Last fall my wife and I bought our first travel trailer. We have been borrowing her father's trailers/motorhomes for the last 5 years now. The last travel trailer he had was a 33' Bullet so we were pretty spoiled when it came to size. We looked at a number of trailers and decided we didn't want to go any smaller now with the kids and their cousins potentially joining us. Our local dealer didn't have much on the lot but when this one rolled in we looked at it and put down a deposit pretty quick. I still can't believe we bought a brand-new camper but you only live once right?
I thought I would detail some fixes I had to make before/during our first trip with the new Jayco and then give a quick review. I pulled the 28BHS home from the dealer with my 2013 F-150 and everything worked well. Our first planned trip was to Billings (1200 miles total) so I was going to use my FIL's Dodge 2500 Cummins as the F-150 is just at max weight. I adjusted the hitch for the differences in vehicles and was all set to head out except my light check failed miserably. Of course my first assumption was the vehicle had a problem and not the new trailer. After checking every fuse possible on the TV I decided to check the 7-way with a VOM. Well...I guess the NEW trailer has an issue. There is an indoor style metal junction box attached to the front beam that has a number of splice caps connecting the trailer harness to the JaySMART interface. Several of the splice caps simply pulled off, the installer must have been missing their crimpers that day. I fixed that with some simple wire nuts and added to my list to change that out to a sealed junction box someday.
The next issue I found was a little confusing at first but was an easy remedy. Our first overnight was at a campground enroute to Billings with city water. The kitchen faucet worked backwards even though it appeared to be plumbed correctly according to the color of the PEX. Everything else seemed normal so I just thought the faucet must have been labeled incorrectly. The next three nights we were using onboard water in my SIL's yard, now the kitchen faucet worked as it should. I should make a note here that the water pump is in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. The hot/cold in the bathroom is now backwards and there seems to be very little hot water available. Time to get serious about looking for this issue:
It's starting to look that perhaps our trailer was finished on a Friday. Anyway, with the issue found my concern level dropped and I just put another item on my list to do when we get home. The trip went well and the trailer pulls very nice, even with 30mph winds. I did have a chance to use the outside speakers and the sound was terrible! I was able to quickly diagnose the wiring polarity error resulting in phase issues with the sound. Now the sound is slightly less terrible...
Overall, we are very happy with the camper. The two features that really sold me on the Jayco was the high payload rating (over 1000lbs more than a comparable Coachmen I looked at) and the huge shower! I was happy to see the dealer bring in one with the traditional dark cabinets, I’ve been to plenty of real farmhouses and haven’t seen any “distressed” white cabinets. Our trailer was missing the USB ports in the bedroom but that will be an easy addition for me and certainly wasn’t worth the hassle to get the dealer to install them.
One feature they should make standard is a ceiling vent in the bedroom. I understand the idea of limiting the number of holes the roof but unless there is a little breeze it can get pretty sticky up there. I did have to tape up the typical air leaks in the AC but it works great now. I really like the skylight in the kitchen area, there really is no need to turn on the lights in the daytime. Ours has the jack-knife sofa which is OK, I will certainly look to replace that in the future. We put a foam topper on the mattress which makes it tolerable but that is another item that will be replaced.
Another item we really like is the MORryde steps. The first time I used one I know we had to have it. We also really like the layout of the trailer with the main TV being right in front of the couch instead of to the side like many others are. We don't watch much TV when camping but it's nice to have for the kids on a rainy day.
The dealer installed an EAZ-Lift Recurve R3 WDH, I thought I was getting an Equalizer brand hitch which it what I’ve used before. A nice feature of the R3 is the adjustable sway control clamp. Instead of the bars sliding and scraping I can just tighten or loosen the clamp as needed. There is also no need to unhook the bars before backing in a spot, just jump out with the Allen wrench and loosen the clamp. This trailer pulls very well as it is, there have been a couple of times that I have forgotten to tighten the clamp and it’s no big deal. I have never felt any tendency to sway.
I thought I could just make the numbers work with my F-150 as a TV but unless the front passthrough is empty it’s impossible to keep the tongue weight below 1000 lbs. This summer I bought a 2016 F-250 Lariat 6.2L FX4. It has 2600 lbs. payload remaining according to the local grain elevator scales. With my typical tongue weight of 1100 lbs. and our family in the TV I have just about 1000 lbs. left to put in the box. Our first trip with the F-250 was about 400 miles and it was an absolute breeze. I know some of the newer ½ ton pickups have the payload ratings to pull a trailer of this size but I would highly recommend the step up to a ¾ ton TV. I can now put 650 lbs. of water in the trailer and not even worry about it.
I will be starting a thread in the mods section to detail the improvements I have made so far.
Linear Mode
