What are all the options for parking your Motorhome for long stretches of time? - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Rexbrook · RV-Dreams Community Member

What are all the options for parking your Motorhome for long stretches of time?

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Motorhomes do not sit for many, many months well. 3 months seems to be OK, 6 months is definitely pushing it. The engine, tires, brakes, in fact all of the drivetrain, the whole thing is built to be driven every once in a while. You can't just idle, you need to get the engine up to driving temperature and keep it that way for 30 minutes. That requires real driving.

If you truly are going to sit for very long stretches, a trailer of some kind is a better move. Where you are planning to sit plays into expenses. Some places are expensive, some are not, in some you can live in a park model (small mobile) or a mobile as cheaply or more more cheaply than an RV.

The Bear II · RV-Dreams Family Member

Some states, counties and cities have regulations specifying how long you can stay in an RV Park. (3 months, 6 Months).

Some RV Parks limit the length of stay especially if it is located in or near a popular tourist destination. One place we go you can stay for 5 days and then you have to be gone for 30 days before you can stay there again.

One of the best ways is to find someone that needs a caretaker for their property. They are looking for someone to watch over the property and maybe do a little upkeep. There are websites where you can locate these types of arrangements. Here's one:

www.caretaker.org/

Loretta · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have been parked for about 5 months but we are workcamping. It is not costing us anything in exchange for 15 hours a week.

TRAILERKING · RV-Dreams Family Member

bjoyce wrote:
Motorhomes do not sit for many, many months well. 3 months seems to be OK, 6 months is definitely pushing it. The engine, tires, brakes, in fact all of the drivetrain, the whole thing is built to be driven every once in a while. You can't just idle, you need to get the engine up to driving temperature and keep it that way for 30 minutes. That requires real driving.

If you truly are going to sit for very long stretches, a trailer of some kind is a better move. Where you are planning to sit plays into expenses. Some places are expensive, some are not, in some you can live in a park model (small mobile) or a mobile as cheaply or more more cheaply than an RV.

101% correct here with Billy Joyce. A trailer can sit for longer periods. You'll still have issues with tires and possible roof maintenance. Motorhomes on the other hand need to have the power train and generator exercised frequently. Having them sit especially in a hot climate(if so) is very hard on it. You can have seals drying up or even condensation problems internally.

In my coach I bought it was a '99 with 60,000 miles. I luckly got it home from the 2800 mile trip and toured around locally for the rest of the summer.......................Then the tranny quit. When I took it out through winter to rebuild and check the issues I found a failed seal on one of the clutches. Basically from sitting and not enough use would have caused that seal to prematurely fail. Under regular running and periodical scheduled maintenance, the diesel engine(which is an 8.3 Cummins) and the tranny(which is an MD3060 Allison) will have no problems going 100's of thousands of miles with out issues. The bigger diesel pushers are basically the same platform as a Highway/Tour Coach or Highway truck(semi). I had a '93 Peterbilt with 1.6 million kilometers on it. It still had the original tranny and diff's. The engine had an inframe(cylinder kits, bearings, head, turbo) at around 900,000 kilometers.

-- Edited by TRAILERKING on Tuesday 11th of February 2014 09:58:14 PM

Rexbrook · RV-Dreams Community Member

Thanks, Bill, Loretta and Trailerking,

Good advice. Things to consider.