Dynamax DX3 Review

I noticed someone taking a picture of MARIS this morning. He isn't the first. I find it incredibly flattering when people sneak a picture of it so I would like to make a post to you, those who may be looking at the burgeoning class known as "Super C." These coaches are larger than "Class C" coaches and are on semi-truck. Ours is a 2017 Dynamax DX3, rear bath model built on a Freightliner truck and chassis powered by a Cummins Diesel engine.

We ordered our coach through Lazy Days in Aurora, CO in June of 2016 and were told it would be ready mid-August. We waited excitedly. Mid-August came. Mid-August went. We called Lazy Days multiple times asking for updates, with growing irritation, and even wound up speaking directly to the Dynamax salesman. It seemed that no one was really following up with us unless prodded, no one answered their phones, and they took their time calling back if they did at all. Dynamax claimed that the delays were parts back-orders and once the coach was finally done, we were told it was in transit, then that it was scheduled for transit. Uh, wasn't it in transit before? Then they said that they couldn’t locate it when it was actually in transit. Then it was delivered to the wrong location and the wash process started, but not finished. No one took any accountability. When it did come in to the right dealership and we went to take delivery, they had only taken a couple hours to do a check on it to make sure everything worked right and they had not finished the wash. There were grease streaks coming off the bay handles below, etc. The mechanic himself told us that the pre-sale process of checking out the rig should take days. They slammed us through a "quick overview" and shooed us out the door.

The Lazy Days people were nice and apologetic in person but their follow-up through the ordering process as well as their after-sale customer service was like they could not have cared less about us or about the amount of money we were spending. It was October 5th before we actually took delivery of the coach. October 5th! It was supposed to have been complete by mid-August. I know we were vocal about it being late, but at that point, a couple days to properly come through and fix the bugs and to give it a complete wash job would have been the very least they should have done.

We had also purchased a new Jeep to tow behind it. We got numerous calls, surveys, and emails from the Jeep dealer for weeks, making sure we were happy but not one single correspondence from Lazy Days. We didn't get a single follow-up thank you, email, call, survey, letter. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I definitely do not recommend Lazy Days in Aurora, Colorado.

The overview of the coach was 90 minutes of information overload. We were first-time RV owners. This was all new to us. Our retention of all the information that was disseminated was far from 100%. There were manuals for the different parts of the coach but no one single cohesive manual with instructions on how to run each of the systems, winterize the whole coach, etc.

Enough about the buying process. Let's discuss MARIS (an acronym for our RV... Michael, Aria, Roxy, Iris and Skye.)

Lazy Days' lack of helpfulness continued after the sale, also, despite their promises that if we had any problems we could just call. Of course we had problems and so we called. I have to first make sure to state that we went through the manuals when we had issues we couldn't figure out despite my husband's strong electrical and mechanical knowledge base. Again, it was difficult to reach anyone at either Lazy Days or Dynamax and they weren't always able to help us. We did get a little help from Chris at Dynamax, especially with warranty issues.

The issue list is long so I will try to abbreviate it.

On the second day of traveling in our brand new coach, we lost air pressure to the rear suspension because the U bolts holding the axle and the air brakes were not tightened down. We could have been killed had the air brakes come all the way off of the axle. We wound up spending two nights in West Memphis/Memphis making for a very uncomfortable experience.

The air conditioners stopped working while traveling. No one at Dynamax or Lazy Days had any idea where the relay/reset was. A mechanic found it hidden back behind 2 brass fittings in an odd place that was dangerous to put your hand into.

The septic macerator also stopped working. The breaker for this was in an odd place, also. It wasn't in the breaker box where one would look for it.

The GPS didn't function. It didn't know where it was. We were able to have another unit sent out but we still have to find somewhere to have it installed..

The TV wires were hooked up backwards and the plug-in cord wasn't long enough.

There was a loud, annoying squeaking when we drive. We found an oversized screw on the door which was rubbing against the door strike-plate. Removing the screw helped but the sound soon returned.

The electric awning with auto-recoil kept recoiling as if there was a strong wind. Again, we had a mechanic look at it and a rod that runs through a part of it had been cut too short.

The electronic touch-screen mounted on the wall in the hallway keeps going off. The unit was replaced by Lazy Days before we left home, but it has since continued to randomly turn off. It also reads Empty for both holding tanks and has never moved off of empty regardless of the levels inside the tanks.

The sensors on our septic holding tanks were ALL installed on ONE tank.

Freightliner had drilled through a float when installing it into the fuel tank so the diesel gauge wasn’t working.

The sink traps were a bit loose and the one under the kitchen sink was dripping water.

The cabinets above the theater seating are missing the arms that keep them up when you lift the doors so I have to hold the cabinet door up with one hand or stand on the recliner and hold it open with my head if I need to use both hands to get something out.

When retracting the sliders, random pieces of veneer have come off a few times. I still haven't figured out where they all go. It's not obvious. Things that make you go, “Hmmmmmmm……”

One of the recliners that were optional to replace the hide-a-bed couch snags on the wood trim so when the foot-rest was opened up, a hole was torn in the side.

At this point it may sound like we don’t like the coach. We did indeed have a terrible experience with ordering, delivery, customer service and the initial issues but everything is settling down and will be just fine once the all of the bugs have been fixed. Overall, we really are enjoying MARIS.

It drives easily enough even for me, a newbie to driving monster size trucks. The weight of the front engine gives it a stable feeling for its size. I have heard from Class A owners that their rear engines give them the feeling that the front wants to float, especially in windy conditions. I don't know if that applies to all Class A motor coaches. When driving MARIS in windy conditions, it does want to pull to the side a little but I don't feel like it's light in the front at all.

I don't know if this is normal, but twice when I was driving it started to drift to the side. Normal, even in a car. My attention had probably drifted momentarily. However, it seemed that it went through a point where it went from gently drifting over to wanting to go more aggressively for the shoulder about the time I touched the rumblers on the side of the road. That may have been a factor of our size or the slope of the shoulder (which appeared level) but it startled me. It did the same thing to Michael, as well, so I don’t believe it was anything related to my driving.

As a newbie, I was surprised that the brake pedal felt hard, like I was pushing on the floor instead of a moving pedal. I’m going to venture a guess that all vehicles that weigh this much are this way. I use a lot of jake braking as instructed by my more experienced better-half and plan well ahead so I keep things under control.

The rear wheels, single axle dualies, are pretty far forward as you can see from the picture above, which means that the back end swings around in a turn. That gives it a decent turn radius for its size, even with the Jeep in tow.

As far as towing the Jeep, we don't even notice it behind us. It tracks right along and the acceleration/deceleration doesn’t seem any different. The towing capacity is 20,000 lbs and the Jeep’s gross vehicle weight is somewhere in the ballpark of 5,400 lbs so it’s not taxing on the Dynamax’s engine.

We like the fact that the platform it was built on is strong It was built on I beams, so it can hold a lot of weight. We fill it up with stuff and go with no consideration for the weight of our belongings.

The finish-out is nice with a fair amount of wood (less veneer than some coaches), solid surface counter-tops, a full size residential fridge, soft close drawers, and porcelain toilets. The blinds are pull-down and have both solar screen pull-downs as well as privacy shade/blackout pull downs. Other coach owners tell us this is much better than the accordion blinds they have had. We also chose the theater seating rather than a hide-a-bed couch for the comfort factor and we had the TV installed to the right side of the cab-over so that we could see it easily from the seats. It was in the middle of the cab-over in the model we looked at and we would have had to watch TV with our heads turned to the left. In fact, from one seat I wasn’t even able to see the whole screen. It was just uncomfortable. Placing it to the right solved that problem nicely. My understanding is that Dynamax made this standard in 2017.

The captain's chairs in the cab also turn around providing extra seating. I like that. The air conditioning units will freeze you out if that's what you like! The aqua-hot, when on diesel instead of electric, makes HOT water (yay!) and heats the coach very well. Heat can be routed so that it only comes out the lower registers or so that it comes out both from the ceiling and floor.

The bed is an RV king. It was a bit hard for our taste so we put a memory foam topper on it for added comfort and now it's our favorite place in the whole coach. It’s like mother’s arms. Cozy, comfortable, and warm! One side is a bit more difficult to get into but we don't really mind climbing in. We had Dynamax finish out the little storage area under the bed when they built it; it was raw wood framed out. It looks much better now with fabric covered plywood.

I have to say that the short closets in the bedroom don't accommodate my long dresses and bath robe but I'm OK with that. I live in shorts most of the time anyway. There are plenty of wardrobe drawers and there is even an extra clothing rod above the side-by-side washer and dryer.

Finally, we have plenty of storage. The bays outside swallow a bunch of stuff, including food we have stocked up on. Inside, there is plenty of storage above the theater seating, above the washer and dryer, under the club seating diner benches, over and under the bed. There are even an overabundance of bathroom cabinets. While I struggle to be more organized, it's not from a lack of space.

Everyone has asked us the specs so I am putting a direct link to Dynamax's site with all the specs: Specs - click here

In summary, we like our Dynamax DX3, rear bath (DX3 RB). It has gotten a lot of attention from other campers. Many people have asked about it and as mentioned above, several people have been taking pictures of it. I think that we will be comfortable in it and it will suit us just fine for years to come. We just need to get these confounded bugs fixed!!!