The date to remove this hulking 1997 Ford F-530 motorhome has come and gone, and we have to wonder what its fate has become. The listing mentions the seller needing it gone by May 28 due to the property changing hands where it’s been stored, but given the ad is still very much alive, I have to believe the motorhome is still available if you’re in the market. Selling a dead R/V has got to be one of the most soul-sucking exercises there is, and it’s a shame this one has put its road-tripping days behind it. Find the Ford here on craigslist in Maryland for $8,000 or best offer.
The big problem here is, of course, the price. You’re not getting anywhere near $8,000 for a dilapidated motorhome that the seller admits has an engine wherein “…(the) motor oil seems to be dried up or emptied.” That’s not good news, but it’s also par for the course for motorhomes that have been off the road for some time. The seller tells relays how the Ford made some long distance trips before it was parked, going from California to Texas to Florida to North Carolina and then onto Maryland, where it’s been ever since. Clearly, time has not been kind.
The seller reports he installed new tires on the F-530 before embarking on his long distance drive, which would indicate at least some interest in maintaining his home on the road. The interior doesn’t appear to be in bad shape, but it’s clearly seen better days like the rest of the motorhome. It’s decidedly modern inside, with basic fake wood trim, very 90s furniture, and conservative tones throughout. This looks nothing like the motorhomes of a few years earlier, that featured far more color and variety of textures and materials. I suppose the upside here is that even for one that’s been sitting, the interior doesn’t appear to have aged that much.
The dual TVs are frozen in time and serve as a reminder as to when the motorhome was built It has middle 90s written all over it, and while you wouldn’t necessarily have to gut the thing, it wouldn’t exactly be very eye appealing inside, either. All I can think of is furniture showrooms from 1994, where wood tones and TVs with built-in VCRs were all the rage. The truth of the matter is, the easiest way to get rid of an unwanted motorhome is to let someone take it for scrap to harvest the organs. Unfortunately for this seller, it doesn’t sound like there are any organs to harvest with an engine drained of oil, so he’ll need to adjust his asking price fairly dramatically to realize a sale.
I definitely will have to agree with Jeff on this one. Not only is the 8K ask never going to happen, most likely they will have to pay someone to get it hauled out of there. It simply isn’t worth anything, especially with that 90’s “Golden Girls” decor.
The “Golden Girls” did look at this and said, “No Thanks”.
Just checked the ad is now expired… much like to motorhome it advertised
FIRST thing I noticed is: either it doe not have any wheels – undercarriage – or they are sunk so deeply into the ground that the body IS sitting on the ground.
i see the “bud” wheels on the front, i think the grass is just overgrown
Ex-Police mobile command center. One of the reasons for multiple TVs.
If you look closely at front fascia and rear you can see the former police lettering that’s been removed
I had to pay someone to take my wife’s late parents motorhome away. Not the same as scraping a car.
Gone. Maybe he got close to asking price? $8,000 is what these days, four months rent in Seattle, a years rent in Klamath Falls? IF the buyer has a place to park… would not want it on the side of our road!
There are RVs for free every day in my part of Oregon. A yard told the newspaper that it costs an average of $2700 to scrap one out. An RVs weakness is LEAKS, roof, roof vents,windows, access doors. And that leads to hard to fix rot damage and mold real quick. Few of them are abandoned on the property of the person who is on the long lost Title. And even if there is a Title (rare) in this State when you go to license it, the DMV will charge you for every year going back to the last time it was licensed. At $350 a pop for a 2 year tag. that can add up in a hurry. The plus side? Long out of production low mileage 440 Mopar engines hitting the market at low prices. :-) Terry J
Another plus to motor home 440 engines is that they are more sturdy than the 440’s that came in cars. I had a Winnebago with a 440 and it ran good and never showed any signs of wear. If I were building a hot rod Mopar now I would search the junk yards for a motor home 440.
while this one is $$$$ they can be brought back .
my brother bought a 31 footer with a cummins diesel pusher for 2700$
it had quit running on the owner who worked on it with “help” from several people, and then after a year he bought a new one.
owner had injection pump rebuilt, but failed to release the locking screw when he reinstalled it.
it was 45 minutes from my house, a bit farther from my brother, but we made 5 Saturday trips to it, pulling the pump and having it rebuilt again, and after getting it back together, it still wouldn’t fire up, but we checked compression and it was good, so we pulled the injectors, a chore as they had never been removed before….shop said not worth rebuilding but found us a set, after they were installed it fired right up.
Actually Jessie Pinkman and Walter White are looking for a place to cook some meth: they might be interested by this one at 8000$.
Rolling homes fare poorly from sitting outside, unused. They are not generally rodent-proof, so you could bet that there were some families living inside.
As a ford in that era, it *may* have had a 460, but more likely a V-10, which was introduced that year. First generation anythings are often problematic, so….
12v & allison.
Rip out inside, seal shell of air/water, spray insulation. Go ta town in your own chosen fashion. Need to start at 3 or 4K$ tho…
Niko brothers on YT are in process of rebuilding 2 much newer (2017) salvage motor homes. Just ripping out the dated interior and refurbishing that is a boatload of time and energy.
Sad to see these sit and deteriorate, as they are so expensive when new. Doubt this one is worth anything. Engine is likely bad with no oil, and although interior looks salvageable, it’s probably rotted and moldy due to lack of roof maintenance. Rodents are likely too, and could have done untold damage to the wiring. And those tires sunken into the ground are probably garbage at this point too. The exterior doesn’t look that great either. This would be a ground-up build that would take a lot of time and money. Might make a good starting point for someone if it were free or super cheap.
My Loving Wife and I had to deal with selling her parents 31′ – 1987 Winnebago Chieftain, 5 years are so ago. Her Dad had passed and her Mom did not want to try and drive it. So we used it a couple of vacation trips, but it manly just sit out back at her Mom place under the shed He had built for it. Well it got to be such a hassle dealing with it, inspections, going and driving it just to keep the fluids moving in it, so one day I suggested to her Mom just sell it, the look I got, her Mom informed me that Thomas had always wanted this, and she was not going to sell it, that Susan and I could after she died. Well I get a call one day at work, my wife informs me that her Mom was going to downsize and we needed to move the Winnie to our place and store it for her Mom. Well you know I did as the Mother of my children asked I went and moved it over to our place, of course it had not moved all winter so I went over check it out got it started aired up the tires and was driving it the 30 miles to our place. I hadn’t gotten a mile and all of a sudden I see lights on top of a local police, and got pulled over, I forgot to put the current plates on it, they were still at her Moms, this local POPO isn’t the understanding type, so I got a ticket, I had to call the Wife to come get me so I could go back and get the plates for it. Then I got it back on the road and I had a inside dual blow out, back to her mom, get my truck go to my house get my good floor jack, get the tire off the spare looked bad so to the local tire store new tire, $155.00, then finally 6 hours after I started this simple task i had it at my place. Her Mom shows up 3 days later to drop off more junk she didn’t want, did I tell we were storing some of her stuff in my car sheds, anyway she is mad because I had her Winnie sitting out in the open, not in myside shop building, so I had to go over take down the cover the Wifey Dad had put up, to bring it over and set it back up to keep the mother in law happy. Finally 2 years later, Susan convinced her mom to sell it, it took another year before it was sold for $5000.00 to a friend of mine, the only reason he bought it, was he knew how well I had taken care of it. These things are money pits, even if you use them all the time.
As someone mentioned earlier, the biggest issue will be water intrusion into the walls and elsewhere. That’s guaranteed and practically impossible to repair without total disassembly of the superstructure. None of that is worth it, of course. Best case would be that the engine and other bits of the running gear could be parted out, but there is no viable economic alternative to scrapping the unit, which also costs more than a little.
Which is why you see these old hulks rotting away in fields and yards everywhere.
Located near Annapolis, MD