[bowlesj]

1st post - here we go. We love our 3820FK. My wife and I live in in it primarily full time as I work various contract jobs. We've had ours since April of this year.

The basement storage and even the inside cabinet space is quite a bit less than many other 5th wheel floor plans. However, we pride ourselves on living within our means in all aspects of our lives, including living space. That's it, that is the only take away on this unit for us.

We love the room separation. My wife too is a fine chef and she loves the room to maneuver in the kitchen as the buffet is an excellent pantry and additional counter space. She found the islands typically limited her access to the gas stove and limited floor space. While standing in the kitchen she can easily interact with guests and share the shows on television while preparing meals.

The front window - bug guts, hard to clean, too much light and heat, etc., are you kidding me? It's the easiest part of the entire rig to clean, it's glass. We, and guests, enjoy meals up in front where we can keep tabs on those coming and going on the driveway and we see eye to eye with the squirrels and birds! It is kind of dumb that there is no storage under the dinette seats, but there are other similar engineering lapses that leave one scratching their head, such as the washer dryer location in the bedroom, but none of them affect us.

The living room is awesome and we love stepping into it through the front door rather than into a kitchen. The bedroom in the rear is very quiet and the extra headroom in the bath is very welcome. I highly recommend the In-command system as it allows great remote control of the slides and awnings for troubleshooting and convenience. We have had no troubles with this system.

This is our first 5th wheel and we came from a 27 foot TT, one other TT and 2 pop ups prior to that so I guess we are used to doing with less space. Our long term neighbors all have storage units and can't believe we don't have one. Which brings me to the closets. They require a smaller hangar, but the typical trouser hangars from most dry cleaners fit great and we keep our off season clothes under the bed in tubs.

What I can't believe is how faithful people are to the Montana brand. Attention to detail and customer support is a joke. We knew this going in, as we really wanted this floorplan, but with my solid mechanical and electrical background figured we could fix just about anything that came along without running back and forth to the dealer. This has been the case on all previous trailers of which all were purchased new and had teething problems and never made it back to a dealer for warranty work. This unit is the worst ever and quite laughable in many instances. I have a list of 20 items that have mostly been worked off at this point. The PDI was done on an overnight stay and turned up 15 items that were able to be corrected at the post rather than hauled into a bay. 2 items were denied which were later agreed to by Keystone to be faulty but I have since corrected those myself as well since the dealers are amazingly cunning or complete idiots.

As far as access inside while on the road, the bathroom is accessible via the rear door and the buffet slide is a shallow Schwintek unit that is a breeze to pop out from the hall while at the head. Not as easy as a standard layout but pretty simple none the less.

At this point we are very pleased with our decision and the floor plan. If we didn't purchase this unit the rear den would have been our next choice and then the front living would have been next. Our unit has been voted best in the park by many people thus far and we tend to agree! Just keep in mind you better be handy to own one of these things or have lots of time and money to possibly have 'em in the shop. At least at this price point.

JMTCW Hope that helps Scuba.


-John-