woodchuck123
RVF Newbee
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2021
- Messages
- 3
I thought I would share an update on our 2021 CS 3927. As most people know by now, starting in 2021 all the Canyon Stars are all front engine diesels or FREDs. The FRED has about the same horsepower as the Ford F-53’s V10/V8 but about twice torque. So more torque is good, but it also has a Freightliner chassis so it has bigger brakes, an exhaust brake, air suspension in the rear, and a better front suspension in the front. So all together a better ride with no sway and better power for towing and climbing hills.
We got it last September. Since then we have driven it about 5K miles. We have taken it to gulf coast along south Alabama, the Ozarks in Arkansas, the Cumberland plateau in Tennessee, the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and to northern Michigan.
It drives great. I am a newbie at driving a 40’ motorhome, so it took me about 1000 miles of driving to get totally comfortable and to actually let go of the wheel with one of my hands. So now it is easy to drive. One still has to pay attention to what is around you, stopping distance, etc. but I am now relaxed and not gripping the steering wheel too tightly. I learned to look down the road and not just past the hood and as a result I no longer move around in the lane.
It probably doesn’t steer as nice as a ‘comfort drive’, but it is pretty effortless. With the Freightliner chassis it doesn’t get blown around by passing trucks.
It handles hills and mountains pretty well. When I was younger, my first RV was a ’71 VW camper van
The FRED, goes up the hills and mountains without much effort. It has a 6 speed transmission. Cruising down the highway it is normally in 6, downshifts to 5 on small inclines if you push on the gas. On bigger hills it will shift into 4 and keep most of the speed up the hills. On the really steep inclines when crossing the Appalachians on I-68 in western Maryland it did every incline except one staying in 4th or 5th gear. On one really long 7% incline it downshifted into 3rd, and slowed to 35-40 mph. But it never felt like it was working very hard. And the exhaust brake works great for when going down the inclines.
And people always wonder about the noise from the front engine. What most don’t realize is that Newmar/Freightliner designed it so that there is no doghouse. The engine is under the floor. So no heat or noise coming to the coach. The motor is tuned to run quiet, so 95% of the time it is just a low rumble. Quieter than a lot of cars. When accelerating hard or going up a big hill you can hear it, but it never gets loud enough that you feel you need to turn up the radio or talk louder.
We tow a stock 2018 Jeep JKU. We have averaged 9 MPG while towing the Jeep over the 5K miles we have towed it.
Getting fuel is interesting. We use the truck stop lanes. The fuel cap for the diesel is about 3/4 of the way back, so you have to pull pretty far forward. The challenge is the DEF tank is up by the driver window. So if buy DEF and Diesel it is a bit of two stage process as you first have to get the DEF and the move the coach forward so that the hose will reach the fuel filler for the diesel. To date, we have opted to get the DEF at Walmart and fill up the DEF tank while not at the truck stop.
When camped in a campground, it gets lots of looks and we get lots of questions especially when they see the garage open. At the last campground, which was a small campground near Nellysford VA the campground host while doing his morning walk came up to me to ask some questions. He had a Tiffin Open Road. He was asking about the FRED as he hadn’t seen one before. While we are talking, he pauses and then asks “is that a toy hauler?” I proceeded to explain yes, and show him the garage door and the second entry. His jaw nearly hit the ground and then he said “I gotta look into getting one of those.”
We love the floorpan of the coach. We liked the idea of the garage when we bought it as we saw it as multi-purpose space as we didn’t have nor planned on getting motorcycles/kayaks/golf carts/smart cars to put in the garage. The garage works great as a screen room, dining room, office, laundry/mud, and craft room. The second entrance is great as we come in the back and take off our shoes and rain gear back there and thus avoid tracking the outdoors into the house!
We thought we wanted a king size bed, and thought we were settling with queen size bed but it works just fine. The Sleep Number bed is great. We both sleep great on it. We actually sleep better on it than any other bed we have owned and better than any hotel. So no complaints with the bed. Ours came with storage space under the bed which has proved really useful.
The bathroom works fine. Yes its small, but not too small. I like the seat in the shower as I am 6’4” so it makes it easy for me to wash my hair. Love the Truma instant hot water heater. It has made me a convert and plan to install an instant hot water heater when we ever buy a house. And the Fantastic fans work well too. They should put those in houses too. And Dometic macerator toilet seems to work like a champ.
The induction cooktop works great. We bought induction compatible pots for it and it all works. We just wish you could put both burners on high at the same time. So it takes a little bit of planning when cooking. But we also got a Blackstone Griddle we take with us, and bought a second single burner induction cooktop to use outside. So we cook outside a lot too.
The kitchen is a bit counter top challenged. One learns to prepare food while balancing it near the edge of the counter top or to prepare it at the dinette table. Not a huge deal but a little more space would be nice. The residential fridge works great! We needed to adjust the lock mechanism on it to keep it from opening while going down the road, but once we did that it works fine. And the pantry actually holds a decent amount of food. We also use the cabinets over the love seat for foot.
The love seat doesn’t get much love from us. Our Canyon Star came with a jack-knife love seat. It is not very comfortable and we don’t need the fold out bed it came with. So that is on the list to get replaced with something better. We did find online some really nice collapsible lightweight footstools to use while sitting on the love seat, and they seem to help.
The dinette is fine for two people. I can’t imagine more than two people ever sitting at it.
And we figured out how to get the front seats to swivel. The passenger seat is pretty easy. The driver seat takes some maneuvering. But once swiveled they work well for the two of us to enjoy a beverage and some jazz at the end of the day.
The garage is what makes all of this work as it is much more than a garage. It is really a multipurpose room. We like to use it as an office during the day, a screen room to enjoy some wine bug free at the end of the day, and as dining room with a view in the evening. We learned to get back-in sites, as then the screen faces toward something other than the campground road. And for campgrounds with the sites close together it is nice as you looking out the back and not at your neighbor. The garage also works well for additional storage space and as a laundry room.
The basement compartments aren’t as a big as a DP due to the long drive shaft down the middle, but they work fine.
The HVAC system works. It has 2 heat pumps and one AC with heat strips. It also has a Suburban propane heater. The AC so far has been up to the task. The heat pumps work great and magically switch to the furnace at around 38’ F. The furnace works and keeps the pipes and basement compartments warm too. Being paranoid I installed some wireless thermometers to monitor the basement during the colder months. Everything works fine down to at least 14’ F. One day in March we got caught in a late season snow storm/cold front. It snowed 4” and got down to 14’ F that night. It stayed warm and cozy inside and the basements stayed warm too. I did disconnect the fresh water hose and the sewer hose before going to bed. Of course being a newbie I didn’t drain the sewer hose so it was a giant 10’ long ice cube the next day but all my pipes were good. The campers in the sites on either side of me had frozen pipes in the RVs. My wireless thermometers showed that the basements stayed around 40’ F. So I would imagine it probably could get close to 0’ F before one needed to do something more.
The propane furnace does use a lot of propane when it is cold. It will go about 2 weeks on a full tank when it is really cold outside.
We haven’t had any major issues. After about a month the fill tube for the automatic transmission came unseated and started to leak fluid after being parked for a couple of weeks. Freightliner came out the next day to the site and fixed it in about 2 hours. And we did take it to the Newmar Service Center for them to fix the leaking basement compartments on the passenger side, a grounding problem with one circuit of the interior lights, and a missing air dump valve/switch for the rear suspension. Otherwise (knock on wood) it has worked really well.
The likes:
1. Floor plan with the garage
2. Sleep number air bed
3. Instant hot water heater
4. Fit and finish of the interior, LVP floors are nice
5. Second entry door in the garage
6. The micro-suede fabric on the furniture
Dislikes:
1. Kitchen counter space is pretty limited
2. The furnace is a little loud
3. The jackknife love seat, almost anything else would be better
4. The power window on the driver side, it’s dumb. It would be better to have a bigger screened window like on the passenger side
5. Can’t open the fridge very far when the slides are in, so one has to think ahead when packing the fridge for a travel day.
6. Would like it if the DEF and diesel were closer together to make it easier to fill both of them up at a truck stop.
Overall very happy with it and Newmar. For two people it works well. We know its not as luxurious as some of the more expensive Newmars, but it is still really nice.
