2020 Aliner Expedition A-frame through conaway's, no canvas to fight and i am not sorry

buying report from the A-frame side of the house. i am in Montrose, high and dry on the western slope, and i wanted a hard-side folder i could set up in four minutes at 10,000 feet when the weather turns on you fast. soft-walls are great and i did not want canvas to babysit in that climate. so a 2020 Aliner Expedition, pulled out of a lender yard up in the midwest.

the numbers for the board. winning bid was 12,900, sealed and blind, and there is nothing added on top, what you bid is what you owe. an Expedition this age retails 16 to 19 out here and new is north of 25, and good used Aliners barely depreciate because people hang onto them, so there is not a lot of slack in the used market and a repo was the way i found one under 15. free delivery the first thousand miles, the yard was about 700 from me so delivery was zero. paid by wire, no financing on these because the lien rides the title until it is paid, which i will come back to.

i had never bought anything sight unseen and the thing that made it bearable was the photo set, they inspect and shoot every lot and there were 50-some photos including the lift latches, the roof seam and the floor. you can see the whole listing style at conawaysautosales.com. more on how it actually arrived once i stop typing on my phone.

it is here and set up. delivery took eleven days from when the wire cleared, inside the window they quote. the driver had it on an open trailer with a travel trailer, dropped it in my driveway, handed me the keys and the paperwork folder, title with the lien release and a bill of sale and an odometer-equivalent statement, all notarized.

condition versus the photos, honestly, close. the one thing that was not in the photos, or i missed it: the screen on the door panel had a two inch tear in the corner, the bug screen, not the structure. the listing photos showed the door but not that corner close enough to catch it. a screen repair kit and some patience, 11 dollars, fixed on the kitchen table. that is the whole fault list. the roof panels, the latches, the floor, the lift struts all checked out and the seam is tight, photo in the next post once i figure out how to attach it from this phone.

to aframe_over_canvas, it is the dinette slide floorplan, no wet bath, i use a portable toilet and a shower tent because i would rather have the floor. four minute setup confirmed, i timed it at the first campground, three minutes fifty.

it is partly that simple and partly not. the A-frame is genuinely easier to set up and there is no canvas to learn, so for setup anxiety, yes, it is the gentler start. but they cost more used, they sleep fewer, and they are hot in the sun, so if you have kids or you camp the desert in summer a soft-wall high wall might fit your life better even with the setup learning curve. match the camper to how you actually camp, not to which is easier to crank up.

the two honest gripes i will leave for the next buyer, since the board is for that. one, no financing, i had my credit union write a small loan before i bid and anyone going this route should line the money up first or it is a scramble when you win. two, when i emailed the conaways people for one more photo of the door screen, the exact thing i later found torn, the reply took a couple of days and by then i had already bid. not a disaster, the 30-day guarantee is for material misrepresentation and an 11 dollar screen is not that, it is a repo. but if the reply had been same-day i might have caught it. that is the trade for the price, and i would do it again.