Thread: Jayco Journey Outback?

After seen 3 one year old Jayco vans, (the ones over $50000 ) with water damage due to bad craftsmanship I will not get near them.

Graeme please look elsewhere for a caravan... there are a lot better choices out there re build quality and value for money!!

Before we bought a van we hired various ones etc and after that there was a very long list of why we kept well away from that particular manufacturer .

Jc

Originally Posted by Chucaro

After seen 3 one year old Jayco vans, (the ones over $50000 ) with water damage due to bad craftsmanship I will not get near them.

Do you know if the sides were aluminium clad or the flat composite material? I was particularly favouring the composite walls on the Journey due to their better sealing with the roof and better resistance to hail damage.

JC, are you able to recommend better built and better value for money manufacturers? Reviews for several other brands' after sales service seem just as bad as this one and we don't have pockets deep enough for brands such Lotus, if they're actually any better. Lotus do seem good though but even a discounted 2015 17 footer at $70K is out of the question.

Originally Posted by Graeme

Do you know if the sides were aluminium clad or the flat composite material? I was particularly favouring the composite walls on the Journey due to their better sealing with the roof and better resistance to hail damage.

Composite.
Have a look THIS thread and you will know why Justin recommending you to do a good research.
IMO because I do not have the money to get a Evernew or a Bailey among very few others the best option it is to get an old one and restore it.

and its not just us Graeme
Jayco Starcraft Reviews - ProductReview.com.au

I've seen both of those threads. Buying from a dealer rather than direct from the manufacturer was envisaged in order to have some leverage on getting build faults corrected. We haven't settled on a Jayco but haven't found another brand that gets close with specs yet the price is not prohibitive. I don't know the chassis details of earlier Jaycos so can't compare ruggedness with current models.

An older van doesn't seem to be an option as its hard enough to find one with an en-suite at all, let alone a separate shower and toilet. There are plenty without any en-suite (that may or may not have water damage) but the reason for upgrading is to get an en-suite.

I haven't heard of Bailey or Evernew so thanks for those manufacturers to follow-up.

Graeme, we have a 2010 Jayco pop top twin axle outback van that we bought new, from memory, the model is a 18.55.3 which is just about the most popular of the pop top Jayco's.

I know maybe 5 or 6 other Jayco van owners and like me none of them have had any water issues and all rave about how good their vans are, especially for the money.
Plus even if they did have water issues the internal frame is aluminium, where as just about all other medium priced vans are marantee which falls apart and rots if it gets wet.

It sounds like your looking at the 17' model with the full bathroom across the back that was introduced about 18 months ago, my BIL has one. The only problem I see with them is to have a full bathroom in such a small van means there is little cupboard storage, bench top space. Ours has the combined WC/Shower/basin and works for us.

I have looked at the Starcraft models and while very affordable I wouldn't buy one, in fact I would never buy any aluminium clad van, one half decent hail storm and its stuffed and you usually end up waiting months to get it repaired, no such worries with a composite skinned van. Also I would not buy a single axle van, if it suffers a blow out then it can get really messy trying to pull it up.

There are lots of really good cheap couple of year old secondhand Jayco vans around and the trick is to find one with lots of extra solar, extra batteries, extra water tanks.
We timed it and a standard 82 litre tank takes 15 minutes to empty and you only get two tanks standard, we have three tanks in our van and if your doing mainly free camping then that amount of water can last if your careful about a week. If your staying in parks then that isn't a issue, except the HWS is only 22 litres so even with a full shower and town supply you can only take roughly a 5 -7 minute shower at best.

Owning a Jayco is like owning a Land Rover, everyone who has never owned one will give you ten good reasons not to buy one based on hearsay and what they have read on forums. If I remember right Jayco has over 60% of the new van market, if they were so bad then why do they sell so many?