2. Buying the 5er

The week after taking THE TRUCK home (not kidding…I need a ladder to wash the windows!!!) I had to take it back to the dealer for a day for them to apply a paint protective coating and install an upgraded alarm system. Instead of just hanging around I rented a car and drove around to 5 different RV dealers in the Sacramento/Roseville area.

One concern that I was having was in regard to something I had not thought of in the purchase of a new truck; the spacing between the bottom of the over-hang of a 5er and the top of the trucks bed rail. When being towed there should be a gap of ~6 inches so as to allow flexing when going in and out of steep driveways, etc. However, with the beefiness of our new truck’s suspension, the height of the bedrail is 56 ½” right over the axle. That meant that a 5er had to have an overhang height of ‘no less than’ 62 ½”…and that information is not readily available from the Mfg’s when doing an internet search. Bottom line…I was afraid we may have out-thought ourselves and bought ‘too much’ truck which could possibly have meant we would only be able to look into buying a TT instead of a 5er.

The first RV dealer I went to (Pan Pacific in Sacramento) had only a few 5ers, but a lot of TT’s. I liked the 5ers they had, but armed with my tape measure they did NOT meet the 62 ½” minimum…I was bummed. I called home and told Janna it looked like we were now in the market for only a TT.

OK, so what’s the big deal; TT vs 5er? For some it is just a matter of preference, but for most there is a recognition that 5ers are more stable to tow since approx. 25% of their tow weight is sitting on the bed of the TV right above the axle. This is opposed to a TT where over 90% of the weight is hanging off the back of the TV. And since ~4 ft. of a 5er’s length overhangs into the TV the ‘net’ length of 5er is less. (TMI ?)

Then it was off to dealer number two…just down the street. Happy Daze had a good over-all selection of both 5ers and TT’s. The first thing I did (before looking at ANY rigs) was talk with the sales guys about bed rail height. They brought out an ‘expert’ that said he had not ever seen an issue with ‘newer’ 5ers and any ‘stock’ pickup. Well, that was good to hear…but let’s prove it. So off to the lot we went…tape in hand.

Before I even looked inside the 1st unit we came to (in our budget range) I measured the height…63 inches. Wow! We may be OK here after all. When we got inside I looked around, sat down on the couch, called Janna, and said it looked like I could still look at 5ers and that in fact, the one I was in was perfect and I would feel comfortable buying it on the spot.

Then I was off to another dealer down the street that was actually going out of business because of the economy (had some good deals, but nothing we were looking for), then on to Camping World in Roseville, and another Pan Pacific showroom in Roseville. Both these places had some good looking rigs, so I was able to go home with lots of brochures and pictures from multiple mfg’s at four different (reputable) dealers…not a bad day’s work.

Over the next couple of weeks I took Janna back to Camping World (Roseville) and Happy Daze, and then we also stopped a couple of times at the new Camping World outlet in Vacaville to/from the Bay Area. By then we were getting a pretty good idea of what was out there, and at what price. Plus we could then go on the internet and compare local prices to those in SoCal, or even out of state.

Later in Sept. we went to Hawaii, and returned late on a Sat. We stayed in a motel that night close to SFO, and then on the way home stopped at an RV show at Cal Expo in Sacramento that I had learned about from folks on RV.NET. Wouldn’t you know it that the very first dealer we saw as we entered was Happy Daze…and right there in front was the rig I had called Janna from when I was on their lot (destiny?). They said they had some good ‘show’ deals going, and we told them we would come back after we finished looking around.

Well, we did find another rig we liked a lot but it was just a little too long. So how does one know if a rig is ‘too long’ if you have a TV that can tow almost anything? Well, it all has to do with where you want to take it. Some campgrounds have size/length restrictions and longer rigs may not fit. This could be due to the infrastructure of the roads in the campgrounds (i.e. too narrow) or the length of the driveways of the individual sites. So prior to getting serious about a certain rig (before we started looking) I called Yosemite, Bothe-Napa State Park, and looked at the website for Plumas-Eureka State Park. From this I learned that there were restrictions for trailers (net length) of over 24ft. So that meant we pretty much needed to look for something in the 28-29’ range.

Now it was back to Happy Daze and the original rig that I fell in love with that first day …which was/is 28’11” long…are we really about to do this?!? They made us good offer, I countered that I would like them to throw in the hitch (a slider since we have a 'short bed'...ask me if you want to know about sliders), a ceiling fan and install some upgraded batteries…and like that we had a deal.

In about 10 days we were scheduled to go pick it up.