We went to look at RV’s on Thursday. The trip took a while to come together because the closest dealer is 3 hours from Tacoma. There were a few class B vans that we looked at before we went to see the Leisure Travel Vans Free Spirit SS we had fallen in love with while looking online (for those of you that don’t know, a class B van is any regular van converted into an rv). From the first second we walked into the Free Spirit SS 2014, it felt like home. There is tons of storage, two different table options, and a living area that seats four. The couch unfolds into a bed and can be extended without the slide being out if you don’t flip up the bottom piece.
(This won’t work if you are taller than 5′ 3” but that’s where being short comes in handy!) This will make it easy for us to camp anywhere unnoticed especially in neighborhoods. We’ll also have the option of having extra room for our feet when it doesn’t matter if anyone notices that we’re camping! The shower was much more roomy than I expected. I was worried that the bathroom being in the back would make the living space feel stunted but I needn’t have been concerned.
Here is a floor plan for the Free Spirit SS
And then we took a closer look. The spring that holds the spare tire to the back of the RV so it can flip down and form a table was rusted. The salesman said it was normal. The battery compartment for the generator had white powder from battery corrosion in it. The salesman said it was normal. The locking mechanism on the floor that held the bathroom door in place was a rusty color and right next to a small collection of water. The salesman said he “thought” the piece was made of copper even though there is no other copper used anywhere else in the RV and that the water was from the rain (it was indeed raining that day). By now though, we no longer believed what the salesman is saying to us.
I don’t want to cause a misunderstanding though. I don’t believe that Leisure Travel Vans is a bad company, or this model is poorly made. I believe that there was a fluke with this individual RV. That is the assumption that we are moving forward with until proven otherwise. We’ve read extensive reviews on this company and haven’t found anything but rave reviews and people very happy with their RV’s.
We called the factory to ask about these problems and they seemed less than pleased with the dealership. They told us that the spring should absolutely not be rusted, the battery problem can happen in transport but it should have been cleaned up, and the locking mechanism was made out of cast steel. I sent the factory a picture of the locking mechanism because, to me, the fact that it is made of cast steel doesn’t explain why it would be a rusty color. But maybe there is an explanation. If there is, that would rule out a water leak on the inside and make it possible that, if they fixed the other problems, we could actually buy this thing. Hopefully we will hear back from the factory by Monday so we can make a more informed decision. If we can’t buy it in Oregon, the next closest dealership for this RV is 12 hours away.
But the trip wasn’t a total bust because Oregon doesn’t have sales tax so we picked up our new Macbook Pro and Canon 5D Mark III. Since the camera was on sale, we essentially got the lens it came with for free and still saved hundreds of dollars off of full price! Even if we didn’t need to look at an RV, it would have been worth the half a tank of gas in our Altima Hybrid just to go get the laptop and the camera.
Stay tuned! Hopefully we’ll have more info on the RV situation soon!
Home Sweet Motorhome 
Holy crapola! That RV was nice, minus the rusty parts!
Yeah but the next one won’t be rusty. It will just be awesome!