Mammoth At Home

                    The first few days in your home are special and critical. Your new friend
                                  will be confused about where he is and what to expect from you.
                                                                                                                -petfinder.com

For you RV enthusiasts out there, I'll quote the specs. It is a 2011 Thor Serrano 31V, diesel, about 45K miles, 32 feet long, two slides. Huge storage areas; full-sized bed in the back; sofa with two footrests. On the minus side, a dinky little 3-burner stove with no oven; basic fridge without icemaker, and a TV positioned such that anyone on the sofa would have to crane their head sideways to watch it. Ed's going to fix that.

It had the expected wear and tear for its age but we were worried about unseen defects. So we had it inspected. Nothing serious was found and the dealer's cleanup team fixed almost every problem the inspector reported.

They even fixed a couple of things we wouldn't have asked them to fix, like the awning--it had a little tear but they replaced the whole thing. The radio was missing so they put in a state-of-the art model with USB ports.  They did a great cleaning job, too.

So if a leaking roof seal is the worst thing we have facing us, we will be well set. First stop will be an over-nighter at a local lake.  But not today--it's still raining.



AN UPDATE about the inspection: While I am glad we did it and I don't begrudge the people the price they charged for the hard, hot, all-day task, they didn't catch everything.


1. They didn't hook up the sewer line and test it because--they said--there was no dump station. But all they had to do was ask. The dealer would have gladly pointed it out to them or moved the RV over to it. So when we later had issues draining the tanks, we assumed we'd found a defect. (more later)

2. They didn't test the heating system, probably because the temperature was in the mid-90s that day. So they missed the fact that--duh--it didn't work. I'm sure there's some way they could have tested it.  We were out over six hundred dollars fixing that one.

3. There were a couple of other minor issues they missed; nothing serious enough for me to even remember what they were right now, but annoying to have to fix on our own.