1ST YEAR OWNING THE AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE 🤯 // Watch before you buy!

this is our video about our one-year experience owning the Airstream Interstate 24t GT now a lot of you have asked for us to make this video and this video has been a long time coming but what better time to kind of wrap up the whole Year's experience then at the one year anniversary point we really were waiting to choose this video until we could shoot it not in our home but in the van but that's getting ahead of ourselves let's start with why do we buy the van it's a good point I think initially because I'm looking back to when we started shopping for a van or in a class B van um specifically is because at the time we were starting to see a rise in camground cost so that was one of the defining factors and they were really really busy yeah they were they were when we first started camping campgrounds were relaxing and your RVs weren't basically touching each other and we had just experienced a lot of just Campground burnout to be honest it's true now we're coming from a perspective of you know the East Coast now when you go back out to the West Coast which we spent a large majority of our time at um there is clearly more space more boondocking opportunities you know BLM land and such so well and that's exactly what our plans were for this year to spend most of our time out west we were really excited about staying in our first uh National Park Campground boondocking more and so that's why we got really excited about the van so we purchased the Airstream Van specifically because if you've been following along with our Channel you know we have been huge Airstream um I mean we okay we love Airstream we do we do so here here's here's what Lauren's trying to say we also own a uh 30 foot Airstream classic it's the queen bed rear bed it has been amazing honestly uh and we've loved it there's lots of Windows that which bring in natural light and we can't say enough positive things about the Air Stream classic because we've had an absolutely amazing experience with it so overall if we had to recommend an air today the Airstream classic would be near the top of our list but that's not what this video is about this video is specifically about our experience with the Airstream Interstate van and before we dive into the full 12 Monon breakdown of this thing I think it's only fair to caveat that this is our experience um one of the best things that's happened about buying this van is we have had the pleasure to meet so many amazing people potentially including you who own an Airstream interstate and we've had tons of people who have had great experiences um all of whom of which who have bought one before the year of 2021 um that they love their Airstream Interstate um so I just wanted to make sure we put that out there before we talk about the cluster CER of our 12 month experience and even in the world of air interstates there's different models so as Lauren mentioned we do have a we have a 2023 Airstream Interstate 24 GT now there are a few additional add-ons that we did add on to the the base package that might have been stupid yes what it isable um one of which is the the brand new E1 lithium package that is one of the newer options from Airstream for the interstate the coach coaches in general um which is a major reason that we purchased it because it was going to give us the ability to basically Boondock indefinitely that's true that's true just a massive massive battery Bank um with that particular system comes the Timberline heating system which is unique to the E1 packaged model interstates and wasn't the leveling system a brand new add-on uh it's not it's relatively new they've been making it for a handful of years uh prior to 2023 but the auto leveling system is also something that we opted for um the general idea behind it is you get to your Campground you push a button sort of that one touch thing and then it just Auto levels at all four points which sounds great yeah and when it works it is yeah and when it works it is that's true but that's a kind of be OD but I think that's a perfect place to start because when the van works it is great we love the van when it works okay enough of us rambling this is what you really want to hear the 12mon breakdown of our Airstream Interstate experience month number one we were so excited we were we were we got the tomama tommi Bahama package um which if you're not familiar with that package it's like a limited edition model and it has a lot of some some cool interior upgrades that looks super stylish including a really epic floor um that's also a Ser point but literally some really really cool um features in the interior of That So Daniel me and dash who was just over one year old at this point because this was May and his birthday is May 14th so he was just about to turn one we went and picked up the van from Airstream of Tampa we were so pumped we were basically picking her up and immediately came back packed it and drove to Wyoming that's true and the reason we're going to Wyoming was for the Airstream International rally exactly but that trip was pretty eventful the first 30 days was wild it was it was so we decided to stop uh in Nashville to see Lauren's family on the way to Wyoming so it's kind of show off our cool new van right yeah yeah no doubt no definitely check out the cool van yeah um yeah and that is probably when we started to notice some initial issues with the power system yeah and I think because we were so fresh with it true we really thought we just didn't know what we were doing which is common you get something new and you you know you go through the the factory tour this doesn't matter it doesn't really matter whichever you have you're going to have a a tour when you pick it up they're going to run through 50 million things and they're like you got it and you're like yeah course I've got it all yeah the 400 Point checklist and in all honesty they did a really good job when we picked it up uh here in Tampa an excellent job of going over all the systems so but even that being said you still kind of doubt yourself when you're first starting out with these new systems all newst there were some things that probably we shouldn't have doubted ourselves on because one of the things that I remember most distinctly and we didn't talk about this in any of our videos because again we were like you know we don't know what we're doing I remember going out to the van when it was parked in my front of my parents house and I pressed the button to open the side door and nothing happened and I was like that doesn't make any sense so like I went over to the door I wiggled the thing you know I figured it out whatever it opened manually and then when I was going back into the house I used the fob to try to shut it again and still nothing happened and I thought this is the weirdest thing like it's a regular car fob like this shouldn't be an issue why is the door not working I know one of the things I noticed probably the first few days is um trying to unlock the van from the inside seems like a simple task but we could only get it to unlock with the remote like even like hitting the buttons they were kind of dead so you had to pull the handle to open the door we thought something really odd about that um not only that we had it parked at Lauren's parents house and I mean literally parked every every system completely off only a few days yeah and it was cool weather so it was really nothing to that would be a huge drain on the battery but as it sat there it was losing 20 to 30% of the entire this like massive battery Bank every day I sat in the driveway I mean like we don't really think that's supposed to be like that and so you plugged it in I did I plugged it in I've got I have a dogbone adapter so the the vans come with a 30 amp a plug and then you just you have something called a dogbone adapter that allows you to plug into like your your typical out you find at home um which gives you roughly you know 15 amps so I did that but at that point it still didn't really charge it didn't yeah and again we thought this has to be on us we'll figure it out it's no big deal so basically we hit the road and the great thing about the van is that the system does charge itself while you drive that's true so for the next 7 to 10 days while we were driving out to Wyoming um it was charging and it seemed totally fine true yeah there's there's two Alternators on the van so that that is a a beautiful thing about you know driving and the drivetrain kind of powers the battery pack while you're driving like she said right so while we were on the way out there two weird things happened one is that we stopped at a harvest host and it was getting it was warmer at that point wherever we were and when we stopped at that Harvest host we went after we went wandered local there and uh experienced the little business that we were at we came back out to the van and the air conditioners wouldn't turn on and the E1 system is supposed to be set up so that you can run your air conditioners and because we we have a one-year-old now um now two but at that point one um we weren't willing to go without air conditioning for the evening so we took it to a campground plugged it in yeah and I did the things that you wouldn't typically do when something doesn't work I go straight to Youtube and I search for it so I made sure the inverter was on and all those things um but even then it were having some intermittent issues with AC at that point already but we got it working when it was completely plugged in true that's exactly right so when it was plugged into a 30m campground it would it would work that's the beautiful thing about it it works when it's in a campground that's exactly it so like when which is kind of the irony in all of it when it was at a campground it did well for the most part we'll talk about that yeah so we keep on going you know restful night sleep whatever um and then tragedy number one struck with the van yeah yeah at this point is when we began to realize that maybe the van has cursed and maybe we should have amazoned some sage and just like saged the whole thing and walked through it a few times because this one was pretty uh tragic and it was hard for us to watch what happened La so we were in Nebraska um and I don't even think we were planning on staying the night in Nebraska no we were just driving stra yeah and we stopped at a little Mexican restaurant and I remember when we went in we do have this on video we were like this guy looks really funky this is a video you'd want to watch just kind of flip through some of our old videos it's pretty crazy oh it's so depressing is what it is we hit the hail storm from Hell Yeah from if hell was an icy place maybe but but yeah I you know that's fair it was a rogue storm there were golf ball size hail and they thankfully it was only cosmetic damage we didn't have any kind of issues with like Windows being blown out or light issues or but there were over 1,700 dents little dings yeah this is really when you guys gave it its name um dimples dimples yeah so from that point forward everybody started calling the van dimples so we didn't have to worry about naming the van you guys Nam the van at that point and we just started calling it dimples it was it was pretty rough it was so hard to watch um but thankfully we weren't driving in it when it happened it was totally cosmetic like it was totally drivable so afterwards we ended up continuing on our way to the Airstream rally that's true which was amazing we stayed in Rock Springs Wyoming we had so much fun if you do have an Airstream and you've never been to the Airstream rally um we highly highly suggest it unfortunately this year we're not going to be able to go because I am very pregnant um and due in September and so the timing doesn't work out for us um but it was so much fun an amazing group of people uh which is actually where we learned about Vinnie um who him and Ivan out in California Ivan the Great yes we had heard about Ivan from long they're known as the team to fix an issue like what we had experienced in Nebraska with the hail storm so that's when we started thinking about that but we wanted to wait like there wasn't any immediate issue or need to fix it yeah and so we were like okay well we're planning on headed out generally that way soon so yeah so let's keep with our plan because we still had some amazing plans lined up at the Grand pons and Yellowstone reservations Glacier and yeah yeah we had some amazing amazing Parks mapped out so we were pretty pumped about that we like the dimples whatever we'll deal with it later when we get to California and we called mini in advance and he's like come on in and get okay great so month one completed holy moly it has to get easier from here I remember us talking about that like and we even talked about how you know when we first had the Airstream the first 30 days was a lot of learning you know it's not that easy or relaxing learning a new RV so we were like next 30 days these are going to be great we're staying in the grand tons for majority of this month um amazing Place highly recommend oh my gosh so beautiful um and it was our very first experience staying in a national park which was amazing and it was amazing to like prop the door open and we just had our own little you know Oasis there it it was Heaven yeah and until we woke up one morning in the van's garage had flooded yeah the garage being the back part of the basically the bed is in the rear of the van underneath the bed completely flooded um we could hear the Rushing Water so we went out I immediately went out uh jumped out of the van and went to the back and it was just a waterfall that was cascading down the rear bumper a lot of not so nice words you know popped into my head I think we did a video of this too we did do a video of this yeah I don't think we caught the initial gush the waterfall F just gallons and gallons I didn't get there that fast but it was a lot everything everything was soaked we'll throw a link here to that video so you can see it if you want to see the details but the good news I guess was that we were about an hour away from an Airstream dealership that's um the Airstream team in Tampa we talked to them first they helped us kind of like do some quick analysis we took it down to the Airstream in Wyoming um and they were like yes we can help you fix it but it's going to take some time of course yeah um so had to do with how to access the at that point we determined that it was the Timberline system that's at least where we were able to isolate that initial problem we just drove back stay a few days and because we already had July this was July July is my birthday we already had a Texas trip plan where we were going to be flying out and visiting fam so the timing was great we just dropped it off at the dealership we flew out um had a lovely time for my birthday with family um and then came back to get it we ALS the levelers were already a problem though at this point too the leveler was one of the levelers on auto leveling system was already starting to drop one of the plungers and every day it would drop just a little bit if you didn't use the system so you would have to like hit the manual button to raise all of the levelers up again and then you know it would just drop every day so we knew that was an issue one of the auto blinds are like you know they go up and down really cool feature manual blinds probably better cuz you don't have all the automated stuff pros and cons um it was like tilted like that so we knew there was an issue there uh so we left it with air streaming to fix yep so when we got back uh we went to go pick it up um overall everything seemed like it was fine the only issue we ran into when we picked it up which we didn't realize at the time but now know that it was another sign about our electrical s system issues to come was that it the weather was lovely but they had put it out uh in the front lot for us to come pick it up and our entire refrigerator had dethaw and the electric the electrical system didn't keep it or didn't keep it cold and so we had issues with floor the floor was stained basically there was some stuff in the fridge and it and it we were fulltime on this so that's probably something that we hadn't talked about up until this point we were full timing in the fan and things had melted in I think it was a freezer yeah yeah and legitimately the only thing that this massive battery bank had to power was just the fridge um and we felt well we felt confident time that at least that would be a doable task but unfortunately it was not um so that kind of all that stuff dripped down the woodwork and stained the flooring and that was already an issue um the blinds weren't able to be fixed because the entire panel has to had to be removed and they weren't able to do that they fixed Auto levelers and then the they thought they fixed Auto levelers that's true that's true well be uring them everybody always thinks they fix the auto levelers then then it fails again that's true that's true but then the um Timberline system for whatever reason no a very specific reason see rather than here our opinion we have all of the work orders here so you're not just listening to our opinions we actually this is a collection of work orders from all the places that we have visited in our one year with this van um the wrong clamp was used on one of the hoses for the timberlan system I can say that confidently because that's what's in the report um when pressure was applied the clamp wasn't tight enough to hold it it blew off entire system drained flooded everything so that's that's the Timberline issue at that point which leads us to yeah month three mon three y okay so at this point we feel like the van has had enough issues that we just want to let Vinnie take a look at it get the hail damage fix we had gotten it approved by our insurance company at this point so between the time that it took for um aam of Wyoming to fix it for us to get back the whole nine and it already kind of derailed our trip to Yellowstone and a big thing is at this point we're starting to incur a log additional cost we had to rent a car because when you're in a van like that when you drop it off you have nothing so we had to rent a car we had to rent hotels at that point which thankfully we are big Believers in um travel points so for the most of our hotels we were using travel points when we could if it was convenient and that kind of thing but I mean I mean don't get me wrong there are better places to use points yeah 100% 100 not how we want you have to some random Hotel agreed with that okay so on our way to California we found this cute little um Campground in Quincy or actually when we first get got to California basically we found this cute Campground in Quincy um we really liked it so we figured hey we've got a little bit of time to burn before we get to Vinnie's let's sit here for a week and just do nothing we just want to relax this has been ridiculous like we don't want to worry about the systems we're just going to plug it in this place is beautiful like let's chill and then take it down link which is great um it was a great place to run we got to visit some local places while we were there super fun it's really nice Campground in Quincy and then we tried to leave and then the day up literally checkout time packing up the van we're ready to go go to start the van dead dead dead dead I'm talking like none of the Mercedes systems nothing it was dead um that was tough to swall that was a tough pill to swallow because at the time I was already kind of frustrated with the van and what was going on kind of I was very frustrated we try to you know this was the point where you were you were more frustrated I was I was so mad I was so mad because literally the stress of like having to leave a campground and they're like hey there's somebody coming right behind you and I'm like well it I mean it's dead and at that point the auto levelers were down on the ground so like you just can't even put it in neutral you can't put it in neutral when the van dies because you can't it's all electronic so you can't shift it into neutral and then just like push it out of the way so there's a video for that too there is we tried jumping it with 34 ton pickup trucks and everybody in the camp tried to help us which was wonderful another reason why we love the RV Community um long story short we had to get it towed um 2 and a half hours down to Rockland California we got insanely lucky um we posted on Instagram about being stranded and two Amazing air streamers who we had only met once at a uh Airstream rally Julie and Tim actually came and got me and Daniel and dash and drove us all the way down because we didn't have like there was that little town we were in there was no way to rent a car quickly we couldn't ride with the tow truck because we had Dash and the car seat and oh my gosh so Julie you're an angel Tim thank you for letting her come get us they were literally will forever be dear friends of ours from point forward they became some of our dearest friends so they dropped us off at the Marriott we stayed at that night um went to the air or no it wasn't the air stream it was the Mercedes dealership was the first place we took it to right um and we walked in they let us know that they had updated the software um and it was fixed yeah they didn't really go very much into details um but they they did charge us $280 to put the drivetrain back together because the the the tow guy had to disconnect the drivetrain because it was fully totoe it um and then this where this is $280 invoice to pick up the van after the tow truck dropped it off and this was this is where I lost that's true that's true um I had already written off the van at that point I'm like I don't even know what to say anymore that was cool and then and then Lauren so I'm already like a software update like are you serious that seems like baloney and maybe it is maybe it isn't I'm not a car expert but they said they also did say that there was something that was potentially draining the batteries like it was a some vampire drain of the batteries there's two main but whatever it Cas what they told us too was that they had driven it around they had tested it to everything was fine so we go to get the van after they gave us our keys yeah and the drawers are in the floor busted up busted up there's a hole in the floor ended up being two holes in the floor mhm yeah and I think my head almost exploded so bad this is the beautiful floor we talked about that is unique to tell me Bahama well but then the the thing about it is if someone drove it around yeah it's crap every no one noticed that this happened like I can't my I could couldn't handle so I went back in there I Southern lady lost my you know what on them um and they offered to detail it for us they offered to to to wash it yeah after the drawers were and floor were destroyed three car wash so uh you know so there's that so that day was like for me a Tipping Point that I was like I don't I don't even know but we ended up taking it straight from there to Vinnie's which was a whole different service experience and they were amazing yeah Vinnie Vinnie is he is a straight shooter he just gives you the news whether you like it or not and I can appreciate that yeah sometimes s people you know make mistakes sometimes they deliver a Flawless you know product or solution um but I think it's just always good to be upfront and honest and he is just exemplifies that we walked down the list of the things the yeah at this point we knew there were issues with the electrical system we had issues with the leveling system we knew that there could potentially still be issues with the Timberline system we did not know um oh and the door the screen door broke too yeah I forgot about there's little things just there were a ton of silly little things to be honest so not Vinnie wasn't planning on handling all of those because our van was under warranty and Vinnie's shop isn't a dealership those things needed to be going to an Airstream dealership to be fixed so we didn't have to pay for them specifically it was an insurance claim because we were getting the the dings yeah for the hail fix so Vinnie let us know because he's an angel that after they were done with the hail damage which he was straight with us and told us it was going to take some time uh there were 1,700 Bings in our van um that after that he would have his team take the van to the Airstream dealership that was closest to him um and we could do whatever we wanted at that point which it was going to take time Airship Adventures yeah exactly so that was the end of month three mhm wow yeah this wow yeah this video has been a long time coming well good news this part gets really quick that's true month four in the shop at Bear era no it no oh that's right okay right yeah good that was a lot of work getting fixed yeah month number five in the shop this is when it actually was transferred to to uh like mid month yeah Air Stream Bay Area airam yep yeah and so it took about 45 days for them to fix the hail before it moved over incredible because there were some parts that needed to be ordered to like the yeah one of the outside doors got DED and the H you know just little things like that so they did a beautiful job they literally like sent us videos showed us all of it like you literally could not tell this thing got mindblowing it is mindblowing if you have dings or dents on any air stream or apparently a vehicle because we have a Mercedes chassis I I mean go to V and see I in the great um okay so month number five it's moved to the other the airam the area Airstream that's exactly right and they reach out immediately um and start communicating which I thought was over the course of this journey we visited a lot of dealerships they were like I mean on the ball with communication and they would even at some point start sending us videos of the progress and things like it was really really a wonderful experience so I do want to say a lot of positive things about that month number six yeah it was in the shop yeah um yeah and month number seven it was in the shop too so thankfully we had already had some other plans we went and ran the Berlin Marathon and so like it didn't completely ruin our year that our home was in the shop like this but it definitely was very very inconvenient and like Daniel has said a couple of times it incurred a whole lot of cost we took a bunch of flights that we weren't expecting to take um had a lot of hotel stays that we weren't expecting um so that was really unfortunate because that was not part of our expectation with the van lights at hotels and rental cars that we never anticipated that we would me so month number seven at the very end of the month um the van is now ready so we spend Christmas with my family and then fly up to Cal or fly out to California right and pick up the van on the 28th of December okay yeah yeah and they had a laundry list of stuff to fix um and the expectation was set in advance that it was going to take some time because they just had a lot of craft effects I mean honestly well they had to try to figure out the electrical system which is hands down probably the most complic at problem with the van um they even sent one of their texts out to the and did a full training for a week before he came back and worked on it he was a super straight shooter we really enjoyed working with him I adore him yeah I mean their their team was he went over things that I will not say on camera but the the biggest takeaway here is that he I feel like for the most most part practically rebuilt the power system the correct way um to get it to where it is you know working which I thought was amazing I think that he went he I can't even comprehend how many hours went into him working on that power system and everything else in between um it had to be extensive we get a you know we get we get these these work orders that you guys will get when you go to dealerships and it doesn't always say like 400 hours on it but I got the feeling that he probably put 400 hours into rebuilding everything doing everything quote from him about the experience with working on our electrical system is he said he usually goes through about like one walkie-talkie a month working there in general at like something that annoys him because he's like just tosses just tosses them and I think he said that working on our van he like two or three talk just on our van alone our van alone cost him with multiple walkie doggies and he just cracked us up and and they found things so they they found they found oh my God that was the cracked black tank that was a crack so the black the the black tank was cracked there was a wiring harness that was I don't want to misquote these things because I think that's they replaced the black T they replac the blackant they replaced the flooring too which is a really really cool thing um they had to replace the freezer door which was dinged up because of the shelving the shelving hit the freezer door too um they had to replace the rear shade um the main harness was uh almost touching the drivetrain had to fix that um the stabilizer one of the plungers had to be how fixed this thing um the there were the there was a leak in the bathroom light that had to be fixed um okay so as you can see if we actually went through all details of this that's just this video would be 3 hours long so needless to say they did a good job we really appreciated their communication so that leads us to month number eight this is January of 2024 get called and we are driving her from California to Nashville to Florida to get back for the Florida RV Show true now we initially thought we had or we had about two weeks to do this trip we did and so our plan was like you know let's make really good progress at the beginning and then like we can relax and enjoy kind of the back half of the trip yeah so first night yeah we left left California um we I you know we didn't make it out of California we did make it we did make it out that's right we did now again I will add this cat before we say anything the bear Air Stream team did nothing to work on the Timberline system because they weren't there to fix a Timberline system but at this point we started to have trouble with the Timberline system um well so it was cold it was really really cold and we were basically having to outrun a snowstorm so it was in the 20s we went to bed we set up the everything heating system should have been working great um but before but we hadn't used it in those kind of temperatures and I don't know I don't know that we had used it before cuz it hadn't been cold we used it a couple once or twice on the way to California okay yeah so we turned it on went to bed at about 2: a.m. I woke up and it smelled so strongly of fuel right that it scared me so I woke Daniel up shot the system off immediately and we were like uh what are we going to do um we have because we are seasoned our beers we had multiple blankets and that kind of thing it felt warm in there at that point and so we were like we know when the Sun starts coming up it'll be fine so we got out a couple extra blankets made sure Dash was comfortable and made it through the night it didn't never get real real cold in there no and so yeah we turned off the yeah the next morning we were like what the heck do we do we can't sleep in here if it's smells like Fuel and we can't freeze so especially with a one-year-old that's the biggest thing right I mean there are things that Lauren and I would try to tough out but when you have a one-year-old you're not going to try to tough those things out especially if there is even a a slight chance of you know putting that child at risk you're not going to do it yeah the answer was no and so it radically changed our trip back we ended up just staying in hotels every night and beining to um Florida as quickly as we could get there basically we ran into a couple additional issues we had a new issue with the leveling system one of the ones that hadn't had issues before now was hting the ground um we also had an issue with one of the sensors um that was actually causing it not to throttle right right it's like a it's a it's a parking sensor a collision sensor so essentially what happened is we pulled into a gas station and then this like you know red dash light went on and I had no throttle response whatsoever so I'm just tapping pushing the gas pedal nothing's happening I'm just kind of rolling um I just c yeah because at that point like I literally you're you're pressing the gas and nothing's happen um eventually we were just outside of Memphis when that happened and we we weren't sure if we're going to make it because when you lose throttle response well then you're just rolling um so that's essentially what was happening and there was no way to know if that would happen while we're driving on road or right um thankfully that didn't happen we ended up making it back to Nashville turned out fine we talked to the uh dealership in Nashville the Mercedes dealership and they let us know that because of the issue that we were experiencing that we weren't going to have any kind of issue with it being on doing on the inter they show us how to deactivate it too which was cool so we we went into like a manual setting and then deactivated it maybe not the best thing to deactivate like a collision sensor but it we had to get back yeah so when we got back to Florida we took it to the Tampa Mercedes Mercedes Benz of Tampa Yep this is still month eight yeah and they basically said might be this little license plate thing on it which had been on there since the time we picked it up yeah what do they call they took it off um but basically this one's not on us it's an Airstream problem that's exactly right because Mercedes delivers the chassis um it's the same chassis that they deliver to companies all the world and then Air Stream will you know do all of the retr feeding not retr feeding but all of the you know add-on stuff they basically add-on everything to the chassis afterwards um um one of the things that they do is they add this like bumper type thing that allows you to step up and kind of I guess if you want to work in the engine bay or something like that it's for whatever reason um that they believe that was causing an issue with the sensor um despite it coming from the factory that way so regardless they were able to clear all the sensors they had to remove that uh bumper thing and then it started working which is great someone is woken up from his nap you want to say hi Dash you w to say hi everybody and D raisin yeah he's still sleep still waking up a little bit so after the Mercedes dealership we took her back to Airstream of Tampa to see what's going on with the temper line system and see what they can do about this censor issue there's also some there was one other thing that the fog whites were falling out um one thing the dealership told us is that when they spray the bumpers uh at Airstream corporate when they're building the units out they might have sprayed too much paint and the fog light covers were sort of falling out so the brackets weren't able to engage these are minor things the windshield washer broke I just want to make sure we cover everything because we're trying to be as comprehensive as possible um so the windshield wiper was fixed as well which brings us to month number nine and she was in the shop um and and that brings us to month number 10 and she was still in the shop um at that point we also had the Tokyo Marathon that we went and ran so we let the Tampa team know that there wasn't any massive rush they knew when we were getting back um but then we were hoping to have it ready by them right so let's see that brings it to month number 11 which is April uh we went and picked it up when she was finally ready uh and took her to South Carolina right for a trip to visit more of my family um out there and um really just kind of due to the fact that there were so many issues with the van in general and an oversight um with the dealership they didn't realize that the we were picking it up and they forgot to put the back seat on the chassis like the rear uh bench seat wasn't bolted down on one side so we didn't have the tools with us so we had to stop by a South Carolina to have the bench put back together and the rear panels and everything put back together as well yeah so they got that done quickly which was nice and then we continued on rest of our trip the uh we did stay at a campground um but overall we didn't plug her in hardly at all the electrical system seemed to be finally working yeah yeah I I felt pretty confident that the electrical system is in a good spot right now um I've also I'm doing a better job of managing my own expectations the days of me thinking you can Boondock with this thing for a week long gone I don't even think it's possible with the E1 package I could be 100% wrong if you have one and you're able to do it let us know uh I don't think the solar panels that come with it are worth anything I think think there's just like 3 or 400 watts of solar the battery bank is the lithium pack is massive I don't think it really makes a dent in that so I think you maybe got uh you can get a couple days out of it um with basic use and I think that's pretty much it you're going to have to drive it again but we still had an issue with that leveler so after the trip we brought it back to Tampa and put it back in the shop for that which leads us to month number 12 yep and the reason why we're not shooting this video in the van is that it's still in the shop yeah yep yep so there you have it 12 months of ownership of the Airstream Interstate GT 23 foot 24 foot oh thank you3 2023 24 foot do we regret it it's been a big learning experience I uh at this point we have a year under our belt and maybe 8 to 10,000 miles on the van a majority if not all that mileage has been driving from Florida to California by way of Wyoming and then driving back while also doing a tour day dealerships um as well so the reality is that's the experience we have to base uh this this feedback on um we would have liked to say that we could have had more experiences that we could share with you we definitely had another heartbreaking experience we had to cancel we had the Balloon Fiesta that was a tough pill to swallow because that as you may or may not know that is really hard to get um some Campground you know access there and we had it lined up and had to cancel it because of course it was in a shop at that point as well so we've missed a lot of amazing camping experiences uh and then I think my favorite question that everybody asks is is it a lemon so we bought it in the State of Florida the reality is Florida Limon laws are 30 days in the shop so yes it's a lemon what we did not know at the time um well really at all is that a lemon law case can take up to 3 years so it's not really quite a simple fix no matter what yeah so there's no simple effects but the end of the day we definitely have a whole lot of memories Dash do you love the van yeah yeah he actually loves rolling up and down in it and honestly you know there there are a lot of cons you can park it so much easier than to no Pros there are a lot of Pros oh I'm sorry Pros they're so fixated on the I know it's like cons no Pro um you can just pull into a grocery store and park in the back of the parking lot and it's really easy to take into small towns whereas you know you really can't with your toble so you have more access I mean even packing the airam classic like for shorter trips like it really is wonderful um as far as that piece of it goes so when it works it's great it's fantastic yeah well and like we've said we have a lot of friends who have purchased years that are pre-2020 um I know nobody's curious about what happened then uh that have had really really positive experience experiences with the Air Stream Interstate um obviously ours has been one uh that has been pretty regrettable but at the end of the day it's been an experience it's allowed us to wander local all over uh and that's true we've met a lot of really nice people in Ubers and at rental car places Hotel locals working on planes and no so there you have it friends if you haven't already this week make sure you want your local and also if we forgot something or you have a specific question feel free to leave it in the comments we will be happy to answer as honestly as we can um and we have some really fun content coming up so make sure you stay tuned we've got some fun content coming up but if you haven't already this week make sure you wonder local CU as you know can you say it's good for the soul yet can you say it's good for the soul no are you getting shy in front of the camera you never camera shy this child talks 247 now you always talk you don't want to say it's good for the show no you want to wave you're going to give them the foot instead you're giving them the foot instead is that your new wave W hello [Music] everybody can you say it's good for the soul

Channel: Wanderlocal Travel Family

Views: 8,970

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Id: fjGlxIaew0k

Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024