my first real thread, i have been lurking since the welcome post. Judy, Columbus, 31 years of fifth grade and done as of June 6th. the plan is a class B and the western parks while my knees still cooperate.
i am bidding on a 2020 Coachmen Beyond 22D AWD on the Transit, 31k on the clock, parked in a lender lot outside Atlanta. it is on the m&a listing page right now. i made a checklist for the photos because that is what teachers do. tell me what i missed.
the dash photo with the odometer, checked against the miles in the description. matched.
the door jamb sticker, for the VIN and the build month. it says 11/19, so a late 2019 Transit under a 2020 coach.
every ceiling corner and the area around the roof fan, looking for brown rings. none that i can see.
inside the cabinets and under the sink for mouse droppings. the under-sink photo is blurry so i asked for another.
the tires. i read the Travato thread. the photos do not show date codes, so i asked for those too.
the underside, for rust. Georgia is easy on that, but i have no idea where it lived before the bank took it.
the other half of my question is the guarantee. i emailed and asked what it covers in plain words. the answer: if the lot turns out to be materially misrepresented you can send it back within 30 days for your money. it is not a try-it-and-see return. their example was a van listed with a working generator that shows up with a dead one. so for those of you who have done this: if the guarantee only protects me from something the listing got wrong, is my checklist the right one?
good list. one to add because it is a Transit: ask for a cold start video. engine off overnight, hood up, sound on. the 3.5 EcoBoost of that era can rattle for a second or two on a cold start, and a video of a warm engine tells you nothing. the yard can do it, they just need to be asked the day before.
and on your question, yes. you are building a record of what the listing said. screenshot every photo and the description the day you bid. if something arrives different, you want proof of what the page said then, not what it says after the lot closes.
S
sprinter_4x4_or_bust
BoondockerSalt Lake City, UT34 posts, joined Jun 2025
i will be the grump. photos are good for what you can see. they are no help with smells or with anything that only shows up when it moves, a transmission that flares on the 2-3 shift, a wheel bearing that hums at 60. you can do every item on that list and still get a surprise. not telling you to skip it. the checklist lowers the odds, that is all it does.
a Georgia van is a much easier bet than a Michigan van, though. if it lived its whole life there.
update. M and A sent the new under-sink photo and the tire date codes in a day and a half. 2223, 2223, 2323 and 2223, so 2023 tires, somebody put new ones on before the bank got it. the cold start video took longer because it is the lender's yard, not M&A's, and the yard had to be asked. it came Friday. 40 seconds, no rattle i could hear, a little ticking that harvest tells me is normal.
i bid 61,500. it closes Monday at noon eastern. i settled on that number on a calm Sunday and i am not raising it. sprinter is right that there are things i cannot see, and the gap between my number and the dealer prices is my cushion for them.
how did Monday go? one more for your list on any van with a lithium bank. ask for a photo of the battery monitor screen. the cycle count and the state of charge tell you a lot about how it was stored, a bank sitting at 0 percent for months is a different bank.
i lost it. the email came Monday afternoon, polite and short, the lot went to another bidder. that is all you get. whether i was 200 short or 20,000 short, nobody is ever going to tell me. i was more disappointed than i expected over a van i had never seen.
glad i did not raise it at 11 pm Sunday, which i nearly did. there is a 2021 Solis sitting in a Texas yard on the m&a auction list now and i am running the same checklist on it, with kim's battery screen added and harvest's screenshots saved in a folder on the desktop labeled VAN.
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