[whatsnewell]

After 8 years of ownership, and over 50,000 miles of travel I can't really come up with a "worst night"......there haven't really even been any 'bad' nights. We've never been stuck on the side of the road with a mechanical issue.......we had a blowout on I-10 just two months after we bought our Newell, but within 3 hours we were on our way once again. One time we got off I-40 in Needles, CA to take a break at 1 am and the coach wouldn't start, but within 2 hours a mobile mechanic had arrived, diagnosed our problem, and we were on our way once again. One time we took on bad fuel (that is a whole other story), but were able to coast into the parking lot of a Lowe's stopping right next to a pond where we spent the night in safety within walking distance of a great Mexican restaurant. The next morning a pump truck came to empty our tank, which we refilled with good fuel and we were on our way. Our engine water pump failed just as we were parking on the property of my sister-in-law back in February of 2012. I replaced the pump myself at my leisure with no inconvenience or pressure. We would imagine our time is coming, but so far (knocking on wood like crazy) we have nothing but positive memories upon which to reflect.

[lbrachfe]

Never a bad night in our Newell, but a great story when we owned a Damon Tuscany 10 years ago. We were on I-70 in Vail,Colo in the frozen rain at 12k feet elevation and the engine shut down out of nowhere. Waited for 3 hours for a tow to Grand Junction, Colo Freightliner that jerry rigged a fix of a coolant pipe that had burst with exhaust tubing and unknown to us. We left and headed back East on I-70 and wouldn't you know it that the repair failed in the exact same mile marker a couple of hundred miles after the repair. The second wait was four hours and this was the following day. We got smart and had the coach towed to Denver this time and Frieghtliner there did the repair over and correctly and the body shop fixed the damage done by the tow truck. All no charge and a nice parking lot with 50 amp for 5 days. We had a good time in spite of the problems.

[GratefulKev]

I borrowed my late father's Ventana to use for glamping at a few music festivals the Summer of 2017 and traveling to NJ several weekends in the Fall to spend the night in the coach after watching my oldest daughter compete as a member of the Princeton Women's Soccer team. Dad had passed about four months prior to me borrowing the coach. For 20 plus years, I needled him about the money he dumped into ever more expensive and complex coaches. As a Wharton grad, he knew the financial decision to own coaches was a losing proposition but he enjoyed traveling, he loved the people he met on the road, and he loved, even more, the cuisine he experienced in various places across the US. He also loved buying a new coach and telling me how much fun he was having spending my inheritance (I did not need it but he loved saying it). And, now unable to hear an "I told you so" from him, I was borrowing his last coach and loving every minute of it.

When the soccer season was over, I had to sell the coach for his estate. On the trip down to Florida from DC to return the coach to its home base in Port St. Lucie, gremlins took over the coach. At some point during the drive, it started raining. The windshield wipers worked intermittently, at best. I had to press the button on the steering wheel to get them to move for each swipe. Then they stopped working completely so I pulled off into a rest area to spend the night while the weather passed by. I locked up and got into bed only to be jarred from my sleep by the blasting of an air horn. I wondered which idiot trucker at the rest stop would blast their horn at 12am. Then I sat up, aimed my ear towards the front of the coach and realized that I was the idiot: the air horn was haunted and blasting away. I jumped to the front, pressing every button on the steering wheel, turning off the generator (that stopped the air horn but the normal horn continued to blare away), and quickly consulted the operating manual for the coach. After a few minutes, I jumped outside, fully expecting to be assaulted by several road weary truckers, found the fuse for the horn, pulled it, and quiet ensued. I ran back into the coach, started her up and got the heck out of dodge. I made my way to a Pilot about 9 miles down the road and found a parking spot well away from any other vehicles bedding down for the night and prayed that whatever caused the horn to spontaneously blast was somehow fixed by pulling the fuse and changing locations. Thankfully, the horn cooperated and the rest of the evening was peaceful. Upon arrival in PSL the next day, a Freightliner shop diagnosed the issue as a problem with a ring deep within the steering column; however, I have my own theory, involving a proud father sending a posthumous message to his son via the air horn that, if you listen to carefully, kinda sounded like, "I TOLD YOU SO!"