Transcript:

I bought an rv!

So for a minute now I have been an RV repair tech who did not own in her own rv, which I think is totally fine because like plane engineers don't necessarily all own their own private jets and they still know how planes work.

But that all ends today, folks.

This is my 1998 Fleetwood Flair and let me tell you, it was an adventure to find her.

You see, I had a couple of criteria.

First of all, I had a budget of $10,000. That was what I could scratch up, and I knew because I was buying on the lower older end of things that no matter what rig I found it was going to need some work. That was kind of the point. So I wanted to make sure that I didn't blow away all my money on a rig and then had nothing left to fix anything up inside.

Ooh, a penny.

Secondly, it had to be a motor home. My daily driver is a Kia Soul, and I don't know how you live your life, but I am not towing anything with that, and I really wanted this rig to be something that I could drive by myself very confidently and didn't have to ask anybody or borrow a truck or anything.

I wanted to be a self-contained RV repair woman.

And thirdly, my boyfriend had to actually fit in this rig. You see, my boyfriend is six three, which means most RVs aren't designed for him to fit in them. I had to find a rig that didn't have the bed jutting up against a wall at the bottom, so at the very least his feet could hang off the edge.

I spent well over a month looking for the perfect used RV. I was on Facebook marketplace almost every day looking to see what new things had come up, what prices had dropped, what I could get my hands on. And let me tell you, it was a struggle.

Side note, I'm gonna do a video sometime soon on how to make a good Facebook marketplace listing if you're going to sell an RV, because wowza most of them are bad, and just putting up a decent listing I think can make you really stand out.

Between blurry photos postings with no pictures of the interior. Postings that only had bizarrely close closeups of things that nobody cares about and no wide shots to show you what the inside looks like. A couple weeks in, I finally got to the point where any rig that seemed, even in the realm of possibilities, I would shoot a feeler out too, because half of the people wouldn't even respond.

And slowly, one by one, each new dream rig was crossed off the list.

At one point, my boyfriend and I drove four hours round trip to Utah to look at what we thought was going to be the one only to get a text message 10 minutes before [00:03:00] we arrived that it wouldn't start anymore and it was backfiring. We spent about an hour there trying to troubleshoot it, and eventually figured out that it was a fuel pump problem and was more of an issue than I wanted to deal with. I couldn't have driven away with a rig if I wanted, but I really thought that one was gonna be the one, but it wasn't Luckily.

At one point I was seriously considering buying a used school bus and doing a full schooling renovation just so I could have a working rv. And while it sounded like so much fun, I eventually decided that was probably too big of a first project. It's not off the list forever, though. I still have a dream of doing it someday.

But then the day after the failed Utah trip, my boyfriend and I were sitting at a bar for lunch. Minding our own business and I pulled up Facebook marketplace like I did every time I was bored, and I somehow saw a rig that had been posted less than an hour before I was checking. She looked like she was in good shape, well taken care of, and so I shot off a message the owner somehow immediately responded, which never happens. And I asked her if we could come see it that day. She said yes, and we were off to the races.

So my boyfriend and I threw down a tip for the bartender, booked it out of there, ran home to get my tools, and we were on our way. Once we got to this rig, we probably spent about an hour, hour and a half combing through this thing from top to bottom, so we at least had some idea of what I was buying.

I know absolutely nothing about motors, cars, how cars work. Fun fact, most RV repair techs work on all of the parts of your RV that make it a house. And for the most part, usually don't touch the parts of it that make it a vehicle or a trailer. There are some overlaps, like some techs will pack your bearings, but for the [00:05:00] most part in your head, separation between church and state. I work on the recreation. A mechanic will work on the vehicle,

So I was very, extremely lovingly grateful that my boyfriend is a car guy. He's worked in the automotive industry for forever. I asked him what he wanted to be called for this video, and he said, an automotive professional. So that's what we're going with.

He scoured the motor. Basically everything from the driver's seat forward, and here's what he came up with. The motor itself in this looks great for being 30 years old and starts right up and ticks like a clock in a good way. I know some ticking is bad. This ticking good or so I've been told. The brakes are a little squishy and I concur when I drove it, but it's something that he said was in the realm of fixable for not crazy, crazy amounts. So, yay, the AC in the front doesn't work, but also potentially fixable with an O-ring. So, Yay. Other than that, everything else in the front of here works the way any 30 year old car would is a good sign.

So here she is in all of her glory. She has. Plenty of storage. Upholstery straight out of the nineties. A giant dinette A kitchen with almost no counter space. A bathroom that you can actually sit comfortably in while you do your business.An AC that currently does not function. I am hoping that this is the reason why.

Oh, and my favorite part. It came with two whole cans of beans.

She is a little old. She's seen some things. I mean, she's not that old. She's younger than me. I'm not 30 yet. Thinking about it, it's around the corner.

She is in desperate need of a remodel, some paint, some rearranging, but for now she's totally livable.

If you would like to follow along the journey as we try to make this bad boy, bad girl. Ooh, that sounds dirty. Why? Why are women dirty? Oh, we've gone down a rabbit hole. Oh, no.

As I slowly try to make this rig scream more millennial and less the year a millennial was born.

Step number one of that process is going to be a deep, deep clean as this place does have about 30 years worth of grime in it. And you can join me in next week's video as I test viral cleaning products to see if we can't make this thing shine like the top of the Chrysler building.

I was an Annie as a kid. I used to be a theater kid. If you didn't know.