a much smaller extension,

My full wall slide coach had an outside kitchen and we never used anything other than the refrigerator and that only occasionally. We found it easier to restock the inside one as needed.

Lastly, I just this week finished adding an inverter just precisely so that I can run my fridge on electricity when driving. If I was dry camping I’d switch it to propane and, of course it’s on shore power for most of my use.

Good luck in your pondering and enjoy your shopping!

[taylorbob1]

1) advantage of full wall slide on the 29m is that everything is fully functional when the slide is not extended. For Boon-docking in a Walmart parking lot, you can use the rear bed without extending the slide. Many RVs require a bedroom slide to be extended in order to use the bed

5) the outside kitchen is appealing, but remember these factoids...
a) the outside kitchen takes up valuable storage space
b) depending on where you live, it’s only usable for a short season when it’s warm outside
c) the outside refrigerator is automatically turned-on when the Inverter is switched on (29m). It’s a traditional electric-only “college-dorm/office fridge”. There’s a receptacle behind the outside wall where it’s plugged, accessed in the bedroom behind the cabinets. So some on this Forum have added an “On-Off switch” or run an extension cord thru the wall so if they’re not using the fridge, it can be turned off or unplugged to not burn valuable Amps while boon-docking

[Oneilkeys]

For the Schwintek slide systems it is very important to put the slide all the way in and all the way out - every time. When operating the system, you should hold the button down until the system completes the full out or in movement. The last few seconds is the system syncing the motors and you can hear the whine as it completes the cycle. Not allowing the system to sync, can lead to the slide jamming.

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Oneilkeys

For the Schwintek slide systems it is very important to put the slide all the way in and all the way out - every time. When operating the system, you should hold the button down until the system completes the full out or in movement. The last few seconds is the system syncing the motors and you can hear the whine as it completes the cycle. Not allowing the system to sync, can lead to the slide jamming.

I don't know who make the slides for Thor (27B, 29.3 or 29M) but that being the case, why don't they make it where when you flip the switch or hit touch pad controller, it extends all the way out unless hit a again to stop or if it senses some obstruction?

I think I follow it should go all the way out, it just that in 27B in bedroom, To me, you really only need it to go far enough to flip bed. I would always want to extend living room slide as far as possible.

I don't know what Thor is doing but they have and are eliminating what I view as best floorplan the 29.3. The ACE 30.2, Windsport 29M or Hurricane 29M replacement is too long for me. The 27B is only option left and Thor is going to eliminate it next year. Just seems like an awful lot of trouble for Thor to go through to prevent me from getting an RV

[Mr Sunshine]

Your questions are good, but some of the answers depend on you and how you will use your rig. Are you planning on extended boon-docking? Is there a reason you are limiting the length, or is that arbitrary?

Here's some random responses:

1 and 2-The slides units of today are much more reliable than the ones of a few years ago. We had problems with both slides on our 33' 2007 Class A. With the newer Swinteks, if you don't screw them up by stopping them part way, you shouldn't expect problems.

3-RV refrigerators don't use much LP gas. We rarely dry camp more than 2 nights in a row, and almost always run the refrig when we are on the road. I wouldn't want to carry enough batteries to run the refrig just on DC.

4-That motor home was 50 amp and had 2 A/cs. We rarely ran both. They were both connected to the same ducts, so we would usually run the front one at night and the bedroom one during the day.

5-I've never had, nor wanted, an outdoor kitchen. Yet I have friends that love having theirs and use it all the time.

Is there some way you can rent an RV like you think you want? That's a great way to help make your decisions. It may seem expensive, but not as much as getting stuck with the wrong coach!

Your results will vary. Happy hunting!

[dkoldman]

[QUOTE=Mr Sunshine;186853]Your questions are good, but some of the answers depend on you and how you will use your rig. Are you planning on extended boon-docking?

I would NOT say extended, but boondocking capable is a must anywhere anytime

Is there a reason you are limiting the length, or is that arbitrary?

Yes, where I will store at home has Max of 30' 8" A ladder on the passenger side loses about additional 5 inches.

1 and 2-The slides units of today are much more reliable than the ones of a few years ago. We had problems with both slides on our 33' 2007 Class A. With the newer Swinteks, if you don't screw them up by stopping them part way, you shouldn't expect problems.

If you stop slide on the way out and restart to continue extending the slide is that a problem?

Seems like from what I am hearing is that eventually you get to the end and hold for a few secs it syncs as it knows it is the end. Seems like if you extend halfway, stop and then later retract all the way in and hold it a few secs it should sync at home base? But apparently not.

3-RV refrigerators don't use much LP gas. We rarely dry camp more than 2 nights in a row, and almost always run the refrig when we are on the road. I wouldn't want to carry enough batteries to run the refrig just on DC.


If I could run the refrigerate on the road, this would NOT be a question in my mind. I don't think I wish to run generator just for fridge while driving. I have been told to not fridge while driving. I know a fridge may stay cold for a drive during the day, but if I buy an RV, I want my fridge running with Ice cold beer and water. Of course the beer is for my wife or for when I get to camp it is already cold :-)

5-I've never had, nor wanted, an outdoor kitchen. Yet I have friends that love having theirs and use it all the time.

We just assumed it was nice because it was there; but when we came across a rig that we otherwise like that did not have outdoor kitchen it has made us think about it. The 27B has outdoor TV, but no fridge or sink. I don't think I would want to stock two fridge or to keep both cold?

Is there some way you can rent an RV like you think you want? That's a great way to help make your decisions. It may seem expensive, but not as much as getting stuck with the wrong coach! We have rented in the past; long Forest River 38' etc. I know I don't want to own anything that big. I rent those for occasions not camping. I just want something nice that I can have at the house for whatever I may wish to do. In the 29 - 30' range I can find NO RV that comes close feature & price wise than Thor. The ACE 29.3 is what I view as ideal floorplan, but they were discontinued and hard to find. The ACE replacement for 29.3 is over 31'. The Windsport / Hurricane comes with more luxury than ACE so we are liking it now but the 29M is too long, thus our look at 27b and all of my questions because we will have to accept a flip up bed that must have slide out & no outdoor kitchen.

[Mr Sunshine]

Hey, you are on the right track! Best of luck on your search.

To clarify my comment, we usually run our refrig on Auto, which means when we are unplugged from shore power, and not running the genny, the refrig runs on LP. If i remember, I'll shut it off on our last day toward home.

FWIW, I just checked rvtrader.com and found 31 Ace 29.3 units available in the country, just one in TX, Houston.

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Mr Sunshine

Hey, you are on the right track! Best of luck on your search.

To clarify my comment, we usually run our refrig on Auto, which means when we are unplugged from shore power, and not running the genny, the refrig runs on LP. If i remember, I'll shut it off on our last day toward home.

FWIW, I just checked rvtrader.com and found 31 Ace 29.3 units available in the country, just one in TX, Houston.

Thank you alot, your input has been very helpful. I am treating this purchase like buying a house., It may be overkill, but it also part of the fun it owning, getting to pick what you want. This site has already saved me thousands.

FWIW; I have seen the unit in Houston. It is used 2017 with only one AC. We have been looking at new 2018's & 2019's. There are only 9 of those on rvtrader. Several have very good prices that I am willing to pay, but they are all in New York, California, Washington or other states on East Coast that I have never even heard of

This brings me to another question, how does it work for folks trying to buy a RV that far from home? I mean do you agree that you will buy before you see it; so when you go; it is there and NOT sold? What if you see things when you get there that they gloss over as normal like scratched doors, punctures in ceilings, really bad paint finish, etc. You are 1,000 miles from home maybe paid a a good chunk to fly in. Then if you really do buy you got that PDI inspection thing (whatever they call it to do); so you have to go back home and wait on that to be done. Then when ready; you fly back out; and hope they got it all fixed; if not you repeat the cycle. So you buy and your first trip is now a long one likely through some mountains to get back to Texas (we don't see mountains around here (Dallas) - I don't count the fire ant mounds). But let's say I do make it and get home. I am pretty much on my own, because even though I have brand new unit from a Dealer, I am never driving back to New York or that far in that RV to get something fixed that the dealer is responsible for.

[JamieGeek]

Looks like MHSRV has a 27B:
https://www.mhsrv.com/2019-thor-moto...-a-tx-i2187769

They are one of the better dealers in the nation. (In fact it may be better to pay their price than find a cheap one across the country.)

If you're planning on buying elsewhere due to price you could always contact a local dealer and see if they will perform your warranty work for you (the answer most likely would be "no" but you could always ask). You can also contact Thor and find a local repair shop that can do the work for you.

Another option for repairs (albeit a long drive for you) is factory service in Wakarusa, IN. You'll find no better shop in the US than factory service to fix a Thor.

[Judge]

There are advantages having the fridge on the Inverter.

I plan to make a wiring change in my Outlaw 29H so the fridge can be powered by the Inverter.

Some states mandate that propane be off while driving. On very long trips it wildly be a nice option to use the Inverter as well. When the engine is running, the house batteries are charging so using the Inverter is a non issue and better than running the generator while driving.

I’m also installing solar so if I am boondocking, running the fridge off the Inverter is less of an issue if the generator is not an option (low fuel, low propane, noise, etc.)

[Bob Denman]

Which States require that the propane be turned off? I've heard of it not being allowed in tunnels; but not for entire States.