Rust on Berkshire Chassie

silver · 10-11-2011, 10:37 PM

Imangine my surprise when I found excessive rust behind my basement doors, under the slides, and on the chassie. My Berkshire is a 2008 with less than 10000 miles. I ended sanding the areas down, treating for the rust, and completing repainting. I have to say that this was quite a job. I am concerned as I hope to run the coach for many years and did not expect this issue after only three summers of use. I park on a pad and keep the snow away so air can circulate in the winter. I had a Georgetown before the Berkshire, Used that for three years and it looked new when I traded it in. I expect the same from the Berkshire.

Has anyone else seen this with their coaches?

Other than this the wife and I love the Berkshire.

wnytaxman · 10-13-2011, 12:07 PM

Part of the issue for you may be the concrete pad. The concrete does attract moisture and, hence, rust. We have our unit inside, but I have the wheels sitting on Advanteq and plastic under the entire rig. This seems to keep the moisture down and also protects the tires.

silver · 10-16-2011, 03:45 PM

You are correct the plastic will make a difference. My pad is outside and I make sure that the air can circulate under the coach at all times.

My main interest in posting was to see if anyone else has seen rust behind their basement doors or under their slides.

All fellow Berkshire owners reading this thread let us know.

Thanks.

Moracechaney · 12-13-2011, 12:34 PM

I bought a new 2010 berkshire 360fs back in March and it is very rusty underneath! dealer handled some of it, painted over some of it and i still have it everywhere! apparently no undercoating from the factory, and by the way, if a unit rust up from parking on concrete, that is not good!! amd I am dreading the job of working on my back trying to de-rust!

SEAYALL · 12-20-2011, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrClic

Imangine my surprise when I found excessive rust behind my basement doors, under the slides, and on the chassie. My Berkshire is a 2008 with less than 10000 miles. I ended sanding the areas down, treating for the rust, and completing repainting. I have to say that this was quite a job. I am concerned as I hope to run the coach for many years and did not expect this issue after only three summers of use. I park on a pad and keep the snow away so air can circulate in the winter. I had a Georgetown before the Berkshire, Used that for three years and it looked new when I traded it in. I expect the same from the Berkshire.

Has anyone else seen this with their coaches?

Other than this the wife and I love the Berkshire.

Just wanted to jump in, i'm always on the georgetown side,but considering we're thinking about moving up to a Berkshire FL 390 thought maybe you mite talk alittle about your experiences .. fuel mileage, i haven't broke 8 mpg yet with georgetown, we're thinking ride,handling,etc would be much better with a diesel chassis, would appreciate your overall option .. thank you

Moracechaney · 12-20-2011, 11:21 AM

Overall we love the coach, tile floors are easy to keep clean, coach drives really well even on very windy days, mileage is great so far and not close to broken in. Loaded up, averaging around 10.5, but not towing yet! Will know about what that does to my mileage soon. King size bed was very firm, so put a 3" gel pad on and now great. I think rust issues were from dealer moved to a NY location in winter with salted roads and never washed off under carriage??

Only other issues are slide out gaskets seem to want to fall down so just stuck back up, rear ladder rated for 300lbs broke with my stealth 250. Helps to be close to your authorized dealer, and factory very cooperative and helpful!

Hope this helps!

SEAYALL · 12-21-2011, 04:21 PM

thanks for the reply, none of these things are perfect but you sound happy with your unit,berkshire has a fairly new floor plan 390 FL . we're waiting for dealer to get, we deal with lazydays in tampa, so hopefully get a decent trade or find a buyer . thanks again .. happy motoring .

wnytaxman · 12-23-2011, 08:48 AM

We are also very happy with our Berkshire. We're averaging just under 10 mpg and I do tend to have a lead foot so a 60-65 mph driver should be over 10. Our unit is an '11 on an '09 chassis so we don't have the DEF engine.

For what it's worth we bought ours from RVOne at their Buffalo RV location and they beat Lazydays by a bunch of $$$ so you might want to check out their Orlando location to see what kind of a deal they'll give you.

SEAYALL · 12-23-2011, 09:11 AM

well thank you sir, up there in NY, we're looking real hard, love the 390 FL, with fireplace as we do enjoy it in our #378. How would you rate the ride ? Best i've seen in gas mileage is almost 8 pulling a fiat ... all thing considered say over a 5000 mile trip gas rig cost something $50. more even with the higher cost of diesel ... thanks again

LiteEmUp · 12-23-2011, 01:15 PM

We have a 2011 390BH with the DEF and 360 HP engine w/larger transmission. When the tanks are empty and not towing anything, it runs around 12.5 mpg.

With the tanks empty and pulling our Chevy Express 2500 10 passenger conversion van (weighs 6,500 lbs), it gets 11. The longest trip so far was a little more than 900 miles pulling the van. No mountains, basically flat land which helped achieving the 11. Also, I try not to drive faster than 65 while towing our van.

The readout on the dash has hit 14.0 on other, shorter, trips - this definitely isn't the norm.

Joker · 12-24-2011, 02:04 AM

Just wondering, are the mpg numbers being posted here from the dash computer or directly computed from miles driven divided by how much you put in your tank?

tmmar · 12-24-2011, 10:09 AM

I have been averaging about 10mpg computed manually. We keep track of when, where, how much diesel we take and the mileage at every fill up. I keep the speed around 65mph.

LiteEmUp · 12-24-2011, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joker

Just wondering, are the mpg numbers being posted here from the dash computer or directly computed from miles driven divided by how much you put in your tank?

For me, the 11 with tow and 12.5 w/out tow (and empty tanks) are from miles driven divided by how much I put into the tank. Also, both numbers are ~99% freeway miles with no idle time on engine. And I try to keep it around 65 mph. Very rarely do I go faster than 70.

The 14.0 during a 3 hour trip was from the dash read-out (must have been going downhill the whole way or something.....)

And a tidbit on the DEF usage, I used 9.0 gallons over 3,400 miles. That's actual use, including idle time. Paid $2.69/gallon for the stuff at a Pilot station.

SEAYALL · 12-24-2011, 11:09 AM

these are all interesting comparisons, i have a toad fiat pop, an dash told me 44 mpg i thought no way, figured it out manually an came out the same, thought that was interesting ... now to find right dealer, i got 378 at lazydays, fl. been looking at mhsrv outside Dallas an we live in Ga. unfortunately FR dealers around Atlanta don't offer anything like these big dealers ... any thoughts on dealers, would love to hear about it ... what bothers me the worst an all of us i'm sure, are we really getting a good deal when one dealer can be 10k more less than another dealer .. yikes .... Merry Christmas rv'ers

Joker · 12-24-2011, 11:23 AM

Impressive numbers you guys. I must be doing something wrong. Last summer in our inaugural trip, which was about 6000 miles total, we got about 7.5mpg towing our chevy venture and running the gen for rear A/C (we had 7 passengers in the back so we had to keep it cooler). Without the gen we got 8-8.5, with keeping my speed down to 60-65 and running in Eco mode for the transmission. I have the larger transmission/engine setup on a 2012 chassis. Maybe it'll get better when I get better at driving this thing, or when it breaks in a bit more.

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