2015 Montana 3611RL: First the Old 2010 Montana 3665RE

Hi Folks,

I am new to blogging, and a terrible speller, and sometimes I don't make sense, so if you are a spelling fanatic (textual critic) you may want to leave now.

My wife and I had a 2010 Montana 3665RE, but on our way to the 2014 Montana Mid-Atlantic Rally (about 20 minutes into it the trip) the left front tire on the truck blew without warning.

We were in the far right lane, and the truck made a sharp left across four lanes of traffic. I was able to straighten out truck before we hit the center wall. Neither of us are sure what was going on behind us, since we were looking ahead.

The right and left bed sides of the truck were crunched, and it appears the 5th wheel was on two wheels on the right side and then on the left side. It was so violent that the wall broke loose from the base plate. We had an ice machine sitting on the floor, back under the desk area, with two fans. After we got stopped, the ice machine was sitting in the middle of the freeway. The ice machine was 14-15" high, so the walls were at least that high off the floor at one point.

This is typical of what the walls look like all the around the 5th wheel.

Here is where the ice machine and two fans were. One fan is under the wall.

Here is the other side of the fan.

We collected one other car (a miracle in itself that it was only one car), which had scuff marks on the side and top right corner of the roof. We believe the Montana was on two left wheels after being on the right two wheels and contacted the roof of the lady's car.

This is the only contact damage, all the other damage was from the wall pulling loose from the base plate. In the back you can see the SUV we collected, damage is on the right side so you can't see it.

Due to all the structural damage the Montana was totaled. I had done a lot of mods over the almost 5 years that we had the Montana. Here are some pictures of just some of them.

BigFoot Automatic Leveling System - By far my favorite modification. Chock the wheels, lower the front feet to un-hook the truck, and select Auto Leveling.

BigFoot Automatic Level System - The front jacks are 17,000 lbs lift rating each and the rear are 12,000 lbs each. Tires off the ground, no worries.

Solar Power - We plan to do a fair amount of boondocking when we retire. Another nice feature of solar power is we keep our batteries changed while the Montana sits outside in the storage area. In the summer we can run the Fantastic Fan to keep the air moving in the unit while it is in storage, and not have to worry about dead batteries.

546 Watts Solar Panels you can walk on and MorningStar TRI-60-MPPT Control.

Left Battery Bank - Six Trojan T105 6 volt batteries. Right EMS-50 Display, Switch for Convert (normally off), Battery Monitor, and Seaview Tank Monitor.

Invert on the Left and Cell booster on right.

Pantry mods:

Pull out pantry with wire baskets. Baskets are too small for small cans. Made trays twice as wide.

Here where you see the pull out drawer, was a blank panel. Got a door from Keystone at the Fall Rally in 2011, and made the pull out. We used it store Tupperware.