Hopelessly Lost

[Kirk W]

Any Holiday Rambler Admiral series owners out there?

Holiday Rambler was an RV company for many years, founded in 1953 but was bought up by Monaco Coach Corporation(the original company) in 1986 during their big expansion push. In 2009 the Monaco Corp. was sold to Navistar Int. who later moved the RV operations to a wholly owned subdivision called Allied Specialty Vehicles, the same group who own what is left of Fleetwood RV. Holiday Rambler of yesteryear was well known for a quality, but above average cost RV and started life building travel trailers and later added motorized RVs. The name today is a division of the new company and builds four different models of motorized RV but no-longer builds any trailers at all. Currently the Admiral is the lowest price of the class A from HR and is on a gasoline chassis. You didn't mention what age of coach you are looking at but here is a review from the 2010 Admiral by HR.

[Jim Corey]

We have a Monaco Monarch, which I believe is the same as the Admiral. Ours is a 30PPD, and 2006. Have had it about 9 months. So far, so good after 10k miles. (28k total) but I'm 5-7, so fit was not an issue. Shopped over a 6 month period for a low mileage used rig, made it easier to pay cash.

[freestoneangler]

Freestoneangler,

Sorry I threw the thread to a financial thread like that!! Hot topic for sure.

No matter how you pay for the RV it needs to fit you and the wife.

I do stand by my statement that a payed off RV is nice to have.

More important is that everything fits me and the wife as we have to live with it or go get another that does.

 

Like I said, Enjoy the search, I hope you find what you are looking for and I don't care if you pay for with a Visa Card!!

 

No worries, that's what makes threads interesting. We're having fun with the search... it's really amazing the thought process and various changes in direction its taken us... a lot like some threads. No VISA for us... I fall into the no debt category.

[Ray,IN]

 

We try to limit when the passenger gets out of his/her seat but sometimes it's simply necessary and there's no place convenient to stop. Yes, bad things could happen, but they can happen anytime and statistics says that they're no more likely to happen when someone is out of their seat. So we simply just do it. Sometimes one has to balance risk and reward and IMHO this is one where the rewards exceed the risks. One can't always live one's life to avoid all possible risks.

Many years ago I owned a 1976 Allegro gas MH. One day we were driving through a city, my first wife got up to go lay on the bed to rest. A car ran a red light, I slammed on the brakes to avoid broadsiding the car. Wife came flying from the rear of the coach and slammed into the dash. I still hit the car though. Wife(ex) broke both wrists, cut on head, relatively minor injuries, but she was so sore next day she couldn't walk and stayed crippled up for nearly a month.

 

Folks can rationalize it any way they please. Now everyone in my MH stays belted until the MH is stopped. It may not keep them from injury, sure will reduce them though.

[freestoneangler]

If you can believe it, we started discussing 5vers again last night while grilling pork-chops. One of the uses for the RV will be temporary living at the MT property (inside the RV garage once that's up). We made the mistake of stopping by a local dealer and looking at the Cougar 327RES which had really caught our eye when they first came out some years ago.

 

We already have the puller part of the 5ver option. We moved away from it for convenience of travel with the dog (yellow lab), DW being able to get up and stretch a little while in route, not having to get out of the rig for quick overnight rest, etc. But then came the no other motor and transmission to maintain, the cavernous size of the interior (this one has opposing slides), and ~$20K lower price than the A's we're considering... hmmm.

 

From the forums 5ver group, anyone make this full circle decision? Still Hopelessly Lost .

[Rick_Reichert]

Sounds to me like the old Ben Franklin decision-making list would come in handy for you. Draw a line down the center of a piece of lined paper. Put the pros of each type of RV on one side of the page, the cons on the other. Keep adding to the list and re-organizing it so that the most important factors TO YOU are at the top. Here are a few of mine to get you started.

Pros ................................................................ Cons.....................................................

Fifth wheel is very safe to pull ........................ Most of the truck bed is taken up by the hitch

Fifth wheel is very easy to hook up to tow....... Hitch is very heavy and not easy to remove from the truck

Tow vehicle can be separated from trailer....... Tow vehicle gets worse gas mileage than a motorhome "toad"

Trailer has low cost to license and maintain.... Trailer requires a more expensive, heavy vehicle to tow it.

 

And so forth and so on. Hope this helps!

[freestoneangler]

Sounds to me like the old Ben Franklin decision-making list would come in handy for you. Draw a line down the center of a piece of lined paper. Put the pros of each type of RV on one side of the page, the cons on the other. Keep adding to the list and re-organizing it so that the most important factors TO YOU are at the top. Here are a few of mine to get you started.

Pros ................................................................ Cons.....................................................

Fifth wheel is very safe to pull ........................ Most of the truck bed is taken up by the hitch

Fifth wheel is very easy to hook up to tow....... Hitch is very heavy and not easy to remove from the truck

Tow vehicle can be separated from trailer....... Tow vehicle gets worse gas mileage than a motorhome "toad"

Trailer has low cost to license and maintain.... Trailer requires a more expensive, heavy vehicle to tow it.

 

And so forth and so on. Hope this helps!

Funny you mention that... my wife dug up a list of these same things from a folder we've been keeping on this journey. We started mulling it over again and seeing if what made sense then, still does.

[Kirk W]

The trouble with that type of list is that some features do not fit well into only one side of the list. While having two engine/drive train systems to maintain is perhaps negative, not being stranded if the one in use should fail out in the boonies is a positive. There are many things which it just depends which side they belong on. I don't believe that there is a real choice of one better RV type but it is more a personal feeling than any objective list.

 

We found we prefer a motorized RV for fulltime, but the main reason was that it was what we chose! Don't allow us to vote on what you should choose to live in. If you look at enough of each one, at some point you should find one that just seems to click with both of you and that will be the right one, whatever type it happens to be. We can all justify the type we prefer, but in reality it is a very subjective and personal choice. Keep looking at both until you find your own preference. RV shows can be great fun!