I searched awhile for my used 3023, learning everything I could about them from these forums during that time. Fortunately, I have an ebay junkie wife, who kept looking there for us. She found one in San Antonio, TX that looked like it fit the bill on what I was looking for.
A used RV dealer there had it. I started asking him questions thru emails about it. The more we exchanged mails, the more the negotiations went. We quickly moved from emails to telephone calls. Alll of this transpired within 24 hours. We were still about $400 dollars off my price, when he throwed in the clincher. He said he would end the auction early for me, and pay my hotel bill if I wanted to come pick it up. As much as I like visiting San Antonio and hard as a good used Trailmanor is to come by.....he sold me.
When I arrived at his business, it was just as clean as he said it was, and the only thing really noticeably wrong was a dent in the upper half of the door, which he had disclosed on his ebay listing, with pics of it. This used dealer was knowledgeable about Trailmanors and took me thru the steps of opening and closing it (which I already knew from these forums). He had water in it, and showed me that the hot water heater, pump, etc. worked. I even climbed underneath it, looking at wiring, framing, seals, etc. I noticed after closing it, that one of the spring-loaded latches was barely holding down the front shell. The dealer had some heavy duty plastic cinches, which we used to help secure it for the journey back.
After arriving home, I gave it a hard inspection and found a crack on the frame. It was in a place that was hard to see, and I missed it on my initial inspection at the dealer. I won't hold that against the dealer either, because I called myself looking for things like that, but missed it and would have expected others to miss it too. It was very hard to see. I followed the advice from Leon and other members here about the crack, and emailed Ed at the TManor factory. After Ed conferred with their guys, he emailed me back precise directions on how to fix the crack and how to reinforce it. That right there sold me on the great customer service that Trailmanor has. Fortunately, I have an employee who is a welder, and he easily fixed the crack for me, following Ed's instructions.
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3728&highlight=frame+crack&page=9
I replaced the spring latch after I got it back home for $8 and the hot water heater anode rod for $13, all which my local Trailmanor dealer had in stock. I also replaced my tires, but I kinda have an inside source on those things. That's all I really had to do to get it in camping shape, outside of fixing the crack in the frame.
I had took a friend/co-driver of mine with me to pick this trailer up, and he had never seen the Alamo. We easily pulled my newly purchased TManor thru the streets of San Antonio down near the Alamo/Riverwalk. It was hard to find a parking spot, because of some kind of charity walk that was going on that morning. I finally found a paid parking lot with some other RV's in it. They charged me $50 bucks to park there. Me and the girl haggled over whether or not I had a true rv or not, but I lost that argument.
One of the first things I did after becoming a trailmanor owner, was to officially join this forum group. Best thing any Trailmanor owner can do.
