One of the first topics of conversation when you meet a motorhome owner is about what has broken recently and how you have to live on “RV time” and roll with breakdowns. I guess we’ve been lucky in 5+ years of motorhome ownership as we’ve never been stranded or had to delay/cancel reservations (although we’ve been close, very close). So far we’ve been having good luck with our new motorhome.
The main troubles we’ve had with our Newmar Essex are with 3rd party supplied appliances/devices, for which I can’t fault Newmar. For instance, in the first week of ownership our GE Profile convection oven/microwave decided to stop convecting (although the microwave still worked). A quick call to Newmar customer service prompted a same day visit by a local GE repair shop who diagnosed a faulty thermistor. They ordered the new part and a week later we had a working unit again, without ever moving our motorhome.
Here are some things I like more than I expected:
- Air leveling. No more dealing with finicky hydraulic jacks that are prone to failure and take forever to retract.
- Passive steer tag axle. The tag axle turns 8% in the opposite direction of the steer axle, making for an impressively short turning radius.
- Lack of noise, both while driving and when at a campground. Our prior diesel pushers were fairly quiet, but this thing is at a different level.
- Stability in crosswinds. Even better than our Dutch Star, which itself was a huge improvement over our Tiffin Phaeton. I can drive in 50 mph crosswinds with 1 finger (note, I do not).
- Silverleaf control panel. Silverleaf is a touch screen system that controls all functions in the motorhome and includes two panels (one in the front and one in the back) as well as a Bluetooth module for accessing via a tablet. I figured it would be convenient, but I was a bit worried the UI would be “clunkly” given that it looks “clunkly” (think a late 90’s web site). But it works surprisingly well, with very few pushes required to accomplish a task.
- Built-in sewer hose containment system. I didn’t even know about this until the first time I used it. Without such a thing you have two options, neither of which are ideal: store the stinky sewer hose in the bottom of the wet bay, very near your fresh water hook-up or wrangle the 3” diameter, 10 ft long (collapsed) hose and attachments into a contractor garbage bag and store that somewhere.
Things I like less than I expected:
- Fuel economy. We’re averaging 6.3 mpg over our first 3000 miles. Based on reviews in forums on the same chassis (Freightliner SL600) I hoped to be closer to 7.0 mpg. I expect some increase in economy as the diesel engine breaks in, but 10%?
- Usability when all slides are closed. We knew access to the rear of the coach would be tight when slides are closed, but it’s worse than we thought. There is the 2 foot leap (or crawl) over abutting sofas to get to the kitchen. And then you’re presented with very awkward access to the bathroom. There is just no graceful way to enter or exit without banging either the door or yourself against the fridge.
Inside of our Essex with slides closed
The constriction requires climbing over to get to the bathroom and back of the unit
Forget passengers as there is no room for feet as demonstrated with a woman’s size 8.5 shoe
- Lack of usable space in the refrigerator. This fridge is slightly smaller than in our Dutch Star, but poorly tapered drawers erase more space than is necessary.
The drawers are both tapered on each side which decreases usable space by 5 inches (1 inch each side and 3 inches where the two drawers meet)
As 2/3 and 1/3 width drawers model was selected (instead of equal sizes), both exterior doors must be open to access the larger drawer, which is hard when the slides are closed (ie lunch at a rest area)
- Drivers side DEF fill less useful than expected. In 5 years of diesel pusher ownership I always pined for a drivers side DEF fill as truck stops have DEF pumps only on the drivers side, but motorhomes always put their DEF tanks on the passenger side. I was excited our new motorhome had a drivers side DEF tank. Well, there is a problem: the truck stop DEF pumps (I’ve been to 4 so far) click off at only 75% full and refuse to pump after that, forcing me to fill up more often than I should.
