[Nebster]

It's basically impossible to buy a machine as complex as a Newell and expect to have really predictable, low maintenance costs. You're simply bound to have some stuff go along the way. Labor costs often dominate in the ensuing repairs.

I'm always amazed at the folks who buy $n00,000 motorhomes and then balk at spending $n,000 on a repair. It's as if they blew their entire wad on the purchase and having nothing left over afterwards. What fun is that? (How unrealistic is that?!)

Much better to buy an $(n-k)00,000 motorhome and retain $k00,000 for upgrades and repairs. This is especially easy to do with Newell since, as you have discovered, there is a wide range of pricing across coaches that are mechanically almost identical. Even the brand new models are much more the same than they are different.

In our case, I found a coach where k was closer to 3, and then I spent ~$100k remodeling it (mostly NewellBucks, which means it could have been done for somewhat less if I'd been willing to send some of the work elsewhere). I have also shelled out about $30k on repairs of stuff that has broken in the first year. I feel like $10-20k a year going forward is probably a reasonable expectation. Those numbers are with paying other people to do most of it.