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Journal/Buying and auctions/2021 Seneca 37K bought blind, ask me anything

2021 Jayco Seneca 37K bought blind through Conaway's, bank repo from Florida to Knoxville. ask me anything

Started by seneca_37k_owner on Nov 8, 2025 in Buying and auctions, 13 posts

drives2021 Jayco Seneca 37K on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7 and Allison 3000

three people have messaged me since i joined asking the same handful of things about buying a motorhome you have never stood inside. rather than answer it in private three times, i figured i would do it out in the open where the next person can find it.

the facts so the questions start from the right place. 2021 Jayco Seneca 37K, built on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7, Allison automatic. 24,860 miles showing on the dash in the listing photos. it was a bank repo parked on a lender's lot outside Lakeland, Florida. i won it in September through conaway's auto sales with a sealed bid of $148,200, and it was sitting in my driveway in Knoxville the first week of October.

how this thread works. number your questions, Q1, Q2 and so on, and keep counting up from whoever posted before you. i work rotating shifts at a plant in Oak Ridge so i am going to answer in batches on my nights off, and i will quote each question so the answer stays stuck to it. if i do not know, i will say i do not know.

two things up front, since they color everything else. i never saw it, never sat in it and never heard it run before the day it arrived. you go off the photos and the write up and nothing else. and once your bid is in, it is binding. there is no taking it back on monday. if that already sounds like a dealbreaker, that is a perfectly sane reaction.

if you want to see what one of their listings looks like before you ask, the site is conawaysautosales.com. fire away.

drivesa 2019 Ram 3500 for now, shopping for a Super C on the M2

i will go first since i am the guy in the shopping stage. we are looking at Senecas and Accolades in Texas and the dealer prices make me want to lie down.

Q1. what did you pay against what dealers were asking for the same coach? real numbers if you are willing.

Q2. 24,860 miles is fine, but what about engine hours? i have read some of these get idled half to death.

Q3. what scared you the most about the conaway auction when it came time to actually put a number in?

drivesother people's M2 106s all week, a 2015 Dynamax DX3 37RB on weekends

i work on M2s for a living in Gaffney, so a few from the chassis side.

Q4. the air dryer. is there a date on the cartridge or a service sticker anywhere near it? on a coach that sat on a lot, that is the first thing i would want to know.

Q5. the Allison will tell you about itself. press the up and down arrows on the shift pad at the same time with the engine running and it walks through fluid level, then oil life, filter life and transmission health. what did yours say?

Q6. did the photos show you anything underneath? brake chambers, slack adjusters, the frame rails. or was that part faith?

mike

drives2016 Dynamax DX3 37BH on a Freightliner M2 106, towing a 2014 CR-V

Q7. hours on the Onan generator.

Q8. roof and the cab over. any soft spots, any wrinkling in the front cap? that front cap is where the water gets in on almost every Super C i have looked at, ours included.

i have been looking at repo listings for six or seven years and never once had the nerve. curious how you got past it.

drives2021 Jayco Seneca 37K on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7 and Allison 3000

first batch, Q1 to Q4. night off, coffee, here we go.

cummins_67_curious asked

Q1. what did you pay against what dealers were asking for the same coach?

in July and August i was checking lots from Chattanooga up into Kentucky. 2021 Senecas with 20 to 30 thousand miles were listed from $189,000 to $214,000. the closest match was a 37K in Cleveland at $194,900, and i am sure he would have come down a little. i paid $148,200, and that number is the whole bill, they do not stack a buyer's fee on the back end. to be fair to the dealer, his coach comes with a walk through, a PDI and a service department to complain to. mine came with none of that, and further down i will tell you what that cost me.

cummins_67_curious asked

Q2. what about engine hours?

one of the dash photos was the M2's display showing engine hours: 1,312. that works out around 19 miles an hour on average, which reads like a coach that got driven, not one that sat in a campground idling. mike can tell me if that math is dumb.

cummins_67_curious asked

Q3. what scared you the most when it came time to put a number in?

that the bid is binding and you are bidding blind. the way conaways runs it you never see anybody else's number. you put yours in, you are allowed to raise it before the close, and that is all you get to know. i put in 141,000 on a thursday, stewed on it all weekend and raised it to 148,200 the morning it closed. my wife asked why that exact figure. the honest answer was that it was our credit union approval plus what we had in savings and not one dollar past that. which is the question somebody always asks next, so hold onto it.

freightliner_m2_tech asked

Q4. is there a date on the air dryer cartridge?

sticker on the housing dated March 2024 from a truck shop in Ocala. so somebody cared about it at least that long. i changed it anyway the second week, because i have no idea what happened between that sticker and the bank picking it up. $96 for the cartridge, one video and a fair amount of language.

drives2018 Jayco Seneca 37TS on a Freightliner M2 106, three kids in the cab bunk

Q9. what was left inside? i have heard repo stories with somebody's whole life still in the cabinets.

Q10. how does the paying part work? i get nervous wiring my brother 500 bucks.

we paid an Appleton dealer a lot more for our 2018 37TS than you paid for a 2021, so i am reading this with a slightly sick feeling.

drives2020 Nexus Ghost 36DS on a Freightliner M2 106, towing a 2010 Ranger 4x4

Q11. insurance. how do you insure a coach you have not seen and do not own yet, and when did you bind it?

Q12. i read that conaway's gives your money back within 30 days when a lot turns out materially misrepresented. did anything come anywhere near that, and what did you take materially to mean?

i ask because i am the careful one in our house. my wife picked out the Ghost. i drove it home and worried.

drives2021 Jayco Seneca 37K on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7 and Allison 3000

batch two, Q5 through Q10. sorry for the gap, the plant had us on twelves all week.

freightliner_m2_tech asked

Q5. press the up and down arrows at the same time...

never knew the arrow trick, mike, so thank you. fluid level OK, oil life 71 percent, filter life 68 percent and the health check came back fine. leaving it alone until spring.

freightliner_m2_tech asked

Q6. did the photos show you anything underneath?

they did. five or six shots under the coach: both axles, the frame rails, the chambers from the side. Conaway's Auto Sales says their own people inspect and photograph every lot, and in the pictures there was surface rust on the frame and nothing that worried me. but i am not a brake man, so the first week i paid a truck shop off Strawberry Plains Pike $185 to check stroke on all four chambers and look the system over. everything was in spec. i still think it was the best money i spent.

snowbird_since_2016 asked

Q7. hours on the Onan generator.

211 on the hour meter. it starts and makes power. i changed the oil and filter in it the first weekend, $58 in parts.

snowbird_since_2016 asked

Q8. roof and the cab over.

looked fine in the photos and fine standing on it. no soft spots anywhere i walked, and the front cap is smooth. the sealant around both roof vents was cracked so i redid them, $40 of self leveling lap sealant and most of a saturday.

bunk_over_cab_kids asked

Q9. what was left inside?

almost nothing. a bag of clothespins, a phone charger and a 12 inch cast iron skillet that lives with us now. it smelled like a closed up coach after a Florida summer, which it was, so a dehumidifier ran in it for a week.

bunk_over_cab_kids asked

Q10. how does the paying part work?

payment is a wire for the full amount. i called and confirmed the wire instructions by phone before sending anything. good habit for any wire, to anyone. our credit union sent it, it was verified the next day, and their paperwork says delivery starts 48 to 72 hours after that. mine was on its way the third day.

and now the part i promised. the house batteries. both were flat when it got here and one would not take a charge at all after a summer of sitting. i found that out at 11 at night trying to turn on a light in my own driveway. $318 for a new pair from the battery place on Kingston Pike. a dealer PDI would have caught it. i caught it with a flashlight in my teeth.

drives2017 Dynamax Isata 5 35DBD on a Ford F-550, 6.7 Power Stroke

quick mod note. three of you have emailed me this one instead of posting it, so i am putting it in the queue for you:

Q13. can you finance through the conaways people, or how do you come up with $148,000 for a coach?

please keep the numbering going. this has turned into one of the more useful threads on the board and the numbers are why it is easy to read. if anybody has licensing questions about driving one of these home, that is over in the Texas license thread.

drivesa 2015 Winnebago View 24G, moving up to a Super C this winter

Q14. it came up from Florida in October. was it winterized when it got to you, and did you have to do anything before the first hard freeze in Knoxville? asking for my own january plans, which are in the four season thread and are going about how you would expect.

drives2021 Jayco Seneca 37K on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7 and Allison 3000

last batch, Q11 to Q14. this is the one with the part i would most want the next buyer to read.

retired_lineman_rv asked

Q11. insurance. when did you bind it?

i called our agent the day we decided to bid, read her the VIN from the listing and got a quote. the afternoon i won, i called back and bound it, before the wire went out. $1,640 a year with full coverage. she did not care that it was a repo, she cared about the VIN and the title being clean.

retired_lineman_rv asked

Q12. the 30 day money back...

nothing came close. as i read it, the 30 days runs from delivery and it is for a lot that was materially misrepresented, meaning the listing told you something that was not true. dead batteries after a Florida summer are not that. if the listing had said 24,860 miles and it showed up with 84,000, that is what it is for. read their wording yourself though. i make plastic parts, i am not a lawyer.

mod_bev_t asked

Q13. can you finance through them?

no, and this is the honest limitation. financing generally is not on the table with conaway's, because the title carries the bank's lien until the coach is paid off. so you bring cash or you bring your own loan. we went to our credit union in Oak Ridge in August, before i bid on anything, and got pre approved for an RV loan of up to $125,000 on a 2019 or newer coach. the rate was well above a car loan and it took nine days and a lot of paper. we put $23,200 down from savings and borrowed the rest. if you win a lot first and go looking for a loan after, you are in for an awful week, because your bid is binding either way.

the title end was fine. once the money cleared the lender released the lien, and the paperwork came notarized in a folder with the coach and both sets of keys. the Knox County Clerk asked for the title and bill of sale, plus a VIN inspection. sales tax was a hair over $10,400, which i saw coming and which still stung.

four_season_question asked

Q14. was it winterized when it got to you?

no, and i would not expect it to be. nobody winterizes a coach on a lot in central Florida in October, including the outfit in pataskala. i blew the lines out with my compressor at 40 psi and pumped pink antifreeze through the traps the first week of November. took an hour.

drivesa 2019 Ram 3500 for now, shopping for a Super C on the M2

back with a follow up from the Q1 guy. we put a bid in on a 2019 Seneca 37TS over Christmas and did not get it. no idea what took it or by how much, which is exactly how a blind bid is supposed to work and i knew that going in. it still bugs me. Linda thinks we were four grand too careful. i say neither of us will ever know.

we are going after another one this month. took your advice on the credit union first. the approval letter is already in a folder on the kitchen table.

drives2021 Jayco Seneca 37K on a Freightliner M2 106, Cummins 6.7 and Allison 3000

UPDATE, three and a half months in, since a few of you asked by email.

we took it to Florida for two weeks this month. Knoxville down I-75 to a park near Arcadia, then four nights at Myakka River State Park, 1,940 miles round trip. fuel came out to 8.4 mpg by my receipts with no tow car. the Allison shifts like it is bored, and the coach held 68 on cruise across south Georgia in a crosswind without me fighting it. before we left i had the Freightliner dealer in Knoxville do engine oil, both fuel filters and a once over: $640.

where the money stands, all of it: bid $148,200, delivery $0 since Lakeland to Knoxville is well under the free mileage, tax a little over $10,400, title and plates $142, then the house batteries, the brake check, the dryer cartridge, the Onan service, the roof sealant and the chassis service. $160,096 on the nose. still about $35,000 under that Cleveland coach before he would have added his doc fee.

new item for the list: the topper on the bedroom slide flaps at highway speed. it never did that in the driveway, because of course it did not. that is a spring job. the 6 month warranty runs into early April and i have not needed it.

and cummins_67_curious, good luck this month. anyone curious what is sitting on the lender lots this month, Conaway's Auto Sales has them up. i will keep answering numbered questions here if anybody has more. Q15 is open.

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