writing this from the parking lot by the Stanley ranger station because it is the only spot in town where i get two bars. greg said put the purchase in the buying board instead of burying it in the welcome thread, so here it is, except it is going to come in pieces from wherever we are parked. this is the first real trip in the van.
the short version, details when i have a real keyboard. 2021 Winnebago Travato 59K, ProMaster 3500, the lithium package with the second alternator, 24,100 miles on the listing. it was sitting in a lender yard in Mesa. we found it on mandaautollc.com at the end of March, bid in April, and it was in our driveway in Boise the first week of May. neither of us ever stood in it before the hauler rolled it off. Dana thinks that part was nuts and she is probably right. she also loves the van, so.
trip so far: Boise to Ketchum on 20 and 75, a night at a forest service spot north of town, then over Galena Summit this afternoon. pulled into the overlook so Dana could take the picture everybody takes. two nights at Redfish Lake starting tomorrow, no hookups, which is the real battery test. after that Challis and Salmon, and over Lost Trail into Missoula if the van behaves.
galena_overlook.jpgstanley_ranger_station.jpg
for anybody who searched their way here wondering about buying a class B through m&a auto sales, it worked. there is one paperwork thing i would do differently and i will get to it.
glad it landed here. you know the rule, say what you paid when you get to the keyboard. the people who find this thread later will want the number more than the scenery, nice as the scenery is.
if you do make it to Missoula, the Walmart out on North Reserve is easier on vans overnight than most, park toward the back by the garden center. Bozeman is only about 200 more miles if you get bored.
Redfish is the interesting part for me. post your state of charge at bedtime and when you wake up, and say whether the fridge ran on battery. that 2021 setup is good, but plenty of owners never figured out that the second alternator only really charges above idle, so a day of short hops puts back less than you think.
also, Galena in the first week of June, still snow on the overlook side?
Challis, the RV park behind the hot springs, 30 amp for the first time in four nights. numbers, as promised.
batteries. fridge on battery the whole time, roof fan on low both nights, furnace once around 4 am the second night because Redfish went down to 34. at bedtime the two nights we were at 81 and 78 percent. mornings, 63 and 57. the drive to Challis, an hour and a half with the fan going, put it back to 96. kim, a little snow left in the trees on the north side of Galena, none at the overlook itself.
the money. sealed bid of 87,250. M&A Auto Sales does not add a buyer's premium, so that was the invoice plus one delivery line. Mesa to Boise came to 1,038 miles on their sheet, the first thousand are free, so 38 miles at seventy cents, 26 dollars and 60 cents. i laughed at that line, it was the cheapest thing about the whole van. wired on a Monday and it came 13 days later on the back of a car hauler, not driven, so the odometer read 24,107 in my driveway.
comps, before greg asks. dealers in Salt Lake and Spokane had 2021 59Ks at 104 to 112 with similar miles. one private sale in Bend at 96 was gone before i could call. i went in figuring anything under 90 was fine. you never see where anybody else bid on the m&a auction, so i honestly cannot tell you whether 87 won by fifty bucks or by five thousand.
i zoomed in on galena_overlook.jpg because i look at class B roofs the way other people look at sunsets. the roof fan lid toward the back, over the bed, has a split running along the hinge side. you can see a light line in the dome where it should be solid smoke color. that is sun damage. two or three summers parked in a Mesa yard will cook those lids, and they go brittle right at the hinge first.
not a big deal yet. it becomes one the first night it rains hard with the lid propped open, because water runs along the hinge and drips straight onto the bed. a new lid is cheap and it is a ten minute job off a step ladder. while you are up there, look at the sealant around both fans and the AC shroud.
promaster_tech_luis wroteit becomes one the first night it rains hard with the lid propped open
luis, you are about thirty hours late. it rained in Challis last night, hard, around 1 am. Dana woke up because her pillow was wet. i had the lid up a couple inches for air. the crack is right where you said, maybe three inches long, and of course it is over her side.
borrowed a step ladder from the campground host here in Salmon this morning. split lid, no question. the butyl around the base of the fan looks fine, so the water came through the lid and off the hinge, not through the roof. put a strip of Eternabond over the crack for now and we are running with the fan shut and the windows cracked instead.
i went back through the m&a listing on my phone tonight. there are two roof photos, both taken from the ground at the back corner, and the fan lids are just dark shapes in both. you cannot see it. i do not think anybody hid it, i think nobody climbed up. i asked for photos of the underside and the inside of the cabinets before i bid and never once thought about the top. if you are buying from pictures, ask for one taken from up on a ladder.
S
sprinter_4x4_or_bust
BoondockerSalt Lake City, UT34 posts, joined Jun 2025
a three inch crack and one wet pillow is a cheap lesson as these things go. i will also say what every Sprinter owner reading this is thinking. you took a front wheel drive ProMaster to Redfish in June, how was the gravel on the campground loop?
real question though. does the 6 month warranty from m&a cover a thing like that lid? i would want to know where that line is before i ever needed it.
home since Tuesday. answering sprinter first because i asked them the same thing.
i emailed the warranty question that Sunday from Missoula with pictures of the lid. the answer came back Wednesday afternoon, which is slower than i liked when you have tape on your roof. it was polite and it was a no. the way the m&a people put it, their limited warranty, which runs half a year or ten thousand miles, covers the vehicle, and a sun-cracked vent lid on the house side is a wear item. i did not argue. in their chair i would have said the same, and it is a 47 dollar part. the 30 day money back guarantee was not in play either, delivery was May 6 and a cracked lid nobody photographed is not what that is for. no hard feelings toward M and A on this one.
47 dollars is what it cost at an RV dealer's parts counter in Missoula that same afternoon, plus a tube of Dicor for later. swap took twelve minutes in the Walmart lot greg sent us to. and the gravel at Redfish was fine. a ProMaster does not care about a graded campground road. we did not try Grandjean, that would have been a different answer.
reading this closely because we are about where you were in March. two people and a 75 pound shepherd who sheds a second dog every week, looking hard at a 59K. the dealer in Sun Prairie has a 2022 at 109,900 and will not move off it.
question about the photos, not the roof. could you tell from the listing how worn the inside was? dinette cushions and the floor by the slider are where i would expect wear on a van somebody lost to the bank. and did it smell? i keep reading about repo units that sat shut up in a hot yard for months.
dog_hair_everywhere wrotecould you tell from the listing how worn the inside was?
mostly, yes. seventy-some photos and maybe 25 of them inside. the cushions were fine and the photos were sharp enough to show it, you could see the pilling on the passenger armrest. the vinyl by the slider had one long scuff, also in the photos. what i could not see was a busted cabinet latch over the galley, the door just swings open on left turns. 9 dollars online.
smell: closed-up van in a hot place, warm plastic and nothing else. no dog, no smoke, no mildew. i ran the AC on shore power with the doors open one afternoon and it was gone. Arizona is dry, which helped. a yard in Houston would be a different conversation.
now the paper thing i said i would do differently. the Arizona title came with the van, lender's release on it, clean. what i did not know is that Idaho wants a VIN inspection on anything titled out of state before the county will title it. went to the county DMV office, got sent home, called the sheriff's office, a deputy came by the house and checked the door sticker against the dash plate for a few dollars, then back to the DMV for round two. when the clerk wanted the bill of sale again, the broker out of independence emailed a fresh copy within the hour. Idaho sales tax at 6 percent on 87,250 is 5,235, which i had budgeted. the second DMV trip i had not.
shakedown trip total, 1,140 miles, 15.6 mpg figured by hand at every fill.
the ladder photo point is going in my notebook. one more for the list if you ever buy this way again: ask for a photo of each tire sidewall with the date code showing. a van that sat in a yard in Mesa sat on its tires in Mesa too. the DOT string ends in four numbers, the first two are the week and the last two the year.
Tucson here, so i can tell you what a Mesa summer does to a van parked in the open. luis is right about fan lids. the other thing that goes is the AC shroud, it chalks first and then cracks at the screw holes. and the slider door seal gets hard. a cheap rubber conditioner on the seals once a season helps more than you would think.
also, 15.6 on a 59K is better than i get in my Solis and mine is lighter. you must drive like my brother in law.
UPDATE, August, and it is the tires. harvest called it in July and i ignored him for a month.
we took the van to the Oregon coast the second week of August, Boise to Bend to Florence and then up 101 to Newport. on the way home i stopped at the Les Schwab in Bend because the right rear was losing about 4 psi a day. it was a roofing nail and they plugged it for nothing, the way Les Schwab does. while it was on the lift the tech showed me the date codes. all four are the original Michelins, DOT ending 4820, week 48 of 2020. five years old this winter. the two rears had fine cracking in the sidewall between the letters, the kind you only see when somebody points at it with a flashlight. two rears, 560 dollars mounted and balanced. the fronts looked better and i am doing those in the spring.
if i zoom all the way into one of the listing photos i can now read 4820 on the front tire. nobody hid it. i did not look. vanlife, i checked the shroud after your post, chalky, no cracks, and the seal conditioner is in the door pocket.
odometer 27,890. Dana wants to do the coast again in October before the weather turns. for the people who keep messaging me about where to look, it was M&A Auto Sales, and the list changes week to week, so what we bought is long gone.
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