[Archived]

Are you buying a new one or a used one!???

[Richard]

New
one! Buying a dream!

[Archived]

It varies by state, but the lemon laws often cover the chassis and drivetrain of a motorhome, but not the “house” portion. You will need to rely on the converter’s warranty for that. You may also be able to buy what is commonly called an “extended warranty” but is really a type of insurance for breakdowns. Since the bus chassis is built for commercial reliability, a lemon law claim is not very likely. If you are buying new, you should feel comfortable that the converter will stand behind its product. Ask any owner of a Bluebird M380 what a nightmare it is to deal with a poorly designed and assembled but expensive coach.

[Peter]

Robert,

You have a fun adventure getting ready to start as we also commissioned a new build.

A couple things I learned is that all the converters do things differently. The only common item is the Prevost chassis.

I’ll speak from the Liberty perspective…

-one holding tank for black AND grey, which I liked, you may not.

-manual sewer and water hose connection. Once connected, air valves operate the holding tank from inside or outside. Also, auto fill with fresh water once connected if you activate that feature. The system only draws water from the fresh tank which I like.

-manual easy-glide slide trays (not electric).

-offers macerator (Marathon does not).

-lithium Ion battery technology (batteries will last about 10 yrs., weight savings)… instead of 8-10 lead batteries, we have 3 LI batteries.

-the genny is in a side bay (like all) but the radiator is at the water bay with a grill in the bottom of the chassis. Marathon has their radiator at the front, Millennium’s is on the roof. (that’s when we were looking, things could have changed). We never looked at Featherlite (did not know about them).

Liberty’s 40+ yrs. of making conversions was a plus in my book.

I think that you couldn’t go wrong with any, all are nice and top-of-the-line. But, look at how you will use the coach. Liberty’s offer OTR (over the road air)…not sure all do. We have four slides which eliminated that feature.

Good luck,

Mark

[Archived]

Hey Mark you said that yours was a
custom build? Looking at there website is does not seem that embrace a
custom build. There are so many
questions that I would like to ask you. Is
your bus still on their website? Would love to see it!!! What do you two use your bus for mostly?

Where
you able to pick out everything that you wanted? Was a Dean Loucks custom paint
job offered?

What
I plan to do is take very long road trips and stay in places like the Keys, So
Cal or Vegas for two or three months at a time. I’m planning my first trip already…that is
to see 16 of the National parks in the lower 48 and Alaska.

I’m
going to have a condo but only plan on being there when there is maintenance
being done on the bus. I want or plan to
spend 85-95% of my time roaming the country.

You
make a lot of good points. I did want a
macerator and will need to verify who provides that option and who does not.

[Archived]

Robert: Buy a condo or home on Tellico Lake near Knoxville. Beautiful area, centrally located, and only a few miles from Jeff Rowe. I can refer you to a great real estate who has been working that market since the dam was built and the lake started to file with water.

[Jerry]

Hi Robert, I’m not sure why you think that Liberty doesn’t embrace a custom build. We picked everything out that we wanted (cabinets, leathers, appliances, wood flooring, fabrics, etc.) I would imagine that there are some extreme things that they may not do. You have to be more specific.

Any questions, please ask. We use our bus for normal travel between CA and TN. At 15 months of travel, we have put on almost 20,000 miles not counting the delivery miles from Canada (chassis).

Our bus is still on their website… under ‘past coaches’, we are #787. And, Dean Loucks painted our coach.

Some of the State Parks cannot accept 45 ft. coaches, you will have to check before arrival.

Mark

[Robert]

For the life of me I cannot imagine anything that would bring about the lemon law regarding the purchase of a new conversion.

These coaches are not mass produced so the buyers and owners of converted Prevost coaches are very small in number relatively speaking. Adding to that, a very large percentage of them participate on Prevost Community. I cannot recall a single new buyer complainng about the service and support they have had for their coaches. I am talking about over a 26 year period with one exception and that was about 24 years ago and the converter is no longer in business.

All the converters mentioned have a history of bending over backwards for their customers. Their sales are all based on relationships and they will do everything they can to maintain those relationships.

There is no comparison between a conventional RV, how it is built, how it is serviced, and its reliability compared to a Prevost conversion. It is like comparing a Yugo to a Bugatti.

[Archived]

Bryan,

Can’t help but wonder why you would take such a shot at the Bluebird M-380. Did you ever own one?

John

[Dan]

Thanks for
the information Mark.

I think it’s
because some of the other coaches websites and specifically talk about doing
custom design work more so than Liberty.

I absolutely
love what you created. Your coach looks
more for the lack of a better word, more “masculine” then most.

I do have
more questions everything from info about AC units to Apple products, satellites
and becoming confortable driving it. I created a document of everything that I
think I would want in my bus; I guess I need to make a list of all my questions
also! I think I better search the post
before I ask; the answers may already be there.

Jon thanks
for your comments. I was thinking along
the same lines but I thought that I should ask just to be safe.

[Bryan]

Robert, there is a limit to the customization availble from any of the converters. Given and endless stream of money any converter will do anything possible, but as soon as you begin to introduce price limits some changes to their fundamental layouts and systems are going to be imposed. It is not that they do not want your business, but because the coaches are highly engineered and the development costs for anything new are substantial. Unless they can recover that over a broad number of production units the buyer that wants the features has to pay.

Having said that Mark has pointed out how much freedom he had in customizing his coach. Only when you start changing systems such as asking a converter who uses roof top A/C units to use all Cruiseair units will you start bumping into issues. I say that because while that change seems simple its impact affects the control systems, the bay layouts, and even the ceiling and ducting designs.

Your best course of action is to create your list of wants and needs and visit with every converter. After speaking to them I would imagine you will be able to select your builder who will create the coach of your dreams.

[Archived]

John, you aren’t suggesting that the Bluebird M380 is not trouble-prone, are you? While it is a beautiful coach inside and out, they are notoriously prone to major problems. Just do a Google search. While I have never owned one, I have very close friends/travel buddies who have one. Before Bluebird went bankrupt and left them without recourse, their coach spent MANY months over many different occassions at Bluebird’s facility in Fort Valley, GA for very significant design and build related issues, such as faultly fuel plumbing that permiated the coach with diesel fumes, leaking (flooding is more accurate) storage bays, the need for complete replacment of the water and comfort heating system from Hydro-Hot to a Webasto based system, numerous serious house electrical problems including complete reworking of the electrical system for the washer/dryer and house air conditioning, slides and stabilizers that would not retract, and many less serious house issues. In fairness, prior to its bankruptcy, Bluebird tried hard to address these issues, once flying a crew to LA to work on the rig and once sending a driver to bring it back to Georgia, but the bus was out of use more often than it was on the road. The problems were not unique to my friends, who struck up friendships with other M380 owners they met at Fort Valley with similar serious issues. There is at least one M380 owners group that functions mostly as a support group for owners to help each other with the common problems. Strangely, as far as I know, the larger Bluebird Wanderlodge is quite reliable and not prone to the same problems as the M380.

[Robert]

Bryan,

While I can’t say that there was not a 380 out the that had some problems I really would take issue with what you say as to the 380 as a lot being trouble prone and basically junk. If you read here the troubles that have developed with some Prevost based coaches, you could probably come up with the same take on them. I bought a new M-380 in 2004 and used it until last February when I bought a Country Coach XLV. I didn’t have any problems with it outside of what you would normally expect with use of any motorcoach Prevost conversions included. I consider the M-380 to have been a very fine piece of equipment. What I read in your evaluation of the M-380 is very much the same as I hear in an every now and then evaluation of Jaguar automobiles. When the question is asked, “Did you ever own one?”, the answer is always, “No”. When asked, “Did you ever drive one?”, the answer is always “No”. When asked, “Did you ever ride in one?”, the answer is usually, “No”.

I’m asking you. Since you’ve never owned one, have you ever driven one? Did you ever ride in one? Have you ever even been in one?

I think that it’s just as unfair to make such statements about M-380 Blue Birds as a group based on one or two experiences that no one knows the circumstances of which that may have brought the aleged problems on as to condemn the Detroit Series 60 as junk because we all read the saga of one that went bad here in this forum.

Just for the record, I think that the M-380 is a fine coach with no more inherent problems than a Liberty converted Prevost with a full load of Rose Petals and I think your assessment of it is just so much BS.

[John]

Hi John. Sorry to get you upset, as that was not my intent. I didn’t call the M380 “basically junk”. In fact, I said it is beautiful. As for your questions, yes I have owned a Jaguar and while it was also beautiful, it suffered from a lot of expensive problems and failures that I’ve never seen in other cars before or since. (When was the last time you saw the differential fail in a 3 year old car?) And, yes, I have seen, been inside, ridden in and driven an M380. As I noted, my close friends and travelling companions have one. The problems I described were the ones I personally observed. They are not alone in suffering from these and other problems. Anyway, I’m glad your experince was contrary and I hope you enjoyed the heck out of your Bird. I only mentioned it as an example regarding lemon laws and making sure the converter is around to address problems because, as you noted, all RVs have them.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone wants to see a state lemon law in action regarding a motorhome (which just happens to be an M380), paste this link into your browser: caselaw.findlaw.com/us-8th-circuit/1495337.html.

[needtocamp]

I’ve had my say.