Should I Purchase a 1985 M25 TM?

I have an opportunity to pick up a 1985  M25 trailmanor.  I was thinking of partially refurbishing it.  Does anyone have any thoughts or observations on the prudence of such a project.  I am assuming I would have to put in substantial funds to get it up to shape.  One of my questions is whether or not this would be a good long term investment or whether fixing up something nearly 20 years old is good money after bad.  Thank you for your help.   TMFAN (Trailmanor owner wannabe with 2 toddlers).  ANY THOUGHTS MUCH APPRECIATED

TMFAN,

Your post is ripe for Happytrails to respond. Take a look for his posts and you should find a link to some pics of an old TM he bought for $400 and restored to usability. I found it very interesting and it just may give you some idea of work you might expect with a unit that old. Good luck and remember that at one time we were all "Wannabes" too!

Wade

Thanks Wade--I appreciate the tip.  Hopefully I will hear from him soon.  Best.

TMFan, lol, yup, that's definately a question for me to respond to. How much are they asking? I got my 1986 M25 for only $400.00. The TM factory will send you enough aluminum/wood combo to fix it for free as they used wood in them where they shouldn't have. My rear shell was perfectly fine, as it was stored in the closed position. But I did have to replace all the wood up in the top of the TM in the front shell. Fortunately, TM sent me almost enough to completely do it. If the rear shell is ok as mine was, I believe I have $40.00 in 4 new "pocket stop kits", 12.50 in the extra aluminum that I had to buy (about 8 feet), a few bucks in a few boxes of #10 screws, 7.31 including shipping for the bumpers for the pocket stops and shims, as well as a plastic door holder, and that's about it! I did spend a few bucks on having the trailer's wiring wired back to code as the previous owner had messed up the wiring on it, but that probably won't be the case with yours. Anyway, if you're wondering what all I'm talking about and what all's involved, you can check out my web page. It's pretty detailed on EVERYTHING you need to do. My total time invested was less than 7 days I think, it only took me so long as I couldn't work on it for a long time due to an injury, but it is up and working and we're camping in it. My web page can be found at: http://members.aol.com/br768 Take a peek and tell me what you think?


[glow=red,2,300]Happytrails...........[/glow]

P.S. Ignore the first section on the pocket stop bumpers, I updated that with a whole section later on down the page with factory TM ones.