6 Month Review of our 2018 Roadtrek Zion

We're at Manning Park at the Hampton Campground. Beautiful spots, but the one problem with the Hampton Campground is you're really close to the highway. So you're going to hear some highway noise and you might hear some of the other campers as they leave through the day. We wanted to do a six month review of our Roadtrek Zion. It's almost six months to the day, actually six months was yesterday. We did do a previous review when we had it for six weeks, so if you haven't actually seen the six week review, I'd encourage you to go look at that. We went into some areas in a fair amount of detail in that review. If we touched on it there, we're not going to really touch on it much in this review. I think what's important to note is that we're also part-timers, so we're not living on our Roadtrek Zion full-time like some people are. We're out, I would say, three out of four weekends on trips, so we've done a lot of different trips, sometimes just one-nighters, others four or five days, and we're just actually now in the middle of summer where I anticipate we'll get some much longer trips. Just to take that into account when you're looking at our review. We're going to break our video kind of into three segments. We'll talk a little bit about the ProMaster chassis, then we'll do just some of the outside features, then we'll move to the coach, basically, the part that's built by Roadtrek, and then we'll have just some overall comments and conclusions at the end. So join us as we talk about our Roadtrek Zion. We've had the Zion now for just a little over six months, and we've driven it in all types of weather. We've driven it in winter, in snow, we've driven it in lots of rain, which is what you see usually in the West Coast, and a lot of bumpy roads. Generally it's gone very well. I should note, too, I did change the tires out as soon as I bought the van. We have Geoland or Geo 15 tires on, which are actually an all-terrain tire, and technically they're a legal snow tire as well. You can drive them all year round, but they give us that little extra traction in snow. That was something that was very important to me. So in the six months that we've had the ProMaster, we really, I'd say, love it. It's easy to drive, it's got a great short turning circle, you can park it just about anywhere. I think if we had the SRT, it might be a little easier to park, because it's about a foot and a half shorter, but generally this fits in most of the parking spots. So it gets reasonable fuel economy, and I would note that, I'm usually quoting things in miles per gallon, but a Canadian gallon is about 20% larger than a U.S. gallon, so just factor that in. So our fuel economy's been reasonable. The best fuel economy that we had is 20 miles per gallon, the worst is 12, and the average we're getting is about 18 miles per gallon. Now it's also important to note that where we live and most of the trips we go to, we've got a fairly steep series of hills that we always have to cross, so that's actually, the mileage would be, I think, significantly higher if you were driving on highway miles on a lot more flat terrain than we do. So I think 18 miles per gallon is pretty good, given the fact that we have a number of hills, probably 6-7% grades that we go up and down on a regular basis, so I think that's important to note. One of the questions that we often get asked is, how is the truck on the hills, and it's actually pretty good. As I said, we've gone up steep hills, maybe 7% grade. You can stay at 100 kilometers an hour, that's about 60 miles per hour, and you'll be at about 4,000 RPM on the motor if you're going up that long hill. It is important you don't slow down, though, if you get behind, say, at Westphalia and slow down to 50 or 60 kilometers per hour, and you pull out to pass, it's going to be a long process. While the motor's strong enough and the transmission's designed to keep you going at a reasonably decent speed up a steep hill, it's hard if you have to actually pull out and then accelerate. So that's just one of the challenges, but we've been pretty happy with that, and we just take that into account when we're driving. So one of the things that we hadn't covered off in the initial review was, I think you'll see in one of our clips, the hot water heater, and that's just in here, very easy to open up. It's currently turned on, off, on, that's as complicated as it gets, we get hot water whenever we need it. The other thing I wanted to show everyone was, because we've had a few questions about it, was the outside shower, and we've only used this a couple of times, so I left the water pump on so I could actually show you. So here's the length of the hose, there's one thing about that, I once went to use it to put out the campfire, but I needed about that much more hose, so it's a good size. In terms of water flow, you can hear the water pump now, you're not going to get, that's about as much pressure as you get. Still more than enough to shower, no I'm not going to soak myself, just to show you that. One thing though, is that the water taps are actually reversed to that of our house, and it always drives me a little crazy whenever I use any of the water taps, because they're backwards, but they work well enough. And then on, you can also see there's a shut-off valve here. So when we've used this, the one nice thing even with this width length of hose, if you're concerned, you can either shower in shorts or have your van parked so it gives you a little bit more privacy. It's also long enough that if you want, you can actually walk around the back and shower here. So again, it's an easy way to clean off if you've gone for a run, just spuddy, or just have a proper shower if you don't want to use the shower inside. You'll see in our previous video, the shower inside works fine, it's tight, I wouldn't want to be too much bigger than I am to make it work, but it's nicer to shower outside if you can. Just at the back of the van, just to show you, we saw that you were seeing this, I think we'll have a clip of us just putting in our first time we've actually used the mosquito screens. The mosquito screen worked very well, we got to have a nice breeze through the van yesterday, it's warm here, about 28 or 30 degrees Celsius. So one thing that we hadn't shown, I think previously also, was just the propane hookup. Always slam the door, make sure it's locked fairly hard, otherwise it won't, you can't lock the door. So here's the propane, really simple, it's fully on, off, counter-clockwise to turn it back on. Works really well. We last filled up, I think, probably the beginning of April, and we've used it a lot, the furnace has come on a lot, and we're down to one-third of a tank right now, so I think cooking uses almost none, or very little, and certainly the furnace does use some, but it seems to last a very long time. It's a good sized tank. I think the tank in the Zion is slightly larger than the tank in the SRT version, just because of the space on the chassis. So it's just one thing to be aware of if you're looking at the different models. One thing I wanted to talk about, too, is just trying to keep the van cool, and that is a bit of a challenge. You'll see when we started the video that we have Reflectix up in the window, but I want to show you what actually comes with the van. So for the cab, with the Zion, you get these, which are somewhat, they're like a little insulated material, black for the inside, obviously white to put out towards the outside. They fit in the passenger and driver window. They work very well. They stick in, there's little magnets inside, and they clip in, and they seem to work very well, and they're a little thick, so they provide some insulation. So we use them both to insulate the cab in the colder months, and then in the summer to keep the heat out. Now we've got Reflectix in the front window, and we use that when we're usually just for, going to be somewhere for a short period of time. The front window also comes with the same material as for the two other front windows, but you can see, it's quite big, it's fairly heavy, and it's very thick. So it's kind of cumbersome to put up. We still use it, and we will typically use it if it's colder, or today when we're parking the van for the rest of the day, if it's in the sun, we'll use it, because it works better in my view than Reflectix. It's just the Reflectix is so easy and so light, you can just put it up and down in like a minute. This takes you a little bit of time just to get it squished in the right spot, and to get it to fit over top of the mirror, but it still does work. It's bulky though, you can see when it's folded up, it takes up a fair amount of room. So we usually put this in behind our sofa, and store it there, and just use the Reflectix for short trips to block the sun. Since I use the kitchen and cook most of the time, I'll talk a little bit about the kitchen. The propane stoves are really great, I really like it. They're a little bit small, so you can't really put any big pots or pans or frying pans on the burners, but in general they're really good, they work really well, and the propane seems to last forever. The microwave, I think we use it occasionally, but we try to refrain from using it, because it takes up a lot of power, so only when absolutely necessary, we'll use the microwave. The kitchen sink and the tap is fine, it's a little small, but it's fine. I've really learned to, as a new VR viewer, conserve water, and just because I'm aware that the grey tank has limited space, we have limited water in the fresh water tank, although the fresh water tank seems to last a lot longer, but the grey tank seems to fill up pretty quickly. So I've learned to use very little water when I'm washing the dishes, and even brushing our teeth, both of us use maybe a quarter cup of water to brush our teeth. The kitchen tap, also it works really great, but I think you might have seen in some other reviews of the tap, that when you lift it up and turn on the water accidentally, it'll shoot straight at you, so you have to be careful. The kitchen counter space, it's obviously very tight. We tend to use the sink area or the stove area to put things on, so I find that it gets a little awkward if I want to use both the kitchen tap and the stove at the same time. And the extra, the folding countertop works well, except sometimes it kind of gets in the way of the side sliding doors, when we're trying to bring food and things like that in and out of the van, it kind of gets in the way. So it would be nice to have extra counter space, but I have no idea where they would put it. So you just have to be organized in doing your cooking, and ensure that you don't take too much stuff out and put everything on the counter. You just sort of take what you need, put it away, and then that works well. One thing I noticed is the smoke alarm is a little bit sensitive, and so if I'm sauteing something or cooking something in a frying pan that might smoke a little bit, it sets it off right away, even making fried eggs. We definitely set it off when we make toast, so we've ended up having to put the toaster outside on the step there. That seems to work well. The refrigerator works really well, I really like it. For a trip for a few days, I can pretty much put everything I need to put in the fridge. It gets a little crowded if you're trying to put lots of cold drinks in there, but otherwise, space-wise it's perfect. And the only thing that I would change in the fridge is maybe make it a frost-free freezer, because we're always concerned about ice building up and having to defrost, and then we're worried that it might leak when the van is in storage. I do like the LED lighting a lot in the coach. They're a little bit bright, so quite often we use the smaller LED lighting on the side, especially in the evening when we don't really want it to shine into our eyes, but the great thing is that you can pick and choose which ones you want to turn on and off, and they're really handy. I tend to be a little bit clumsy, so the compartment in the cab above the passenger and driver seats, the storage compartment, kind of gets in the way, and I do hit my head there quite a lot. The two little compartments above the passenger seat and the driver seat are fine, they're great. I like to put my maps and things like that up there. The cab seating for the passenger and the driver, the swivel seats, we never swivel the driver seat. We just leave it as is, but we do swivel the passenger seat a lot. Now if you'd swivel it all the way around 180 degrees, I'm about 5'5", and I find that my legs, or my feet dangle, so what I end up doing is sort of swiveling it halfway and then resting my feet on the driver's seat if I do need to sit there. In terms of the tank readers, we've had a little bit of issue with that, especially the grey tank. You know, we're certain that we haven't used that much water, but it seems to show sometimes that it's two-thirds full, and sometimes, depending on the slope of where the van is, in a certain location we had the tank read one-third, and in another location it read empty, so not entirely reliable, but with your own use you start to get used to how much water you probably do have in the tank, and how much is safe to use. The blackout curtains that come standard with the van, the little plastic that's attached to the seam of the curtains end up kind of getting pulled off very easily. As we've mentioned in our first review video, the shower works well, and we've showered in the van a few times, and it's fine. We don't use the little sink in the bathroom, it's just too small. The clothes closet, it has a hanging rod, and we find we don't really hang our clothes in there, we tend to use the command hook to hang a lot of our clothes. So what we've done, and one of our viewers actually had this idea, is to buy a drawer system, and so we bought, just from Home Depot, a plastic three-drawer system, and it actually works really well right now. So the large drawer underneath the fridge, we now refer to it as our junk drawer. We throw everything and anything in there, and it's such a big space and it's great. In the future what I'd like to do is organize it a little bit better so that we know where everything is, but it's a great storage compartment to have. The additional storage underneath the side seats in the back of the van are very handy as well. It's nice to be able to store the handheld vacuum and our cat's litter, and also additional paper towels and Kleenex boxes and things like that. One thing which would be nice is because we have to lift up the seat cushions and the wooden boards in order to access those areas, it would be nice if there were doors in the front so that we could access them without having to lift up the cushions, but just a little inconvenience, that's all. The rest of the storage compartments in the van are great. The hinges do get loose occasionally, and we've had to tighten them or put them back into place, especially if we've driven on a rough road. But otherwise, good space, good use of space. I don't think we utilize the space as efficiently as we could. When I have time I'll try to organize myself a little better and use the space more efficiently. So I wanted to talk, just do some summary points. I've talked a little bit about the ProMaster, Mickey's talked a little bit about the inside. Generally I think we're very happy with the van as a whole, but I'm going to talk about a couple areas that people have asked questions about. First, storage. So Mickey showed you some storage, some of the spaces that we have and some of the things that we've changed, and we can still, I think we can still make some modifications. Storage overall though, you're in a Class B, so there's limited storage. But I think if you use it wisely, there's quite a bit of room. So I compare it to a backpack. We used to do a lot of backpacking, and if you've ever used a backpack, you recognize that when you buy items and you store them in your backpack, if they come in a little container and you put that container in your backpack, you're probably going to end up only using 50 or 60% of the usable space. Ideally what you do is you take the things that you're not likely going to have to pull out of your backpack too often and stuff them in little corners, and that works well. Same sort of theory for the Class B van. Use the space effectively. If you take it out of a container, maybe take the things you're not going to use too often and stuff them in a corner, you can get a lot of space and a lot of storage. Another example of that would be the boats that we have. So if I bring our packraft, which you've seen in a number of the videos, the packraft is about the size of a small backpacking tent. But by the time you have the paddles and the PFD, I mean a pack that's probably about this high and this wide, that fits anywhere. I can put it behind the sofa bed. Often we just leave it in the cab, and at night we have it underneath the bed as storage. But I could also take it apart and move it into different sections of the cab. So I think if you do that, you'll find that there's lots of room in the Class B. And of course, you know, try not to bring more than you need. That's one of the things that we found in having, I don't know if it's just having a camper van or this particular model, but you're really a lot more conscious about what you need and what you don't need. We've been asked a question about VoltStart and how VoltStart works. Basically, you turn it on, and if the battery level gets too low, it will automatically start the coach and run for 30 minutes. So we're just going to try showing you how Voltrek works. We've actually run one of our batteries down. I'll show you that right now. It's at 12.94 volts. Even though it's daytime, I've got the patio light on. I'm just trying to draw the power down. Quite frankly, we're just trying to draw down our electricity as much as we can. So hopefully, VoltStart will kick on. And what we're going to do is I'm going to turn VoltStart on, and then we're going to kick on an appliance and see if it'll bring it down low enough to have VoltStart start. So here's how it works. Fairly simple. That's it. Turn on the button. VoltStart tends to kick on, I think, at about 12.5, 12.6 volts. But we're going to try it right now. So we're going to turn on the toaster, which we've actually got outside. And what happens is when you turn on an appliance and it's under load, it'll draw the battery down. And if you turn the, like if we turned it on right now, it's going to probably drop from 12.94 to down, maybe down to 12.6 or 12.7. As soon as we turn the toaster off, the actual battery storage charge is going to be, say, around 12.9 again, unless we leave it on for a long time. However, VoltStart will kick on, at least what we've noticed, it'll kick on as soon as your battery level gets low, period. So I'm just going to get Mickey to turn on the toaster right now. And I'm going to pause. I don't know if you heard that, but the VoltStart just came on. Still on. You can see that the engine's running now. Now, the only way, and I'll show you what the voltage right now as it's charging shows 13.14, and it will run for about 30 minutes. And then it'll shut off. The other thing I just want to mention is that while it's under, while it's charging, the number is going to look really high. But I'm going to turn the engine off and you'll see it'll drop down to probably about 12.9 because it's just showing you the voltage as it's charging. It's not showing you right now the actual voltage remaining in the battery. So now we're going to just turn off. So if you want to turn off VoltStart, you have to reinsert the key. And then you have to actually depress the brake. There you go. Now it's still on. And you can see the battery now is about 13.1. So it's charged up a little bit compared to where it was before we started the VoltStart. We've used it, I guess, twice when it's come on. We were charging two batteries one time, and it brought our battery charge up to 13.4 volts after 30 minutes, which was sufficient for what we needed, and we subsequently were off driving somewhere. So we didn't actually have VoltStart run multiple times. We've never had that happen. But it seems to work quite well. It's kind of strange, though, to be either sitting outside or be sitting in your van and then have it start with nobody sitting in there. And the first time that happened, even though I know I had VoltStart on, I was a bit confused for a couple of seconds trying to figure out what happened, what's going on, because the van just started. Now, Roadtrek has advised that the maximum voltage for your battery is 13.6 volts. They halfway, so a 50% charge is 12.8, and basically the batteries will shut off around 12.2 volts. One of the two items that actually sold us, I think, on the Roadtrek was, first of all, the warranty, the six-year warranty. The second was just the whole electrical system. So the solar panels, the lithium batteries, and the VoltStart. And we found all three to be really helpful. As a matter of fact, if I had any... I think if I was to add anything or want anything more, I wish I could add another lithium battery. It would just be nicer to have that much extra power. We haven't had any issues, but it would just be nice to have that extra battery. Let me talk a little bit about fit and finish, because people ask that question, too, from us. How's the overall quality of the Roadtrek? We found it quite high. I mean, there are some things that maybe aren't the best design. The ottoman, for example, in the back is really just an ottoman. It's a funny design. You can't sit anyone there, even though the big cushions are there. You couldn't sit anybody. The closet comes out too far. So it's not really an effective seat. But you can certainly sit on the other side and put your feet up on it. So maybe there's a better way to design that. The quality of the cabinet seemed fine. We haven't had anything fall off. I think Mickey talked about sometimes the latches can be a bit finicky, but nothing inappropriate. On a scale of 10, I'd probably say the quality is maybe an 8. Pretty good. There's a few things that are a little off, but nothing significant. I think they've done a pretty good job overall in the fit and finish. And certainly, same thing on the outside. We've had no issues at all. It seems to be good. Really, I've got two critiques of the Zion overall. One is just with regard to the coach and the fact that the van is cold. So when we've used it in the winter or even yesterday, yesterday it was warm here. It was 25, 26 degrees, so over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But at night, it got down to 4, so about 39, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And I had anticipated to get that cold. We're fairly high up. We're at about 1,200 meters, so a little over 4,000 feet. But I hadn't anticipated to get that cold. So the furnace came on a lot last night, and I hadn't insulated. Now, what we typically do is we insulate the cab with the features that we showed you yesterday, with the covers that come for the window, because the cab can get cold. And then we had a blanket on the back door and on the side door from the inside, and that helps a lot. And then we put Thinsulate in all the other windows. Now, Thinsulate is light and easy to use. It helps a bit. It doesn't help as much as I think some people have said in videos I've seen, but it certainly does make a difference, and so we use it. So that's one critique. The other critique I have with regard to the van is probably more just about floor plan. So our Zion does not have a fixed eating area. We have two spaces for tables, one at the front. And if you watched our six-week review, we used that table. And that's the only time we've ever used it since. I don't even think it needs to have the little plate to lock that table in. I just don't think it's really useful having it there. We do use the back. If it's raining, we will eat inside. Or if it's too buggy, we will eat inside. And that's worked for us. But I find it's nice in the summer because we get to come outside, so we don't need to use it. But when we do use it a lot, I find it a bit annoying just having to have the table and then take down the table to make the bed. And then when we get up, we have to make the bed and then put the table up. I'd rather have a fixed eating area. That's a personal preference. If I was to look at another van or if we were to look at another van, I think we'd give serious consideration to one that had a fixed eating area. My leaning would probably be the Hymer Actif because it does have the fixed eating area. The front seats turn around on one side, but you have that fixed seating. That means, though, you give up other areas. So it's going to be a, you know, we would have to look at that and make a decision as to whether the floor plan would offset some of the other things that are in the Actif that we're not perhaps as comfortable with. I don't know if we would change our decision, but I'd certainly give it further consideration. Overall, we've been very happy with the van. It's been reliable. Fit and finish has been very good. We'll show you just an example of the air conditioner coming on. We haven't actually had to use it because once we open the van doors and the windows and turn on the fan, we can generally keep the van at a reasonable temperature, particularly if you can park in the shade. Then I think you can actually get by without using the air conditioner, but we haven't had to use it. We've turned it on a couple of times, either just for the cat, for a short period to make sure it stays cold. It's loud, but it seems effective. And with the Volt Start, I think you'd probably get, if your batteries are fully charged, you probably get two, two and a half hours would be my guess of air conditioning before your Volt Start will kick in. Kind of a summary point for the van for me, and I think Mickey's similar. We've enjoyed the van. Well, having the van has encouraged us to stay places that we normally may not stay. Most of them we've been very pleased with. One of the things I enjoy is when we get to stop on a nice spot, simply pull over and have lunch. And if it's a beautiful view. Yesterday we stopped just off the viewpoint we were at and had a nice lunch next to the forest. I really enjoy that. It certainly allowed us to go a lot of places and spend some more time outdoors than we probably would have if we'd have taken our tent.