The Truth About My RV and Other Common Questions

hey good morning from the shop guys i posted that video on my 2001 beaver patriot thunder a few weeks ago and it uh was a lot more popular than i thought it was going to be so to everybody that joined the channel based on that video welcome i really did not expect it to get that popular but because it was so popular i decided that that i would answer the most common questions i was getting about it so you don't have to go through all the comments just to find the same answer repeated over and over again but also i wanted to make sure that everybody understood that even though i really am in love with this rv it is not a perfect rv in fact i did put a list together about things that i've noticed about it or already knew about it that need to be addressed before i'd even feel comfortable going full time in it so i don't want to give the impression that this thing was perfect and flawless and there's nothing that i had to do on it it's just that it was an exceptionally wonderful condition that i would have been a fool not to get it at its price point but let's go ahead and get this thing pulled out so we can go over it a little bit better so i can tell you what i've found wrong that needs to be done on it which of course leads me to the first problem that just happened two days ago which is right here it won't start from the ignition which i was a little surprised about and i didn't do a lot of troubleshooting on it but the good news is this at least with the key in the on position i can put this on rear start and start it from there at least so let me get this thing pulled out so i'm pretty sure it's just an ignition switch it's uh 20 some odd years old it looks like the original one so i'm not too worried about that uh it does seem to be intermittent getting in and out i thought it would be fair and fun to let you know that even my rv has issues with it so don't feel bad if uh yours has issues too especially if you just bought one but let's go through this list real fast we probably won't do any repairs on it but i just like you to be aware of what i found wrong with it so far and some of them are pretty common on beavers so if you are shopping around for beavers this would be a good thing to look for now one of the things i showed on the last video were the rear clearance lights they are all cracked that's just plastic fatigue over time so it they are likely leaking water into the rear cap closet area so they are a little bit higher on my to-do list than anything else but also on the roof is going to be this skylight which is number one on my list because it's definitely broken and it was leaking when i was power washing it i could see it and i think it's been doing that for a while the previous owner did a little bit of touch-up repairs right here but that's always been on my list i also have a few front clearance lights that are kind of doing the same thing not high on my list is i don't really like the look of the peeling cap on this so i would like that painted and my wind sensor i could replace but i i'm very doubtful about how useful that's going to be i do have a replacement one i could put on but like i said they tend to break i know i got a lot of feedback from some people who said no my winstons are still good but i just know the second i change it out it's gonna break so i'm hesitant on that one now also on the rear cap the clear is also peeling there's a little bit of spider cracking on the fiberglass itself up there and over here on the ladder there is also a little bit of damage on the rear cap by the ladder right here and obviously some paint peeling on the aluminum stuff like that i'm not too vitally concerned about again this is just my experience in my opinion but having a little bit of defects in your paint and in your body work may go a long ways to your mental sanity because if it's pristine you will be concerned about somebody scratching it or damaging yourself you can throw off and ruin an entire trip because you cause a little bit of scratch or dent damage on an rv and if you already have a little bit there and established it's not nearly as difficult for your mind to uh to accept that kind of damage now one of the last kind of cosmetic issues going to be this insert it's a black vinyl insert that goes on the molding right here as i was washing it this was popping out too so i'll probably want to replace this the good news is i think i already have a roll of it right in here to replace it so it's on my list of things to do just not really high on my list so that was most of the exterior cosmetic kind of issues that you might find on the rv that you're buying that was on mine so those aren't very big deals the next one if you're a keen viewer on that video you might have spotted it right about there so first off my slide-out seal is loose and falling off so that's an important one to get done white ones aren't generally available too much anymore and i don't really like them anyways because they're not too protected from uv and tend to crack a lot more but also i don't know if you can notice right here i'm definitely off level let me run the slide out room out and you'll see what i'm talking about so obviously you can see the slide out seal is pretty loose about halfway up the good news is there's no topper on this which i pointed out in the last video so replacing is just going to be a little bit of a tedious act of cleaning off all the old adhesive using um adhesion promoter and then putting on the new seal so that's not too big of a deal but if we look underneath right here that alignment issue is causing some problems down here because the slide-out's a little bit too low i'm going to have to adjust this slide out a little bit because it's ripping off this bottom seal and threshold and while you can see that roller there that's not going to be the main adjustment because the slide out compartment guides on this support down here the arm that supports the entire slide out is kind of hard bolted behind the carpet right here it's kind of hard to see that there's bolts right there so this carpet has to hold down then i'll have to readjust the entire slide out now generally that's just a matter of uh i wouldn't call it frame fatigue just a frame uh relaxing or stretching a little bit over time obviously the slide works just fine i just don't feel comfortable with having it out of alignment maybe causing some damage on the inside too i haven't found any yet but maybe also this is another issue these door struts are pretty weak on this door and although the entry door does not have a power lock actuator for locking the door all the compartment doors do have power locks controlled by the switch right here but this front power door lock isn't working and it's intermittent on the rest of them again not a really vital one but i'm thinking about upgrading to a remote fob anyway so we'll save that for later all right now while we're on this side you might as well look at this door right here i did the hard sell on my sewer hookup which i do like but these doors right here that come with that sewer hose i'm not a big fan of them this one keeps falling apart and falling off like that so i want to come up with some better solution on that one uh i also need to label these valves so i know what they are the previous owner did all this and that was a next thing on his list to do but he didn't get to it before he sold it so past here on the side discharge radiator this grille is just a little bit loose and it does rattle driving down the road or when the engine's running so i'd like to get that done the exhaust chrome tip i don't know if you can see the holes right there can you see the holes in it so i could replace that but it seems like a lot of work just for something that's kind of not important so i'll likely just cut that part out because it's already been smashed a little bit if i put a new one on i'll likely smash the new one and then i talked a pretty good game about beavers build quality but over on this side there is a little bit of an issue because of their build this is the air intake for the engine and this wall is actually a little bit rotten right here if you can see the belt line sealant is cracked i can push on the wall right here i did actually have to already secure this rear molding and this belt line molding because the whole thing was kind of loose and that's because of how beaver did this air intake if i take this off i'm sure most roofers or contractors would point out there's a counter flashing issue on the inside here this is just a decorative grill covering everything look at it this pan right here for the air intake it does have a drain hole in it at the bottom but if water is coming right here from rain there's like no counter flashing or no flashing right there to keep water from getting in between here and the sidewall so if i pull that up you can see can you see there's some rod in there so again not very high on my list of things to do because the damage already done i'm definitely not going to like cut this out and repair the uh luan that's behind here or the wood that's behind there because that's a lot of work for no real gain i will likely just try to put something in there to secure it down glue it back down and then just use a counter flashing right there to prevent damage down the road the payback on cutting any of this out and trying to re-laminate this wall is nil zero it has no no added value the gel coat fiberglass on the ounce outside is still in good condition so to try to cut and seam fiberglass in right here and fix all the paint work especially around the thunder decal and the beaver decal no real value to doing that so one of the last few issues on the outside is going to be the dash ac stopped working on me i think it's an electrical issue because i did charge it back up and it worked for a little bit and then it just stopped working and the compressor clutch stopped working now again my apologies to beaver this is 2001. so accessibility wasn't high on their list of things to do you can get to the ac ports just fine right here but i wasn't getting any power to the ac clutch huh look at that i think i just troubleshot it who says making videos doesn't solve problems so it looks like that connection just burned a little bit let me uh connect this and see if this fixes the problem hey look at that it's spinning and i know you guys can't feel the air but it is really cold so that's both good and a little bit bad because i didn't have any dash ac driving up to las vegas so i ran the generator the whole time for the roof ace to work which of course that did hold up but that's not fair well guess we solved that problem that was unexpected i had expected to kind of point out beaver's design choice on the front dash ac controls underneath and the bad access to it and to highlight something about it i didn't really like especially as a technician but then we fixed it on accident but i can go ahead and show you guys anyways as a technician always kind of bothered that beaver didn't add a generator slide on the front or a front cap that slid out or even a opening on the front cap so you have to do everything from underneath it's a very tight squeeze underneath there's a condenser fan there's a resistor for the blower but the dash ac plenum is way up there so you have to or you can remove the dash and there's an access panel under the dash if you take those defroster vents off take a couple of these one two three screws out this whole part comes out there should be an access panel right in there but this is fabric and you always risk the screw gun falling off and poking a hole in it you know i know that really the last real items on the outside really isn't on the outside it's in the basement i did talk about the wonders of the fresh water tank and the uh electronic monitor panel if i go to the fresh tank it reads 74 or 60 or 76 gallons i've been having some problems with the accuracy of it and i don't trust it but there's a transducer pressure transducer right there works very similar to the aladdin system and even current silver leaf systems can use that model or that type of transducer but i think that one's bad which also means i think the probably the wastewater tanks the gray and black ones are probably bad too so again not high in the list of things i want to replace or worry about because i can visually check the tank if i need to but that's pretty much everything on the exterior we'll go inside real fast one of the common questions i got was there's no way the upholstery is the original upholstery with 160 some odd thousand miles on it now on youtube uh secret to know is that even with high resolution cameras things really look better on video than they probably do unless you get a camera really close up to it so there is some damage to the passenger seat right here uh it looks like cat damage to me you'll see it right there too but also on this passenger seat the power foot rest doesn't work i did note that at the time of uh my inspection so that was not uncommon the driver's seat surprisingly doesn't have as much damage to it there's a little bit of scratch marks in it but this is the original fabric even has uh the embroidery like i said so it's gonna be hard to find that and you can see the damage here which does bring me to the next problem that i didn't really point out this little hole right there that's from the slide out when the slide-out room is all the way back on this recliner i think this one's original too it does have damage to it you can kind of see it on the armrest mostly it is dirty it probably needs a good scrubbing but other than that i i mean it's kind of pretty impressive that it's held up to that kind of use for 20 years and all them miles worst ones is actually the dinette seats and these are original and these are made by beaver themselves and upholstered and you can kind of see the probable cat damage to it that's what i would guess now one of the things i kind of liked about freestanding dinettes is that you can just go get replacement chairs really easily but i've started to have a change of thought when it comes to these seats and i don't know if it's just because i'm getting older uh you can kind of see the damage here too because these are the original seats i kind of do want to take them to an upholster and get them recon uh and get them recovered uh they do match the table they do match the wood and i think they're actually pretty comfortable seats too so i haven't decided yet on that what i'm gonna do but there there is definitely wear to the the fabric here but surprisingly the sofa has the least amount of wear to it and you think that would have the most amount of wear i can tell you when it comes to turning it into a bed it's not extremely comfortable mostly because of this seam right there is about where you would lay so you'd have to put a foam topper on there if you are going to i guess sleep long term but besides some damage to the actual chair upholstery the only real damage to the rest of the upholstery that's inside on the walls or on the balances that's not dirt is back here in the bedroom so this valance right here see a lot of uh loose strings on it i think that looks like cat damage to me it could be pins people were putting pins in the valances right there but i think that's cat damage now this day night shade is original and in pretty good shape don't worry about those wrinkles i just put in it but the one above the bed you can see this broken string is broken now i can restring this as i know how to do that but i haven't found a need to yet because i always keep this one closed anyways but this does lead me to one of the other problems this does have cg windows on it and cg windows are on a number of different rvs but definitely on beaver and they have what's known as seal creep so that's the actual sail between the two panes of glass because this is dual pane and it does start to move in the heat so besides that window right there the dinette window also has a little bit of seal creep you can see right here too now this is mostly just a cosmetic issue it can cause a seal issue where you can get uh moisture in between the glass i don't have any fogging going on currently so it's not high in my list of things to do where you can actually reglaze these windows there's a number of services now out there they they can do that so you don't have to replace the entire window but before we get too far removed from fabric issues i do love this ceiling right here this is a padded vinyl ceiling but what's really common beaver did not use a very good adhesive for installing this headliner to the ceiling to the wood underneath and so it's hard to see but this whole thing is loose it's going to be most notable right above the slide out right here because there was a big drought droop right here and so it's very loose now this is not indicative of water issue or a water damage this is just uh the wrong adhesive was used or they didn't use enough of it even when they were brand new there was issues of this having coming loose you can see that better now of course that being said we did know that the skylight does have a leak and so there is a little bit of more damage right here to the material you can kind of see where the wood blood or the wood's bleeding through from the leak and this isn't necessarily indicative of a water leak it's just wood exposed to sun like this is gonna have some issues now while we're talking about the fabrics i did take off the plastic that was on the carpet itself because i like a number of viewers was concerned that the sticky part of the plastic would eventually get stuck to the the carpet and then cause problems over time it didn't it's not sticky so i'm happy about that but as i pulled it up right here the sculptured carpet at that same right there is loose so i do need to address that now the only other real cosmetic damages that i see that i will notate is there is one broken tile right here in the hallway which again is not very uncommon uh especially on this era rv not just beaver but fleetwood and monaco usually right here at the threshold in the hallway it would crack there somewhere to the point where they just put a grout line in right there anyways a few other things inside mechanically this fantastic vent old style power lift mechanism needs to be replaced one right there to replace it with and i know i should know better as a technician this is the original lp detector and these go obsolete after five years so that one's oh i don't know 15 years past due along with the co detector in the ceiling right here beaver and safari didn't put these in the ceiling it's very irritating if you're a owner because this green light's on all the time in the middle of the night monaco kind of did the same thing so most people it's not uncommon to see a piece of black electrical tape right over that hole so those are probably more important to do the smoke alarm right here is still good and it does work uh but safety is kind of important so that's a little bit higher on my on my list of things to do now the last few things that are on my list of needed repairs one really have that should be addressed gonna be with this toilet right here now i will warn you guys you may not want to watch this part i can describe it to you uh when the previous owner went ahead and i guess either switched out the toilet did some repairs to the toilet he used a an oversized foam residential wax seal for a residential toilet not for an rv toilet where the toilet mounts to the ground i did note it at the time of my inspection but let's see if we can't take a look inside so this i'm gonna open up the toilet right here now that oversized foam seal creates a ledge that will uh trap items on it so i do need to take that out and put the proper sized foam sealer back in there that's a simple one though and we're really nearing the end of the list oh the dash radio i only have uh volume from one speaker which is going to be right there so i haven't troubleshot that one the home theater system right here which which is a very nice surround sound system that he put in it does say it has bluetooth i haven't figured out how to do the bluetooth on that yet either but i'm quite stubborn and i don't rate directions very often now the last few items on my list really aren't anything that's broken or items that have failed they're just items that i don't like now the first one's right above my head this ac plenum the previous owner went ahead and installed this because that's all he could get at the time when he changed out the roof ac now like i pointed out in that video he changed it from a penguin roof ac to a heat pump all that means is that it's not just a ac it can actually make heat that's usually about a 600 upgrade so not all acs are going to be heat pumps but all eight heat pumps will be ac so like i said it was really nice upgrade he gave me but this has a quick cool feature on this plenum and the way this ac is ducted that's not going to work so this one kind of bothers me in that sense back here in the bathroom area we have two faucets they're brass double handle or dual handle and one right here uh i'm not it's not the brass that's bothering me it's the handles themselves i didn't notice it because i don't normally live in these things is after you wash your hands uh and your hands are all wet and soapy there's not a lot of traction to grab on these handles and they your hands just kind of spin on it so i don't like that aspect i also don't like dual handle setups on a rv bathroom sink or even a galley sink because it does tend to waste water as you're mixing hot and cold to get the right temperature and turn it off each time so i do like single handles strangely enough though i've been looking around a lot of the home stores and even the rv suppliers and they do still have some brass faucets that would look fine but they don't have any single handle faucets even uh the big box stores on the on the chrome or even the brushed or the brush chrome ones or the brushed stainless steel ones there's a lot of dual handles very few single handles right now so i don't know if it's a supply chain issue but i'd really like to go with a single handle if i'm going to change out these faucets otherwise i would just change out the handles kind of the last one on my list of things i definitely want to do and it's actually pretty high in my list is right here at the dash this backup camera isn't the one that came with it there's a wireless one you can see with the antenna and it's an analog wireless one so the screen cuts in and out and it doesn't refresh very well it's a very very low quality resolution to it that's horrible night vision on it too so at the very least i'd like to upgrade this to the fury and digital one the digital backup cameras really beautiful screen uh picture quality i've never had any cutout so i'd probably want to do that and then i'm thinking about putting the side cameras on on that option too so that one's probably pretty high on my list because i do like to see behind me when you're driving and then lastly we'll get off back on the roof right here i would like to add some more solar up here i know some people asked about solar there's enough room up here to at least add one more panel if not two more panels so that was the walkthrough of everything that was wrong with my rv or i found wrong with my 2001 beaver patriot thunder i just want to let you guys know that it wasn't as pristine as maybe you might got the impression that it was it is very very nice but i know the number one question because i've seen the comments on youtube is how much did it cost now as a general rule and i do these videos i don't normally talk pricing about the cost of rvs or the cost repairs just because it's not always my business to share with everybody everybody else i know it's usually one of the first questions i always ask but i don't ever feel right sharing other people's financial information but in this situation it was all me i paid for it and i am not a salesman i can only go up based on what i thought it was worth the book on this one was 64 000 which was high book now of course book is not set by me that's set by the industry itself so that banks know how much they'll they'll be willing to loan on something like this but 64 000 is what it booked at on high but lower mileage and obviously this uh 160 some odd thousand miles on it is not lower miles but because you guys asked nicely and repeatedly and i think it's my place to let you know because it was such a very popular video so if you are going to be looking at a beaver should be i guess have an idea what to spend on something i ended up spending 67 000 on this uh i thought it was an exceptionally great value still i bought a private party so it did help me quite a bit not having to pay the sales uh sales estate tax on it but i think i still got an incredible deal the previous owner was happy to that i was getting it so i think that was part of the reason why he he went with it um but that's what i paid for it i let you guys decide in the comments whether that was too much or not enough or just right i feel pretty good about it and at the end of the day that was really what what matters thanks a lot for watching this guys i hope that answered all the questions you might have had uh giving you some food for thought if you're going to buy one of these or used rv what to look for especially on these beavers but i hope you also understand that it was not pristine there were some issues with it there still are but overall i'm really so happy with this rv and was really happy to share it with you guys thanks a lot for watching and no yes i still have a chassis battery draw on this but currently as per my last video i'm just taking out the negative battery cable off the chassis battery until i get this situated but ultimately it's not a bad another surprisingly common question was on the washer dryer right here this is a washer dryer combination so it's both a washer and a dryer go straight from wash to dry this is the really old school all mechanical splendid and it actually still works both wash and dry function the mechanical ones like this are almost bulletproof it seems like they're not the greatest dryer on the market but they are better than going to the laundromat oversized residential foam foam toilet and oversized foam waxy an oversized foam residential wax seal for a residential toilet not for an rv toilet where the toilet mounts to the ground

Channel: AZ Expert

Views: 158,392

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Id: kRBlwannZZg

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022