our 2021 Four Winds 28A came through lake park, please read my photos before our fall trip

long one, sorry. we are me, my husband and two kids, 6 and 3, and we have wanted a class C since we rented one for a week on the North Shore last summer. the rental was $2,100 for six nights and my husband did the math on doing that every year until the kids are in high school.

in july we bought a 2021 Thor Four Winds 28A, Ford E-450 with the 7.3, 18,200 miles, through Lake Park Auto Connection. they broker bank repossessions and the RV was sitting at a lender yard outside Springfield, Missouri. we never saw it in person before it came. the bid is sealed, so we never saw anyone else's number either.

we bid $67,850. we had already lost a bid in june on a 2020 Minnie Winnie 26T and never found out by how much, which is the maddening part of doing it blind. this time i bid the number where losing would make me sad. no buyer's premium, the invoice was that number and nothing else. Springfield is inside the 1,000 free delivery miles from Lake Park, and it pulled into our driveway 13 days after the wire.

two short trips so far, a night at Crow Wing and two at Itasca. everything we know how to test works. but we know very little and we are planning five nights down on Lake Pepin in october with the kids. here are the listing photos plus the ones i took from our own ladder:

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what would you check on a 28A before a 600 mile trip with two little kids? be blunt.

cabover_leak_hunter wroteget up there with a plastic putty knife and see if that edge lifts.

it lifts. about 14 inches of it, i could slide the putty knife under like a bookmark. i felt a little sick for ten minutes. then i went inside with a $26 moisture meter from Ace: middle of the cabover deck 8, the corner under the bad spot 13. my husband pushed and knelt on that corner every way he could think of and it is firm.

so we cleaned the old sealant off that stretch with mineral spirits and ran new Dicor self leveling over the whole seam on that side, and the other side too since it looked tired. two tubes, $38 at the RV place in Bemidji. the embarrassing part is that it is right there in a listing photo i looked at fifty times before bidding. i did not know what i was looking at.

e450_brakes_joe wrotehow many hours on the generator?

41 hours, oil was fine. brake fluid is light amber. tires all say week 32 of 2021, but the pressures were all over the place, 58 to 80. all at 80 now per the door sticker. oil change is booked at the Ford place in town for friday.

weekends_at_mankato wrotewould you pay seven to twelve grand more to buy one off a lot?

i argued this with myself for weeks, so fair. for us, no. a dealer in Brainerd had a 2020 28A in the spring at $76,500, and the doc fee plus a prep line added another $1,400. when i asked the salesman about the roof he said it is all sealed at the factory. i do not think that walk through was going to find my seam either.

what we gave up is real though. nobody helped with financing, we set that up at our credit union before we bid. no trade in, not that we had one. and the handoff was the driver walking me around it for twenty minutes before he got a ride out.

paperwork came separately by mail: the Missouri title signed over by the lender, a lien release on the bank's letterhead, and the bill of sale. took all three to the deputy registrar in Park Rapids and paid the 6.5 percent Minnesota sales tax, a little over $4,400, which a dealer would have charged us too. I read the lake park terms twice before bidding, the 30-day guarantee and the 6 month limited warranty. a lifted sealant bead is not what either of those is for, and i did not ask.

trip report for the folks who asked. five nights, three at Frontenac on Lake Pepin and two at Whitewater. 612 miles round trip and the Ford dash said 9.1 mpg, which i did not expect. the furnace ran every night, it got down into the mid 30s. the 3 year old slept on the dinette per grandma's advice and did not climb anything. thank you.

after two nights of hard rain at Frontenac i climbed up with the meter again. corner 12, middle 8. the reseal held.

one new thing. the power awning stopped halfway out in the wind at Whitewater and would not go back in. it was a loose plug behind the fuse panel. five minutes to fix and forty five to find.

UPDATE, and the lesson is to read post #12 sooner than i did.

the 28A is in my father in law's pole barn outside Park Rapids for the winter. we winterized with the pink stuff on nov 8, the day of the first real snow, padded the cover straps like dog_and_a_minnie said, and went home. i went back over thanksgiving to grab the kids' sleeping bags and the chassis battery was dead flat. 19 days. it would not take a charge on the barn charger, so a new Motorcraft battery was $219 at the Ford place. added a $24 disconnect on the negative post, and the house batteries are on a little solar maintainer propped in the barn window.

where things stand at 2,300 miles and 11 nights: the reseal is dry, 9 at the corner on thanksgiving. the awning plug is zip tied. oil change done. the money beyond the lake park invoice has been the tax, two tubes of sealant, a battery and a disconnect.

my husband taped a list inside the pantry door of every seam to meter in april. the kids want Frontenac again in may.