richfaa,
Not sure, Al and I are part timers, we are putting at least 6000 a year on the unit, for now. Steve R., a fulltimer, is putting on more, but he is sitting places for a very long time, 2 months in KC area, just spent almost another 2 months in Gatlingburg. Al and I used to put a LOT of miles on a unit when he still worked, we just did not get to sit for 2 months in one place.
If you go with this argument then you will need to look at units that cost a LOT more, a couple times more, than a Montana. For the Stevens, that would probably mean, we would still buy the Montana, but does that reduce us to never doing more than a couple of weeks a year, and a few weekends because the unit was only built to go so many miles before failure??
Welds break, sad but true, and our hearts go out to all the owners who have to deal with that. (We understand that pain, we had the frame bend on the prior TT and our current boat trailer. It is not a fun thing to deal with!)
Shackles and springs break and wear out. Betcha a lot of MOC members are gonna keep a really close eye on those items now. Maybe they had no idea these things require a lookeesee now and then??? Al has always considered them to be a maintenance item. Just like keeping the correct pressure in your tires and replacing them when they need to be replaced. That said, you never know when a spring will fail, you can be fine one moment and broken the next, even if you do inspect them frequently.
Believe me, with the Aluminum structure, Montana sure beats the dickens out of the prior TT which has a wooden structure! Want to have me tell you about the ROT in that one??
Just our feeling here, but you all know how we feel about Isolator (or similar products). After hauling Montana around for 1 year without Isolator and over 6 months with Isolator, well, never again, without similar product! When we watch Montana rocking and rolling and floating around back there when we hit some rough roads, the first thing that comes to our minds is "WHAT WAS GOING ON BACK THERE BEFORE??" And, we are thinking FRAME DAMAGE???
Sure makes for some interesting conversations tho?? Doesn't it?? We sure appreciate hearing everyone's different thoughts and views! For now, Al and I are gonna use Montana as hard and as long as we can, time and family commitments aside, we will be in Montana as much as we can be!
Carol