We basically had great luck with the 89 Angola. We got it in 99 from the original owner who would make the most finicky POG member cry with his attention to detail. Each and every system was upgraded as needed and it was impeccable. He was 82 with a wife of about 50 and was trading in for another Angola...and then got yet another one within a year of that.
The systems were straightforward, completely operational, easy to access and we should probably never have sold it except for the %^&*( heaters as Loc mentions. For the uninitiated, Angola and some others used Espar heaters, which are German products used, supposedly for truck cabs and commercial excavation equipment for cabs. They are small units that have a turbo diesel-fired chamber. When they work, they are loud, usually drip diesel fuel and blow so hot and dry you could fire up a kiln with them. When they don't work, you are SOL.
We were in Colorado and on a fling, decided to investigate a Webasto retrofit. Since the coach had OTR a/c and heat, it was my thought that somehow we could tie into that system and sneak away into the night with a way to beat the system. Not so. The only answer was to run an entirely new circulating system with zone controls and heat exchangers through the base channels in the OTR system. Vehicle systems gave us a quote of $18K for the job and a repair shop in Florida came up with $17.5K for the upgrade.
Looking back on it, I have mixed feelings about whether or not we should have gone ahead with the upgrade.
My biggest gripe about the Angola is that somewhere along the line they forgot to insulate the walls and ceilings in the coach which made it very noisy and demanding of air/heat. When it rained you couldn't hear the TV set.
Helen's point of view on looking for a coach is this: "If the sales guy wants to sell you a new camper, they ought to let you stay overnight in it and see if you really like it. They (she's big on they) shouldn't expect a guy to buy something for hundreds of thousands of dollars after looking at it for ten minutes."
Now that's wisdom.
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