Cruisers Forum
Main Forum => General Discussion => Topic started by: CrazyG on January 29, 2015, 09:33:56 am
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We more or less have our heart set on a Phoenix Cruiser....
But over on the Motor Home Magazine Open Roads Forum, they had been talking about other good units also....like Coachouse, and Nexus, in a addition to PC's..
So, we were down in South Carolina yesterday, and happened to be going by a Camping World...
"NOT" my favorite place to visit, to say the least...
BUT, they had a 24' Coachouse we looked at, and from the outside, it seamed quite nice....
A 2007, Platinium edition with a convertable sofa bed, and dinette in a bed also...
For the cabinetry, they use some form of compressed foil laminate for the doors, and drawers..
WELL!!! The foil laminate was delaminating on all the doors, and drawers faces...
The salesman said the 7+ yr old unit originally probably sold for $140K...
The color of the laminate was deep red, similar to PC Cherry cabinets...
MY Comment is...
PRAISES TO PHOENIX CRUISER FOR USING THE REAL THING, AND NOT SOME FAKE STUFF AND NOT CHARGING $140K FOR THE UNITS THEY MANUFACTURE... (cheer)
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Laminate door and virtually any other "wood" finish in most RV's is laminated. If you find a company that doesn't use laminate doors, drawer faces etc, and doesn't charge 2 arms and a leg for their units, it's definitely worth a look. PC is one of the few that still use real wood in their RV's.
A friend of ours just bought a 2015, 24P Nexus. They have real wood doors, but the finish quality of those doors, and the rest of the woodwork wasn't really up to the standards of PC. Otherwise it's a nice coach inside & out. I wouldn't buy one over a PC though because they are wider & taller. The old school class C size vs PC's more compact exterior dimensions.
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For the record, Phoenix uses real solid wood for the doors and drawer faces. They are stained and finished just like your kitchen cabinets at home. But the actual cabinets, though real wood, they are made of plywood including the faces of the cabinetry. The rails & styles and cabinet sides are finished with a vinyl-paper product that has a wood grain stamped into it to look so dang close to the real thing. I recall a while back, one PC owner had trouble with that material bubbling on his cabinets. There was only one such story so I would not be concerned.
You can determine if my information applies to your particular PC by getting a mirror and place it inside your cabinet to see the back side of the cabinet face. If you have the same as our 2007 2350, you will see the ends of the finish vinyl-paper wrapped around to the cabinet interior but not touching each other. It will look like a stripe of unfinished wood. You'll want to examine a vertical board called a style, positioned in-between adjacent cabinet doors because an end piece might have another board covering over the area. I learned of this a number of years ago but two winters ago I had first hand exposure to it when reconfiguring our kitchen base cabinet from 5 small drawers to 3 large drawers HERE (http://forum.phoenixusarv.com/index.php/topic,1751.0.html). I should take a picture of ours and post it for clarification.
I wonder if Phoenix has since changed this construction practice, now installing solid wood faced cabinetry. I would be interested in reading what others have discovered on their particular model year PCs.
I have heard it said before that the interior finishing of Coach House and Nexus products is less than that of Phoenix, paper or no paper.