It's now been 4 years since the purchase of our 2018 FOREST River Wildcat 34WB 5th Wheel so I feel I can provide an honest review.
First I'll give the good because that's the quick part.
The floor plan is great & the Coach had plenty of storage inside & out. The exterior has a nice appearance....read more
It's now been 4 years since the purchase of our 2018 FOREST River Wildcat 34WB 5th Wheel so I feel I can provide an honest review.
First I'll give the good because that's the quick part.
The floor plan is great & the Coach had plenty of storage inside & out. The exterior has a nice appearance. That's where good ends.
This is our 2nd New 5th purchase & this Wildcat is quite possibly the worst coach from a quality & assembly stand point.
Interior fit & finish: Numerous pieces of the coach's interior trim came loose in less than a year, due to lack of fasteners & adhesive. The Tech who repaired the problems said it looked like they started to install the trim & walked away with out completely finishing the job.
Flooring: The flooring throughout the coach looked great, but is horribly cheap & improperly installed, areas cut unevenly, poor quality carpet, installed loose.
Slideouts: 2 of the 3 slideouts had to be adjusted not long after the coach was delivered & 1 again 6 months later. I'm glad we are on a permanent campsite and do not tow this Coach because I'm sure the slideouts would be an issue each time it was towed. Furnace: Someone did not put much thought into installation of the furnace. It's extremely difficult to access since someone decided it would be a good idea to eliminate the exterior access panel and make it necessary to remove a wall in the front pass- thru storage and crawl into a tiny space for access. After you reach the furnace, you must dismount the furnace to gain access to the electrical panel, where the circuit board & sail switch are located, these are both known to fail. You now have extremely difficult access, costing 4 times the amount of labor that would normally be involved for repairs. Then to top off the furnace issue, the design engineer thought it would be a good idea to put the black vacuum breaker check valve, for the black tank flush, directly above the furnace inside a wall cavity that has no access panel. The problem being that these vacuum breakers are known to fail quite often & leak. Where does it leak? Directly onto the furnace causing damage to the electronics. Due to the lack of access you have zero ability to check it occasionally and find a leak while its minor. Does Forest River Intentionally designing their Coaches with built-in, guaranteed problems?
Kitchen: Another ridiculous idea by a design engineer was eliminating the exterior vent for the propane cooktop/oven. Instead they had a range top microwave in the design that vents to the inside of the coach, causing excess moisture build up inside the coach while cooking, rather than use a perfectly good, tried & true design of venting the cook top to the outside. RV's are already moisture sensitive, why intentionally trap more moisture inside?
Windows: at least 2 windows were improperly installed, making them difficult to open and close. Due to this poor installation the windows will always be difficult because there are no adjustments once installed. Quality Vontrol Inspection obviously never occurred or the Inspector just completely ignored the many flaws in workmanship. Never again will I buy a Forest River product.
Livability
Overall quality
Floorplan
Driving/towing
Factory warranty/support
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