Just got back from a 4 day trip to N. central Florida for a dog agility competition. It was the third trip in our new 2017 ACE 30.3 MH. All I can say is that it was quite the field trial for our new RV!
It was a nice 400 mile round trip from our S/W Florida home base and a good test for our recently installed steering stabilizer and CHF modification. The MH handled some pretty stiff crosswinds both up and back along with the heavy semi truck traffic on I-75. We were quite pleased with how the MH handled!
Now for the fun part! The first couple of days were quite pleasant with temps in the upper 70's we had to run the A/C during the day to keep us and the dogs cool. Grilled out both nights using our new Aussie grill with the LP connection that came with the MH. Life was good, then came the storms! Late on the second night the severe weather came rolling in, high winds (30-40 mph) lightening and torrential rain for 10 hours! We stayed comfy all night inside with the wind howling and rain falling. The motorhome stayed rock solid with the jacks deployed, no rocking and rolling for us! What a comfortable feeling for all of us, especially the wife and dogs. With the wind driven rain I was worried about leaks, especially around the slide outs, but no worries. We stayed high and dry! No water intrusion anywhere. The temps then began to drop dramatically, especially for Florida! Temperatures the next day continued to plummet well below freezing (mid 20's) and we then had to run the furnace non stop for the remainder of the trip. We stayed warm and cozy with only a few drafty areas near the front cab. We had winds of 20-30 mph and wind chills near 20 °. The MH handled the conditions just fine. I was glad for the heated tank and wet bay compartments that Thor has added! We were also happy with the large tank capacities too. We had plenty of fresh water on board for 4 days of showers, toilet, dishes etc and still had over a half of tank of fresh water and 1/2 on the grey and 2/3 on black water capacity left.The hot water heater worked great for as cold as it got, never had a problem with hot water. The coldest morning I did run the hot water heater on both electric and LP for a faster heat up time. Speaking of LP, we only used a 1/3 of a tank for the whole trip with the furnace, some hot water, the stove every night and two nights of grilling out with the supply line.
If someone was going to test all of the systems and construction qualities on a Motorhome in one trip, I think we covered it on this one! Everything worked as it should we stayed very comfortable at all times even with the wild weather swings.
Sure, we had some fit and finish issues early on with our new MH and did need to fix a few minor things but we are quite pleased with the performance of our new ACE!
We also received some nice compliments on the looks of our RV from some of the other folks at the event.
By the way, the dogs did ok at the agility trial too
Steven B.
S/W Florida
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