bought a 2021 Winnebago Vista 29V on a sealed bid, picking it up in Karnes City on the way down

this is our third winter in Mission and the first one where we will not be in the 2004 Itasca Sunova. we sold it in august to a young couple in St. Peter and i have been shopping since june for a gas class A under 32 feet with the 7.3 instead of the V10. dealer asks on a 2021 Winnebago Vista 29V around the twin cities and down in Forest City were 92 to 104 thousand, and the ones under 90 had 40 thousand miles or a story.

a fellow two sites down from us at the park last winter had bought a fifth wheel through paceacemotors.net and talked about it for the entire month of february, so i went and looked in july. they are a broker for bank repos out of Karnes City, which is south of San Antonio on 123. nothing is parked at their place, each unit stays at whichever lender yard took the repo, and you put in one bid, sealed, nobody sees anybody else's number. whoever is highest gets it, no buyer's premium, so what you bid is what the invoice says. i read that three times because i did not believe it either.

the pace ace listing that got me was a 2021 Vista 29V, Ford F-53 chassis with the 7.3 V8, 14,200 miles, 212 hours on the Onan 5500, one owner, sitting at a lender yard in Houston. 34 photos and a walkaround video, but the video was a warm start so i asked for a cold start clip and photos of the slide seals and the roof, and i had them in two days. i also asked what service history there was. that was the thin part, more on that below.

bid 71,800 on the 3rd. how i got there: i priced what the two dealers near us would pay on trade for that coach, added ten percent, and rounded up. they called on the 5th and said it was ours. wired the money on the 8th from our credit union in Mankato.

here is the part that is different from the fifth wheel fellow. we are not in Minnesota in november, we are in Texas, and i did not want a coach sitting in the driveway in Mankato through october. so i asked if we could pick it up on the drive down instead of having it delivered. answer was yes, pick it up at their lot in Karnes City, they bring it over from Houston the week before. we set it for the 24th of october. it is about 350 miles from the lot to Mission going down 181 and 77, which is a nice first day in a new coach.

so as of tonight i own a coach i have not touched. i will post the pickup when it happens. questions welcome, i have plenty of my own still.

first_winter_gail wrotedid you have to pay all of it up front? i would need to finance part of a coach like that

we paid it all by wire, the sunova money plus savings, so i cannot tell you how they handle a lender on the buyer side. i would guess it works like any private sale, you get preapproved at your credit union first and they wire it, but ask the pace ace people directly, i did not. do not bid a number you cannot fund in a few days, because they did want the wire fairly quick after they called.

first_winter_gail wrotehow do you insure it before you own it

i called our agent in Mankato the day they said we won, gave her the VIN off the listing, and she bound it that afternoon to start the day of the wire. same as buying from a private party. it was 1,140 a year with Progressive, full coverage, a little less than the sunova, which makes no sense to me but there it is.

and ron, the service history. the Carfax had two entries on it. the dealer delivery inspection in 2021 and one oil change at a Ford dealer in Katy in 2023. that is it for four years and 14,000 miles. no chassis service since 2023 that anybody wrote down. so i am going to assume nothing has been done and do it all, fluids, filters, generator service. the oil in the pan and the transmission fluid will tell me something when they come out.

fair, and i half agree with you. i went back and forth on this for a week before i bid. the discount was not the point. the Fargo one at 79,900 asking had 8,000 more miles and i would have driven 300 miles to look at it and then negotiated. what i got at 71,800 was a lower mile coach, no premium on top from the outfit in karnes city, and the fact that it was in Texas already, where i needed it to be in october. delivering the Fargo coach to Mission would have been on me.

where you are right is the service history and the test drive. i took a risk on those for maybe 4 to 8 thousand under what a dealer would have ended up at, and the 30 day guarantee if the listing was wrong about something big is the backstop, not a substitute for driving it. if the transmission fluid comes out black i will come back here and tell you that you were right. i would not have done this on a 2012 with 80,000 miles. on a 2021 with 14,000 i was willing to.

good question and i did figure it out, mostly. the seller is the lender. Pace Ace Motors is the broker and they say that plainly on the site, they do not own the units. the lender releases the lien before the title transfers and pace ace handles the title work on their end. before i wired i had a scan of the Texas title with the lienholder shown, plus a letter on the bank's letterhead from their asset recovery people releasing the lien and quoting the VIN. i called the bank at the number on the bank's own website, not the one on the letter, and a woman there confirmed the release. the original title comes with the coach when i pick it up, signed over.

minnesota. i talked to the DVS office in Mankato. the 10 days is the rule but the late penalty is small and they said mail it, so the title, the bill of sale, the application and a check go in the mail from Texas in november and the plates go to my daughter's house. sales tax goes to Minnesota on the purchase price since that is where it gets registered.

pickup report, writing from our site in Mission. we left Mankato on the 22nd in the pickup, two nights on the road, and got to the karnes city lot friday morning the 24th. it is a lot with a small office on 123 south of town, no showroom, a handful of units. the vista was there, they had brought it over from Houston that tuesday. a fellow walked me through it, started it, ran the generator, ran the slide out and in, and handed me the original title with the lender's signature, the release letter and a bill of sale. i checked the VIN on the plate against the title and the odometer against the listing photo, 14,203 against 14,201. that was the whole handoff, maybe 45 minutes, and i was not rushed.

my wife drove the pickup and i drove the coach, 181 to Sinton, 77 to Harlingen, 83 into Mission. every second truck on 77 was hauling a deer blind or a feeder ahead of the opener. the 7.3 is everything ron said. 63 on 77 with the cruise on and it never downshifted once until the bridge at Riviera.

the one thing wrong. the house batteries. two group 24 flooded batteries that would not hold the fridge overnight at the rest area south of Sarita where we stopped for a nap, the inverter alarm went off at 4 am. i expected it after ron's post. Batteries Plus in McAllen, a pair of 6 volt golf cart batteries, 400 with the core. batteries on a coach that sat are a consumable, not something i would send to pace ace, and honestly i would have swapped out group 24s anyway. everything else works. more when i have some miles on it.

UPDATE, end of november. 2,140 miles on it since Karnes City, 16,340 on the clock. a trip to South Padre, a run up to San Antonio to see friends over Thanksgiving, and the daily stuff. 7.9 mpg at 63, which is better than the V10 sunova did.

the thing i want to write about is the generator, because it is the one problem we have had and it is the one i had to make a decision on. the Onan 5500 started surging under the ac load two weeks in, hunting up and down every few seconds. mobile tech came out (the same fellow who posts on the coach board), said the carburetor was gummed from sitting at the yard with old fuel, cleaned it, new fuel filter, 210 dollars. i thought about making it a warranty claim, the 6 months covers mechanical failures and this one was probably there at the sale. i did not, because i wanted it fixed that afternoon and 210 was not worth the back and forth of getting a written diagnosis first. so i cannot tell you how pace ace motors handles a warranty claim, only that i chose not to find out over 210 dollars. somebody with a bigger problem will have to report that.

the transmission fluid, since i promised. came out dark red, not black, no smell. the engine oil was fine. so the thin service history turned out to be a coach that did not get driven much rather than one that got neglected, which is the better of the two.

total spent since pickup outside of normal service: 400 batteries, 210 generator, 38 for a new sewer hose because the one in the bay was cracked. would i buy through the pace ace auction again. yes, on a newer low mile coach, and i would ask for the cold start video and the service records before i bid, and i would not bid on one where the history had nothing in it at all. i would still rather have driven it first. that is the trade.