How much does it cost to maintain a diesel motorhome annually?

one of the most common questions i get is how much does it cost to maintain a diesel pusher motorhome today i'm hanging out with gary here at premier rv of oregon hey guys one of the most knowledgeable guys in the industry how you doing today sir i'm doing great andrew how you doing today excellent thank you so what is your position here at premier rv of oregon so i'm one of the co-owners of this company louie and i have started this company basically 12 years ago and what did you do before owning this company i work for country coach from anywhere from started in engineering in 1989 to work my way to an executive vice president when it went bankrupt a lot of people out there want to know what it costs to maintain one of these and you oversee the service department here at country coach i think the folks on youtube they want to know what are the most important service things that need to be done on diesel pusher motorhomes not only country coach but other class a motorhomes you guys work on everything here yeah we work on all brands of class a's anything with a rear diesel i would consider us just our knowledge of our people to to be one of your best service centers you can go to what do you think are the most important service items for someone thinking about purchasing a motorhome so what we recommend on a yearly basis is doing engine chassis service with a chassis inspection right behind us here that's what's going on here with this coach here let's walk over there we basically like i said it's a lot of people just want to call it an lof i don't believe in an lof on a motorhome what does lof mean lube oil filter so yes we are going to change the oil yes we're going to put our filter on and we're going to lube the motor home but one of the most important things you need to do is really what's going on with the motorhome so in this case our chassis service tech has been in the industry 30 plus years he's going to do a full inspection we're going to lift the coach up here he's going to check all suspensions any oil leaks shocks brakes all of that type of stuff airbags that's the true importance of what i would call a chassis inspection we're going to change your oil we're going to change your fuel filters we're going to do what the normal shop would do but we're going to give you a true inspection and then give you a list of here's everything we inspected did we find something wrong did we not and then recommend what you should or shouldn't do so that's one of the things you should do on a yearly basis the second thing would be the generator service real quick how much does it cost to get a chassis service on this coach i'm gonna say in general five to six hundred dollars depending on what engine you have how much oil you're using so to do a complete what we're gonna call chassis inspection oil change filters air filter five to six hundred dollars so a bad chance as we're standing here dave our service technicians walking up uh like i said dave is dave worked for country coach was one of the top chassis service techs in country coach days um he's been working for us since the day we've opened basically sorry for us one of the most knowledgeable people i know on the country coach side or even on the chassis side and they were kind of just talking about what the difference is of being a normal los and what we do here and one of the things i think that adds great benefit to our customers is your knowledge in the inspection that you give on the motorhome it's just not about dumping the oil and adding your oil right it's truly about i know in this case this this 2001 country coach magna you probably have seen hundreds of these if not thousands of them in your lifetime and done inspections on those so can you just kind of explain what what you do look for what you're expecting that kind of type of stuff yeah we're looking for specific reoccurring things that fail per model like on this particular coach these were well built there wasn't too many things that were problematic on them but they are coming to an age where we're seeing like airbags that are starting to go bad so we do a lot of airbag replacements we're checking shocks making sure the shocks aren't worn out and then just checking all the suspension fasteners and making sure everything's still tight everything's still looking good and looking for rust and any corrosion that should be addressed as well just visual things that we can see from a lift that you might not be able to see from the ground yeah and from your standpoint is there any maintenance items that you think are the most important maintenance items for anybody out there purchasing a motorhome or considering purchasing a motor home make sure that they're seeing on the filters are dated or there's receipts that are showing that the coach is well taken care of it's just good to have them inspected and make sure that there's nothing from a safety standpoint that should be addressed how long did you work at country coach before you worked here at premier rv oregon nine years nice nice a lot of uh and how long have you been in the rv industry that's when i started so since 1999. over 20 years very cool very cool thanks for your time appreciate it so what all do you recommend for annual service so like i said we just got done talking about the chassis chassis inspection that's very important you need to service all your diesel items on your motorhome so a generator would be another one that you needed done annually that's typically about a 300 service oil oil filters fuel filters that sort of stuff on this case most of these rear engine diesel coaches have an aqua hot um they may have an oasis system in them now whatever the case may be those need to be serviced annually that's pretty simple service you're talking 180 to 200 dollars as long as you don't find anything wrong the other thing we highly recommend here is exterior seals some of you know next year seal inspection and spot seal a coach in general is gonna be eight hundred dollars if it hasn't been done for several years that could be two thousand dollars but what you don't want are water leaks you know our big service jobs that come in here are d lambs the sidewalls what could have cost somebody two hundred dollars of seal of top molding that they never had done is now going to cost them ten thousand dollars or even fifteen thousand dollars now to replace a part of the sidewall and repaint it so we're really big on that and on country coaches and other models there's different things that you need to check like on a country the slide room roofs have a urethane seal most shops don't don't know that you got to remove the awning and check those seals so if you don't check those seals and you get water that's where water intrudes your slide room let's walk through the shop here a little bit so this was plant 10 uh when country coach was still in business you've been in this building a long time huh so yeah this was um originally monaco then country coach bought it in 1996 1997. um and we called it our mac plant magnafinity plant um and back then it was called concept that's where the sea comes from on the mac plant but the plant's known for it was our magnafinity plant when country coach went bankrupt we opened up our business in 2010 and we use this facility here as our sales in the front service in the back actually we do remodels in another back room over there so yeah i mean people are coming here anywhere from like we just said an oil change so we just got done doing a 160 000 remodel on a motorhome i want to keep going through all the maintenance costs but i got to ask real quick i noticed some really cool under lighting on this country coach allure here that's a crane prairie floor plan what would that just lighting putting some cool underneath lighting like that cost so this case this customer wanted multiple light functions so he asked for boogie lights in this case we were given five different light colors on a remote panel this would probably run to get we put it on both sides of the front and in the rear we still need to do the rear we haven't done that yet that's probably gonna run somewhere around fifteen to two thousand dollars to get that done things do change but that's about what that's running nowadays and that's having the same people that built this coach doing it it's not a fly-by-night operation you guys know how to do it the right way and make sure everything's done right well we've actually developed a special piece of an aluminum trim that goes underneath the light so the light doesn't fall down we know where the wiring circuits are already at so we can tie into those same circuits i'm just not sticking up an led light and have it fall off in a year um i've developed a special bracket for them i've we've done all that so those lights stay we do them on the bottom of the slide rooms an awful lot also which really lights it up and a lot in the awning so yeah led lights are a daily daily occurrence around here anymore in today's industry well getting back to more of the maintenance those upgrades are always fun but um you've got a beautiful tiffin allegro bus getting some service work in here now i know people are always concerned about tires tire costs have been going pretty crazy in the last couple years what does it cost to put tires on one of these expensive motorhomes well it really depends on brand michelin tires are you know pretty common in this industry they're the most expensive in my opinion you know for eight michelin tires around the motorhome you're probably looking nine ten thousand dollars i like toyo's personally i think they're a good tire for the value you can put toyos on a vehicle for probably three thousand dollars less than that okay but just the difference in price and the tire itself and would that be like 365 steers or 315s does it matter you know 365s are going to be michelin only it's the only company that makes that size 315s 295 is pretty common for the at least these types of rvs and those tires are fairly close in value i mean there's really not a lot of price difference you may be talking five six hundred dollars between all eight of them and how often would you recommend changing tires so the tire manufacturers are going to tell you you need to change tires every five years michelins are going to tell you every seven years and i'm just gonna follow that or really check checking but you know if it's before that time and you see checking on the outside of your tire you need to really look at that closely to make sure you're not gonna have a tire blow out but five to seven years depending on your on your brand of tire so what other maintenance costs are gonna come along with owning an expensive motorhome like one of these on a yearly scenario with a motor home you're going to have other items come up those are going to be your yearly maintenance things that we just talked about but you'll have other things that come up in the motorhome or some circuit doesn't work something like that and that's that's very common like i said early on in country coach days we used to go to a testing facility called nevada test center we actually put sensors in the motor home drove it around and determined by an earthquake that motorhome is going through a 7.1 earthquake on a daily basis so think of that as your home so things will occur those things just i highly recommend when you go in for your annual services get those other things that are not working your motor home fix at the same time so over the years your motorhome's just not falling apart you're keeping it maintained throughout its course's life as we're walking through here i see a lot of people working there's a lot of activity here how many technicians do you have here at premier rv of oregon we're running um 17 18 techs that are actually here we have several detailers like here's one here detailing an engine compartment for a coach that sold we have our painters that i'll keep separated from that they're they're they're in our paint shop and our and then our cell staff but 17 18 techs are actually on the floor with tet work we do have one guy in our cabinet shop we make all our own cabinets here he started a country coach in 88 or 89 he's been building cabins longer than dirt he's probably older than some of the trees he cuts but um but great guy makes a great cabin and you've got some of the best of the best in the industry here where have all these technicians come from what are what are their backgrounds where do you find all these guys well we're really fortunate there i think that's what sets us aside from almost every other service center out there almost everybody here came from country coach came from monaco maybe both those companies were here in the general area we've been fortunate just to when we opened this business you know we started with five techs they told their friends that hey it's a great place to work those techs also came over and then when winnebago shut down we took their whole service department and brought them over here so we're like i said the most important thing we have is our employees and the experience of these people is what makes this company what this company is today i'm seeing all kinds of different coaches here i see a a four travel a nice newer newmar what about getting your getting these coaches inspected before a purchase what advice would you have for someone at how they should get a coach inspected well there's really two ways to go about it i mean you know a lot of people are buying coaches throughout the country so it's pretty hard to bring a motor home here and have it inspected before you buy it if you if you're someplace that can happen i highly recommend that you know we average probably 70 75 sales a year we have a guy that inspects two guys that do that's nothing but they do is inspect the coaches before before we deliver a coach and we fix everything on it but i mean we spend eight hours on the inspection so anywhere from how a blind pulls up and down to a motor home does the tvs work so we really focus on functionality we want to make sure i don't care if it's a for travel a country a little renegade over here vienna yeah it doesn't really matter us we know them all but we're really going to focus on functionality it's you know you're going to you see the scratch on the sidewall i need to tell you it has that you see a scratch on a cabinet i'm going to check heating air conditioning every switch in the motor home everything from a functionality standpoint to make sure that's done in our normal inspections we'll come up with six to eight pages of items now it could be something that cost you twenty dollars to fix could be something that cost you four hundred dollars to fix but we're we're gonna tell you about it we're gonna let you know that this is what we found and then in our last part of our inspection as we were just at the chassis we lift it and do a full chassis inspection and tell you everything that we found or didn't find there in the recommendations what we've got a lot of lately is people buying coaches let's say florida texas wherever not here they buy them drive them straight here and then then we do an inspection and then we let them know here's what we believe should be done to get the coach up to speed uh in fact i have four of those in my shop right now that'd be one of them and we came up with with about a fifteen to twenty thousand dollar inspection list to be really honest with you but that's what happens when you buy a motor home from a private party you don't really know what you're buying i mean when you have no recourse with a private party either private someone buys it from you guys you guys have an excellent reputation well we've already done that inspection so we've done that inspection we've already made those fixes it's all part of the sales deal itself so because if it's a consignment coach the consignee is helping paying for the some of that stuff that we find could be a give and take here and there but that's one of the difference of buying a coach from us probably versus buying a coach from anybody else in the country on a used side is that we're going to go through that inspection that's what's happening here so this cases coaches was sold we did an inspection on it these two gentlemen here are working on it the ladder wasn't attached properly we thought it was a safety issue so we're getting that installed properly this for their case the coach needed a hydra hot service so we're doing a hydra hot service on the motorhome but that's what these two coaches are here doing they got sold going through inspection and all the fixes being done and like i said that's that our expense or the owner's expense one or the other but not to the person buying its expense yeah i respect that and i remember the first time i brought my tiff and payton here to you guys i gave these guys a long punch list and actually this is one of the few places that was able to get everything on my punch list knocked out and that's a lot to be said about that to have technicians that actually get the work done because i think a lot of the big box stores they're coming up with excuses and whatnot now what about parks i know there's been some part shortages in the industry has that affected you guys at all it just the part shortages have affected us just from a time frame not that you can't get it what used to take maybe two weeks to get now may take you two months to get or like right now roof air is trying to get a roof air is almost impossible um so you know you do the best you can there it's not that they're not available and just sometimes you have to wait longer or sometimes you have to compromise that i'm going to do do this instead until these parts are available but there's nothing that we still can't fix it just may take a little bit longer than what all of us would like now what about inverters talking about supply shortages i know inverters have been a little bit of a problem are you guys able to help people with that type of work so we have them we have they were a shortage um the xantrex inverters are now available at least we're getting them so i'm assuming they're available for everybody um and actually in this motorhome right here we're replacing two of them i'll introduce you to our tech that's doing that um brian breco here he's what i would call our electronics expert here at our shop a lot of people can do inverters but like i said he he really focuses on anything that's working funny can't figure something out we typically always end up going to brian here so brian kind of explain what you're doing on this motorhome well on this one it's a old concept here but the two inverters that were in there had completely stopped functioning there was no charging no inverting at all so what we ended up doing is we're actually replacing them with two magnum inverters in this one they are available way tucked up in there yeah we had some magnums and some xantrex in stock but actually due to size limitations we had to go to the magnums on this one so we've got both of them in there so far but we end up having to replace some of the battery cables because the new magnums actually require a bigger size of battery cable so you got to make sure that everything has been switched over for the new requirements of the of the new inverters as well so you know that's one of the differences here versus probably someplace else brian knows that hey this inverter requires a larger a larger battery cable i hate to say it but probably most people don't know that they're just probably putting hook in the same cable in there that was already there not known any better that's why it's so important to have people that have been in the industry forever brian what's your background in the rv industry so i started at country coach in i think about 2004 and worked there until it officially shut down at the very end of 2008 we switched back to the automotive industry for a few years and then came back and started at country coach again with ron lee and worked through that process and came over here to premiere a couple years ago and so i mean i've got about 15 years total in the rv um fixing stuff as far as vehicles go it's about 20 years at this point and then cost wise doing something like this about how much door we're looking at cost wise you know in general in this case they're magnums in a concept changing the wiring you're probably going to be 60 6500 obviously it's going to have new controllers inside got to make sure those are programmed wire properly so that's my i don't know exactly what inverter is costing nowadays because everything's going up in value as we all know but we're probably somewhere between six six thousand sixty five hundred for both inverters and those are twenty five hundreds three thousands these are the hybrid magnums so they're 3000 watt inverters the non-hybrid ones uh are 2800 watt but with the hybrid technology they uh bump up an extra 200 watts to 3000 so can actually use the shore power coming in if it doesn't have enough through that it can boost it with uh inverting power as well up to the 3000 watts nice very cool thanks for sharing this i want to introduce you to another tech here great guy ton of knowledge he was actually one of the supervisors um from the winnebago side when they all came over here this is john emanuel here hey john how you doing sir good how are you good thanks so do you have any advice for someone that's thinking about purchasing an rv i would say find people you trust and make sure that the support after the purchase support before the purchase is there it can make a big difference on the rv experience if if you trust the people that you're buying from they're going to make sure that the whole experience is fluid they have your back when stuff goes wrong and just always a good resource there's tons of people to ask questions tons of experience here and knowledge making sure that you trust the people that you're buying from i think is the first step another suggestion is if you're buying from an unknown party or somebody that you've met and you want to make sure that that's a good motor home and everything's ready for your trips get it to a shop that's well known that you trust and have it checked out we can go through everything all systems all chassis paint body can all be done here so it's always a good idea to make sure it's gone through before you leave on your first trip because that's gonna affect experience also absolutely i appreciate that thank you very much sir a little woodworking going on back here what's going on here sir i just want to take you into our cabinet shop like i said we are one of the service centers that we do a lot of remodel work we have one guy that works in our cabin shop been in the industry forever actually started a country coach year to date one year one year one year exactly before i did so he started 1988 chris does all our cabinetry work probably one of the best cabinet guys i've ever met in my lifetime very fortunate to have him um so this is kind of our cabinet shop a couple things we've done is um actually this is kind of cool we put out a video six months ago on a remodel it kind of showed this double console thing since that video we've probably sold 10 of these things now you know so that we have a guy coming to pick this one up chris made it but i mean his work is just incredible yeah that was a really cool video you guys did on your channel i'm going to leave that in the description below you guys did a youtube video in-house definitely worth checking out your channel well the difference between our videos and andrew's videos as andrew's videos gets viewed our videos just kind of sit there hey i need as many of you as possible to go subscribe to premiere rv of oregon we need to get these guys some more subscribers so they make some more videos so if we can get you a thousand subscribers will you guys start making some more videos absolutely all right we need as many subscribers but we'll make some more videos all right that's a deal we need as many of you as possible to go subscribe to premier rv of oregon right now i'll leave a link to their channel in the description below but what else is going on in the cabinet shop so this right here happens to be a project we're doing so a lot of people come here audio video tv stereos all that kind of stuff pretty common probably an everyday occurrence here this particular case the guy wanted he bought an 07 intrigue from us had original televisions in it he's a streamer so he wanted some new televisions put in new amps and home theater stuff so what we do there is we bought the televisions which you kind of see laying here on the ground we took out the old tv buckets which are here that's one thing great country coach did actually built buckets so now we can just take those buckets out we call them a tv bucket and chris our camera guy gets the television and designs a new bucket so that's what we're working on here looks like here he may have one already designed and going and he does so i'm gonna just kind of lift this real quick so he's built this new area here we fit the television in this must be going in the bedroom because this particular customer got a hinge so he can hinge us out and have storage behind his television that's the only reason we'd ever put a hinge there but that's what chris does back here is like i said i don't have to draw this up for him anymore he takes this and he makes what he needs to make these are the old buckets he'll take these tvs and do doom buckets but we have table saws all the stuff chris needs to make that face frame table going on over here so how do you guys price this kind of custom cabinetry work this is an art to do stuff like this how do you build it i come to chris most of this stuff goes through me especially on the sell side and chris hey i need to do a new bucket i look in history what we've kind of done so in this case a buckets i'll say typically a new bucket for him to design it and make it it's always solid solid wood whatever the coach may be in this case these are cherry solid cherry this isn't plywood this is this is hardwood we make them out of true hardwood and are you able to match the original cabinets so basically yes so we use the same stain and everything as country coach did now in cherry they get darker over years so what i you have to explain to your customer is that it's going to be light give it six months and it's going to look like the rest of the cabinets because it's just going to over time darken but in this case like let's say this this new one so this is a front tv it's going to get a 43 inch samsung qled with this bucket is probably going to be somewhere right around you know 900 dollars for the bucket 600 for the tv install a couple thousand dollars something like that for the new tv in the front bedrooms are always a little bit cheaper just because they're a little bit easier tie in the wiring you're probably closer to fifteen hundred dollars in the bedroom most people think that's gonna cost a lot of money it's just tvs are fairly inexpensive nowadays and fortunately for us our cabinet maker doesn't need to get rich i mean he just he loves making cabinets and this is what he does very cool and there any custom cabinetry work that you guys are afraid of no i don't know there's anything here we're afraid of now i may turn down putting a fourth slide into a coach nowadays just because of i don't want to get into that much engineering personally but but no we pretty much will do anything somebody wants and we'll and i will tell people you don't want to do that it's not the right thing to do now if they they go on and continue that that's what they want to do i'll do but we'll definitely give recommendations on if something's asking if somebody's asking for something that we don't recommend but if they got the checkbook to get it done you guys aren't afraid i will always accept a check my friend andrew always now are there any motorhomes that you guys don't want to work on here i i've seen prevos newell's i've seen it all what do you guys not want to work on here you know any motorhome we want to work on i'll be up front i think there's other places you could take your trailer or fifth wheel it's just something we don't want to work on i mean not that we can't but we'd rather focus on what we know best which is any brand make of any type of motorhome i mean i don't care if it's classy newmar tiffin integra it doesn't matter to us country obviously we know countries really well monaco's beavers any of those coaches we feel very comfortable working on um and like i said it's one thing that makes me proud as an owner here is that 17 techs with 20 plus years of experience i feel very confident of telling any of my customer base that you're getting some of the best service you can find i want to introduce you to one more guy here our service manager jim cooley you know i can't say enough about this guy he actually started at country coach when i was still in high school i thought i'd been in the industry a long time jim's been in the industry since 1984. lou and i feel very fortunate to have him with us the knowledge he brings how he treats our customers i just like i said great guy does a great job for us uh jim cooley yes jim you're very well known in the industry is there any advice that you would have for folks out there thinking about purchasing a motorhome well that's a leading question a little bit in it um so as far as buying a coach the main thing if you're buying a used coach is really look it over have somebody look it over that really understands the motor home it's very easy for somebody to look at a coach and think that they know what they're looking for when they really don't it's good to have somebody that has some knowledge do that you know there's a lot to look for in a motorhome especially if it's got a few years on it and what about general maintenance any advice you have for folks about maintaining class a motorhomes sure i mean everything is in the service you can tell a coach that's been well cared for just from the outside look of it typically people some tend to do a really good job of taking care of their coach others not so much you definitely need to always check your seals on the motorhome water leaks are not a friend of these coaches rust is another thing that can really cause you to have a lot of issues you know keep up on your services your hydra hots your generator engine services that sort of thing yeah and that stuff you guys all do here at premiere rv it is yes and you're the guy that someone will see or talk to uh when they bring their coach in yep typically they would uh call us set up an appointment of course and uh then we bring them in and talk to them and find out what they specifically are looking for and uh kind of guide them along if need be and is there any service work you guys are afraid of here at premier rv of oregon afraid no that's not the right term probably um definitely there are a couple things we don't do we don't have an alignment rack here so that's nothing that we really get into but heavy engine services we don't really get into the heads and pull them off and just valves and things like that but for the most part everything else we can do and you do have resources of coaches do need to get that stuff done we do we have sublet shops that we can use in the event of there's something that is outside of our parameters appreciate all you do for the industry and i'm sure some folks on youtube will be uh calling you soon great thanks a lot gary i really appreciate you showing us around and sharing all that information with myself and the folks on youtube i also appreciate all of you out there subscribing to the channel and also subscribing over to premiere rv's channel i'll leave that in the description below thanks again i hope you're all having a great day thanks guys thank you andrew always much appreciate you coming and visiting us thanks again [Music] [Music] you

Channel: RVing with Andrew Steele

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Length: 30min 53sec (1853 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022