bought a 2022 Grand Design Momentum 397TH-R through pace ace, sealed bid, delivered to the lease gate

ok here is the report, i said in the welcome thread i would write it up. 2022 Grand Design Momentum 397TH-R, sealed bid, bought through paceacemotors.net, the repo broker in Karnes City. paid 61,400. it is sitting at my lease off 72 between Runge and Nordheim right now with the Defender in the garage.

why: my old rig was a 2015 Raptor 332TS, sold it in july to a guy from Victoria for 28,500, and i wanted a 13 foot garage so the Defender and the feeder barrels could ride together. dealers in San Antonio and Boerne had used 2022 397s at 68 to 74 asking. new is over 100 and no.

how i found them: derek mentioned the outfit in karnes city in a text months ago, they are about 25 minutes from my house. it is not a dealer and there is no lot to walk. the rigs are bank repos sitting at the lender's yards wherever they got picked up. one sealed number per person, nobody sees what anybody else put in. this one was at a yard in Tulsa. no buyer's premium either. what i typed in the box is what the invoice said, to the dollar, i read it twice.

i will do the listing and the bid and the delivery in a second post tomorrow because it is long and i have to be up at 5. short version is it went fine and there is one thing that did not work when it showed up.

second post like i promised.

the listing. about 35 photos and a short walkaround video with the slides out and the generator running. hour meter on the onan showed 212. photos of the vin plate, the tire date codes, the garage floor, the roof from a ladder, the fuel station, both a/c units running with a thermometer in the vent. no photo of the water heater, i asked for one by email and had it the next morning. i asked if an inspector of mine could go by the Tulsa yard. answer was sure, on my dime, here is who to call at the yard. i never made that call and the reason is coming.

the bid before this one. a week earlier i bid 48,000 on a 2021 Fuzion 373 at a yard in Dallas through the same site and lost it. you do not find out what won, you just get the email. that stung and it changed how i bid on the 397. i had 58 in my head from the dealer numbers minus what a walkthrough is worth to me, and i put in 61,400 because i was not losing two in a row. that is also why i skipped the inspector, i did not want to wait two days and watch the listing close. not my smartest move and it worked out, both things are true.

the money. won it on a tuesday, wired it wednesday morning from the bank in Kenedy. they verify your id before they let you bid at all, i sent a picture of my license and a selfie holding it the week before, took a day.

delivery. free inside 1,000 miles of Karnes City, Tulsa to my lease is about 580 by the route the driver took, so no charge. their delivery estimate is two weeks give or take for the lower 48. a guy called me on day 7 from Oklahoma, showed up on day 9 at 4 in the afternoon pulling it with a 2019 Ram 3500 dually. i met him at the lease gate on 72 because the lease road is caliche with a bad low spot and i did not want a stranger finding it with 44 feet behind him. he unhooked at the gate, i hooked it to my truck and walked it in myself. signed a delivery sheet after i ran the slides, the generator and the leveling. the pace ace paperwork came in the same envelope, i will do that in another post because somebody is going to ask.

and the thing that did not work: the fuel station pump. dead. not even a hum. tulsa called it in post 2 before i said a word.

first_hauler_marisol wrotehow do you insure something you have never seen and do not have in your driveway yet

progressive took the vin and the bill of sale over the phone the morning i wired, wrote it as a fifth wheel at the value i paid, 41 dollars a month. they did not ask to see it. state farm, who has my truck, wanted to see it first, so the rig went to progressive.

first_hauler_marisol wrotecan you finance a sealed bid or is it cash only

i paid from the Raptor money plus savings so i never asked them. what i can tell you is my credit union in Kenedy said they would write an rv loan against the bill of sale plus the vin if i had the title path in writing, so get the loan answer from your bank before there is a rig to lose. do not take that as how pace ace does it, ask them, i only know what my bank said.

first_hauler_marisol wrotewhat happens if it shows up and the slide does not work or the roof is soft. is it just yours at that point

no, and this is the part i read three times before i bid. you get 30 days to send it back for your money if the listing misrepresented the rig in a material way, meaning it said something that was not true. separate from that there is a 6 month limited warranty for mechanical stuff that was defective at the sale or fails under normal use. a soft roof that was not in the photos would be the first one. a slide motor dying in week three would be the second. i have not used either. the pump is a 180 dollar part and i am not making a phone call over 180 dollars. somebody on here is going to have a real claim eventually and i want to read that thread.

pleasanton, half of that is fair. yes the Fuzion loss cost me maybe 2 or 3 thousand in how i bid, i said so. the other half, the dealer on 281 wanted my Raptor on trade at 21 and i sold it private for 28,500, so the whole trip works out better than your math, but on the 397 alone you are about right. i did not get a steal. i got a fair price with no hassle and a rig delivered to a gate 25 minutes from the broker. i am fine with that.

the paper, for weights. the bank is the seller on both the bill of sale and the title assignment, an oklahoma bank. pace ace motors shows up on the paperwork as the broker, which matches what their site says, they move the lender's rig, they do not own it. the release itself is one page, printed on the lender's own stationery, vin typed in, dated two days ahead of the title signature, and it says the loan is satisfied and they claim no further interest in the unit. i found the lender's real phone number on my own instead of trusting the one on the letter. took ten minutes to get to the person who handles recovered collateral and she read the vin back to me. do that. it is ten minutes.

title: the oklahoma title came in the envelope with the delivery paperwork, signed over to me. pace ace handled getting it out of the bank, i did not chase anybody. took the title and the bill of sale to the county tax office, did the 130-U standing at the counter, they charged tax on the 61,400 sale price, not a book number, and the texas title came in the mail 12 days later. i did not run a ucc search and after your buddy's story i probably should have. the lien letter plus the phone call was enough for me, and the texas title is in my hand now, so if a second bank turns up they can argue with the state.

and the pump. fuel station pump was dead on arrival, i said that in post 4. pulled the cover, tested for 12 volts at the plug, had voltage, so it was the pump. tulsa was right, it is a cheap unit. bought the same one off amazon for 180, four screws and two hose clamps, 30 minutes. filled the Defender off it saturday. that is all it has needed.

check in, derek asked. opening weekend was last saturday, 6 of us in camp. the rig has been at the lease since delivery so it has not been towed except from the gate in. onan is at 251 hours, so 39 hours mine, mostly running the a/c through october because it did not get cool until the norther came through on the 28th. everything tony listed in post 3 checked out except the garage a/c drain, which was plugged, and i cleared it with a piece of weed eater line.

one thing i am watching: the 12 volt fridge. between trips i shut the rig down and pull the disconnect, and after 9 days away the two batteries were at 11.9 when i got back. tulsa warned me. that is not a defect, that is how the rig is built, but i have to do something about it before i leave it out there over christmas.

UPDATE, thanksgiving weekend. the battery thing, since that is the actual problem and not a victory lap.

the everchill fridge pulls about 4 amps when it runs and there is no way to leave it on between trips on two group 27 batteries in the fall. what i did: a 200 watt panel on the roof and a 30 amp controller, 290 dollars total from a place in San Antonio, and swapped the two group 27s for two 6 volt golf cart batteries in series, 230 each at the battery place in Kenedy. left the fridge on and drove home for 12 days. came back wednesday and it was at 12.6 with cold beer in it. so that was 750 dollars, none of it a defect, all of it the rig being a 397.

running total since it came off the truck sept 5: pump 180, weed eater line 0, batteries and solar 750. nothing has failed. the 30 day window closed a long time ago without a call and the 6 month warranty runs to the end of february. i doubt i use it.

towed it for the first time since delivery on the 22nd, lease to the house and back, 34 miles each way, to wash it and pull the tanks before the cold. pulls straight, brakes are fine, the leveling faulted once on caliche and cleared on the second try. 648 miles on it since it left Tulsa by my count, 580 of them the driver's.

would i buy through the pace ace people again. yes, and i would send the inspector next time instead of letting a lost bid rush me. would i bid 61,400 again. probably 59, and probably lose, and pleasanton can have that one.