New 3711FL Notes

[rantin]

In January the wife and I pulled the trigger on a new 3711FL. After 2 months of spending weekends playing and learning as much about the coach as I could I found 3 factory defects. The first problem was not being able to draw antifreeze into the system for winterizing. I tried everything and nothing worked. Checked with 2 different RV dealers and what the recommended didn't work. Finally the 3rd dealer I tried told me I had an air leak and sure enough tucked way back behind the service area was a water fitting that had never been tightened at the factory. The 2nd issue was the screen door. The top 2 screws had been stripped out and allowed the door to tilt in and bang the door jamb when opening and closing. Two quick pop rivets fixed that. Last was water coming out from under the shower faucet mounting (worried about water running back into the wall). Took that apart and found yet another loose water connection. So all things considered no serious complaints. Could Montana pay a little more attention to detail on the QC side, of course but the problems were minor and I am very happy with the coach, it's everything I thought it would be and more! Looking forward to getting out and meeting other Montana owners!

[Artemus Gordon]

All coaches have problems when new. Yes it would be better to get a perfect RV, but it's a complicated, multi faceted machine. Those are minor items and no doubt your find others. Welcome to world of RV ownership ! Have fun!

[richfaa]

Although most can not do it due to distance a tour of the Montana plant, in fact any plant, would show the reasons we get the quality we get..

[K0LCB]

A very wise man told me if I wanted to have something that always needed something repaired I should buy a RV

[WeBeFulltime]

Sounds to me like he had a lazy dealer. Dealer should have done a good inspection BEFORE the customer's PDI. My dealer hooks everything up for 3 days and thoroughly checks EVERYTHING then you can do your own PDI, pay, and take her home.

[1retired06]

Sounds like no serious issues. Congrats on what looks like a well built unit

[WaltBennett]

Water leaks can't be blamed on 'lazy dealers'. The problem is that NO ONE ever puts any water in the tanks or hooks any up to see if there are any in the first place. If either the factory or a dealer did that, then they'd have to drain it totally afterwards and sanitize it before giving it to someone to drive off with. There's only one place that these can be prevented and that's at the factory by someone following after the installer and double checking - but that would mean someone else on the clock . .

[jcurtis934]

Cw of souhern alabama actually did a thorough job of filling all the tanks and checking for leaks...but they didn't check behind the convenience center and tighten the loose connections on the water lines where there was two small leaks on my unit. Took the factory tour and saw no evidence of qc in plant...but did see some things that shouldn't have been done that weren't tagged. John

[richfaa]

We did note on at the last station on the assembly line at the factory that they DO fill the tanks.Can anyone back me up on that???

We gave our dealer the PDI that is provided here on the MOC one week before we went to pick it up. On this 13 Big Sky the dealer called us as they found a defect in the awning and were replacing it delaying our pick up. That was a good thing. When we did pick it up we did another complete PDI and it was perfect.

The 06 3400 also left the same dealer with a perfect PDI. It burst into flames 5 months later in "Q" due to defective wiring.
This 13 3402 has had 4 failed tanks in 30 months. A good PDI will get you out of the dealers lot in perfect condition` on the items you can see and that is a good start..

[Johnnyg]

Rich, that's a great idea providing the dealer the PDI you intend to use. It can do at least two things, make your delivery day much more pleasant or be a precursor to what can be expected from the dealer in the future.

[DarMar]

To me those are just a few minor problems that you can have the satisfaction of correcting yourself. Of course it could have come from the dealer in perfect condition but I don't live in that world. Good luck and enjoy from here!!!