What to Check Before Buying a Used RV

Water Intrusion Is the First Deal Breaker

Everything else on a used RV is negotiable. Water that has been inside the structure usually is not, because by the time you can see it the repair reaches into the floor, the walls, or both. Start at the entry step and put your full weight on the floor there, then work the perimeter of the coach in bare feet or thin soles so you can feel deflection. Check around the toilet flange, under the shower pan, at the base of the refrigerator, and directly inside every slide opening.

A soft spot is not a soft spot. It is a delaminated sandwich floor, which is typically a layer of luan or plywood bonded to a foam or block core with another skin below. Once water separates those layers, the panel loses its stiffness permanently and the fix is cutting out and replacing the section, often after removing cabinetry, furniture and sometimes the slide room to get access. That is a job measured in days at 210 dollars an hour, not an afternoon, and it rarely comes in under four figures.

Look up as carefully as you look down. A ceiling panel that is stained, sagging, or shows a wavy seam where two panels meet has had water above it. Press on it gently; sound board that has been wet feels spongy and may crumble at the edge. Check the corners of the roof at both caps, around the air conditioner shroud from inside, and where the front cap meets the roof. Discoloration that follows a straight line usually traces a framing member that the water ran along.

Use your nose and your eyes together. A musty smell means active or recent moisture, and a seller who has parked plug in air fresheners in three locations is telling you something. Then walk the exterior at a low angle with the sun raking across the sidewalls. Delamination shows as ripples, bubbles or a hollow sound when you tap with a knuckle, and it means the fiberglass skin has released from the substrate. That is a structural adhesion failure, not a cosmetic one.

Structure, Title, and Cabover Rot

Prior structural repair is the second reason to walk. Get under the unit with a light and look at the frame rails, the outriggers, the spring hangers and the areas around the axles. What you are looking for is weld that does not match the factory pattern, plates bolted or welded over a crack, sections of rail that have been sleeved, and paint or undercoating that is newer in one area than everywhere else. Fifth wheel pin boxes and the frame behind them are a common trouble spot on heavier units.

Above the frame, look for the signs that a body was apart. Mismatched paint texture at a cap seam, sealant that is thicker or a different color in one section, rivet lines that do not run straight, and a gap between the sidewall and the cap that varies along its length all say the unit came apart at some point. That is not automatically disqualifying, but it changes the question from how much to who did it, and you need service records before you go further.

Check the title before you check anything mechanical, because a salvage or a rebuilt brand changes the value permanently, complicates insuring the unit, and makes resale much harder. Verify the vehicle identification number on the unit matches the paperwork, look at the data plate for the manufacture date, and compare it against the model year, since a unit built in the fall is often titled as the following year. Ask the seller directly whether there has been an insurance claim and note how they answer.

On a Class C, spend real time on the cabover. That overhang has a seam at the windshield, a seam at the cap, and often a vent, and it lives in the airflow of a moving vehicle. Rot in the cabover framing is close to universal on older units and it is expensive because the repair involves removing the bed platform and the interior skin, replacing framing, and then getting the exterior to seal and match again. Press the interior corners, look for a sagging or wavy front cap, and check the underside of the overhang.

The Items You Price Instead of Walking

Tires come first among the negotiable items, and you judge them by date code, not tread depth. The DOT code on the sidewall ends in four digits: week and year of manufacture. RV tires typically age out somewhere in the range of five to seven years regardless of mileage, because the rubber degrades from ultraviolet exposure and ozone rather than from wear. A set on a large trailer or a coach is a meaningful number, so a full set of eight year old tires with deep tread is a real line item in your offer.

On a towable, get under it and look at the running gear. Most units ride on Dexter or Lippert axles, and both are serviceable. Grab each wheel at twelve and six and rock it to feel bearing play, then at three and nine to check for other looseness. Pull a drum if the seller allows it and look at shoe thickness, the magnet face, and whether the backing plate is contaminated with grease from a failed seal. Ask when the bearings were last packed, and treat no answer as never.

Cycle every slide fully in and fully out at least twice, and watch it rather than the controller. Listen for a motor that labors, look for a room that goes out crooked or catches at one corner, and inspect the wiper and bulb seals along the entire perimeter for tears, flat spots and hardening. Check the slide floor for staining. Then look at the roof and the sealant from a ladder: chalking, cracked lap sealant at penetrations and any patch over a seam tells you what maintenance has looked like.

Run every system, and give the appliances time. An absorption refrigerator needs to be running overnight before your visit to prove it cools, so ask the seller to turn it on the day before and be suspicious if they did not. Test appliances on both propane and shore power. Start the generator and put a real load on it with the air conditioners running. Have the propane system pressure tested, load test the batteries rather than reading voltage, and switch on every 12 volt and 120 volt circuit.

How to Run the Walkthrough

Never inspect in the rain and never inspect after dark. Wet fiberglass hides delamination because the surface reflects evenly, wet sealant looks pliable and continuous when it is actually cracked, and a roof that is already soaked will not show you a fresh leak path. Darkness hides everything. Go in daylight, ideally with the sun low enough to rake across the sidewalls, and give yourself three hours minimum. A seller who will only show the unit at seven in the evening is making the decision easy for you.

Bring tools. A pinless moisture meter is the single most useful thing you can carry, because it reads through paneling without leaving a hole and lets you compare a suspect area against a known dry area on the same wall. Bring a bright flashlight, a small mirror or a phone on a stick for looking behind things, a tire gauge, a ladder if the unit does not have one, and a notepad. Take photographs of everything you find, including the data plate and the tire date codes.

Ask for the paperwork and listen to the story. Service records tell you whether the unit was maintained or just used, and a folder of receipts is a genuinely good sign. Ask specifically about any repair you can see evidence of, and ask an open question rather than a leading one: what work has been done on the roof, rather than has the roof leaked. Then check the manufacturer site for open recalls using the vehicle identification number, and check the chassis maker separately on a motorized unit.

Understand what your walkthrough cannot do. You are looking at accessible surfaces on a unit the seller prepared, in whatever weather you got, without a lift, without the ability to remove panels, and usually without the experience to know what a well done repair looks like versus a covered up one. That is not a criticism of buyers. It is the honest limit of the exercise, and it is why the next section exists.

What a Paid Inspection Buys You

The first thing a professional inspection adds is a view you cannot get in a driveway. On a lift or over a pit, the frame rails, crossmembers, outriggers, spring hangers, shackles, brake lines and the underbelly are all visible at once and from a working position. That is where prior structural repair actually shows itself, and it is where a bent or twisted frame reveals itself in the way components sit relative to each other. Nobody finds that lying on their back on asphalt with a phone light.

The second is documentation instead of impressions. A moisture survey means readings taken at a defined grid across the walls, ceiling, floor and around every penetration, written down with locations and values, so you have numbers rather than a feeling that one corner seemed damp. A roof walk by somebody who has repaired roofs means an assessment of what the sealant condition actually implies and whether a seam has been opened and reclosed. Those distinctions are the difference between a small maintenance item and a hidden structural problem.

The third is a report you can use. A written inspection with photographs, readings and a repair estimate is a negotiating document. Handing a seller a document that says the front cap seam shows elevated moisture and the tires date to 2018 is a very different conversation than saying you think it might have a leak. It also gives you a defensible number, because the same report can carry an estimate of what the deferred items cost to correct at real shop rates rather than at optimism.

A pre purchase inspection generally runs somewhere between 250 and 1,200 dollars depending on the size of the unit and how deep you want to go, and it happens at the facility because that is where the lift, the lighting and the equipment are. There is no mobile or roadside version of this. That means arranging with the seller to bring the unit in, which is itself informative: a seller who refuses to let a unit be inspected by a shop has told you what you needed to know.

Set that cost against the alternative. A subfloor replacement or a roof and ceiling repair is body labor at 210 dollars an hour plus materials, and on anything larger than a small trailer it starts in the thousands and moves up quickly once cabinetry has to come out. An inspection at the top of that range is a fraction of one bad surprise. It is also the only step in the buying process where the money you spend is designed to talk you out of the purchase.