Our RV: The Brinkley Model Z 3515

We live full time in a Brinkley Model Z 3515, a luxury fifth wheel that runs just under 40 feet. It's our first RV. We bought it before we ever stood inside one, drove it off a Florida dealer lot after five months in storage, and have called it home every day since. Here's the rig, why we picked it, and what it's actually like to own.

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What it is

The Model Z 3515 is Brinkley's work-from-home fifth wheel, the floor plan with a dedicated office in the back. On paper it's 39 feet 11 inches long, 13 feet 4 inches tall with the air conditioners, and rated to a GVWR of 17,495 pounds. We tow it with a Ford F-350, a single rear wheel truck, and those weight numbers are exactly why the truck conversation came before the RV one. The tanks are sized for people who don't plan to stay plugged in: 75 gallons fresh, 130 gray, and 44 black, with the gray split across a 90 gallon main tank and a 40 gallon second tank. That gray number is the one full-timers notice, because it's usually the tank that fills first. One footnote if you're spec-shopping today: Brinkley's current sheet lists the gray at 118 gallons (88 plus 30), a change made after our first-year rig was built, so the early 3515s carry more gray capacity than the current listing shows.

Brinkley Model Z 3515 specs

These are the numbers Brinkley publishes on its Model Z 3515 page, checked in October 2026. They describe the 3515 Brinkley sells today. Ours is a 2025 Model Z 3515, one of the very first 3515s, and where we know it's different, or where we've weighed it ourselves, that's in the right-hand column.

Our weights come from weighing the rig at a CAT scale with roughly 50 gallons of fresh water aboard. A blank in our column means we haven't checked it against our own rig, not that it's different.

Why we chose it

We were shopping as a couple who both work remotely, so a floor plan that could hold two real desks mattered more than any showroom feature. Touring rigs at similar prices, the Brinkley felt better built, and the layout gave us what we needed without a compromise we'd regret. We walked through it for the first time after storage in our first tour of the rig, and did the full room-by-room version in our live-in tour.

Before the 3515 came out, we walked through the Model Z 2900 and 3100 next to two Alliance Paradigms, which is written up in Brinkley vs Alliance. We nearly ordered the 3100, then Brinkley released the 3515 with its office in the back and we switched the order. The longer version is in how we ended up living in an RV.

What a Brinkley Model Z 3515 costs

Brinkley lists the Model Z 3515 at a "Standard Run MSRP" of $135,373 on its website (checked October 2026), and the page marks it "dealer stock only." MSRP is the manufacturer's suggested price. The price on a dealer's lot is set by the dealer, and so is what you end up paying.

Here is what Brinkley lists, on the same day, for the 3515 and the two Model Z floor plans we toured before we bought:

Options sit on top of that. On the 3515 page, Brinkley prices the Premium Exterior Package with full-body paint at $24,000 and a Gen-Y Executive gooseneck at $1,876. We tow on a GEN-Y pin box ourselves, and our GEN-Y gooseneck hitch review covers how it has held up.

What we paid for ours

We bought our 2025 Model Z 3515 from General RV in Florida. We put the down payment on it in October 2024 and picked it up in January 2025. The agreed price on our purchase agreement was about $101,000, and the agreement says that includes the dealer's freight and prep charges. Florida sales tax, title and dealer fees brought the total to about $108,000.

For comparison, the 2025 price sheet the dealer filled out for our order listed the same build, meaning the base trailer plus Brinkley's Integrity package and a handful of options, at $123,075 MSRP. So our agreed price came in roughly $22,000 under the 2025 MSRP, before tax.

Solar was extra. Mobile Solar Consulting's invoice for our solar and battery installation came to roughly $23,000, and about $1,000 of that was mounting our Starlink on the roof.

The truck is a cost of its own. A 17,495 pound GVWR puts you in one-ton truck territory, which is why our Ford F-350 came first. When we shopped in person, Brinkley and Alliance were close enough on price that it came down to which floor plans you lined up.

The layout we live in

Brinkley describes the 3515 as a gourmet kitchen floor plan with a rear flex room that it pitches as an office, a mudroom or a laundry room. Its current feature list for the 3515 also includes washer and dryer hookups, a walk-in bedroom closet, and 79.5 inch ceilings in the bedroom and bath. Ours is set up as two offices, and here's how that works day to day.

The rear office is where the 3515 earns its keep. Instead of ending in a back window and a couch, the tail of the rig is a separate room with an adjustable sit-stand desk, and it's why we bought this floor plan. Fabiola worked back there the first year. After that we switched, because Nathan does a bit more computer work, so the back office is his now and Fabiola uses the desk up front. Some days he raises the desk to standing, some days he doesn't. Either way there's a door between the two work spaces, and that door is the difference between two productive workdays and two people talking over each other on calls.

The back office also comes with a view. When we're parked at Nathan's parents' house, there's a forest behind it, and while Nathan is working, deer come out of the woods and walk around outside his window.

The kitchen holds its own too: real counter space, a residential fridge that holds a full grocery run, and enough drawers that we still have empty ones after a year. The living room has theater seats, a fireplace, and big windows that make it feel like a small apartment instead of a trailer. The bedroom fits a king bed and a wardrobe that swallowed everything we brought. A One Control panel runs the tanks, slides, lighting, and HVAC from one screen, and we use it every day.

Running on solar

Our very first camping trip in the Brinkley was fifteen straight days of boondocking, no hookups and no practice run. We had a solar and battery system installed before that trip, and it lets us run the whole rig on sunshine, air conditioning included. Watching the battery percentage climb from sunlight alone still feels like a magic trick. The full story of that shakedown is in our 100% solar episode.

From the factory, the roof had a single 370 watt panel and the rig had a factory charge controller. Mobile Solar Consulting designed and installed everything else in January 2025, right after we bought it: twelve 200 watt panels for about 2,770 watts in total, six 24 volt lithium batteries, and two Victron inverters. They standardized the whole system on Victron gear that all talks together, so the factory controller came out, and we gave it away. The parts list and the factory-versus-added breakdown are in our Brinkley solar setup, and why it runs at 24 volts with two inverters has the reasoning. If you're thinking about solar for your own rig, code NOMADSAMOR gets you half off Mobile Solar Consulting's design consultation package, or a free AC soft starter with a qualifying installation. Their shop is here.

What we've added to our 3515

Most of what we've changed came from living in it, one problem at a time. Each of these has its own write-up.

• Starlink on the roof. We had it running the same afternoon we first hitched up the Brinkley, and Mobile Solar Consulting mounted the dish on the roof during the solar install. That has been extremely useful, because it keeps working while we tow. How we use Starlink. Order directly from Starlink through our referral link and you get a free month of service, credited after your new service activates. Starlink sets the exact terms, so check the referral offer shown at checkout.
• A three-stage water filter between the campground spigot and the rig, added after a lead warning got taped to our door. Blu Tech sent us the AR3 Essential Bundle to review, and our AR3 review covers how it's gone. Our deal: 7% off anything on their site through our link, with coupon code IEOHHWNJ.
• SnapPads on the leveling jacks, so there's always rubber between the jack feet and the ground. Our SnapPad review. RV SnapPad is a channel partner of ours. Our deal: 10% off. Our link applies it, or enter code NOMADSAMOR at checkout.
• A new mattress. We slept on the one that came with the Brinkley for a year and a half, then replaced it during Fabiola's bedroom makeover. RVMattress.com sent it to us free to try out and talk about, and we are also affiliates (our mattress review). Our deal: 30% off with code NOMADSAMOR at checkout. Start from our link so the order is credited to us.
• A four-camera system. The factory backup camera pointed almost straight down, so we replaced it with an AUTO-VOX CampSync, which AUTO-VOX sent us for free and paid us to feature in a video. Our install story.
• Small stuff from our live-in tour: twist-on waste valves, propane gauges with leak detectors, water leak sensors under the sinks, and a water pressure regulator.

Most of the smaller gear we use is in our Amazon storefront, and every company we work with is on our partners page.

The honest ownership reality

No new RV escapes a first-year shakedown, and ours didn't either. Three months in, a hydraulic leveling jack started leaking fluid badly enough that we spotted the puddle before we spotted the jack. The verdict was a full jack replacement, on a rig that was barely three months old. We covered that and the growing fix-it list in our issues check-in.

What has kept us happy is what happens after something breaks. Brinkley's customer care has picked up the phone, coordinated a mobile tech to us on the road, and taken the rig in for the bigger work. We hauled our warranty list to the Brinkley factory in Indiana, toured the line where our rig was built, and left with most of the list handled. A later service visit knocked out wall buckling, a noisy fridge, bent outriggers, and a cracked desk. Not every trip went perfectly, and we've contributed a problem or two ourselves while parking tired at the end of a long day.

We got one of the very first 3515s. Brinkley has added improvements since then, like a third air conditioner, which should be handy, and a couple of tweaks such as to the suspension. Otherwise, this is probably our perfect model. It's a bit long, and it took a little while to get used to driving, but otherwise it has worked really well, and we really like the space. The extra office is extremely useful since we both work remotely. It's easier to work when we're not side by side, because we like to chat. On the 3100, people set up an office at the sliding desk in the bedroom, and we found that a little cramped. Our rolling office chairs don't fit through the bedroom doorway either, so the 3515's separate office works great for that.

At a rally, we heard that Brinkley has since stopped making the 3515 in favor of a different design. That surprised us, because we think it's an amazing design, and with Brinkley now listing it as dealer stock only, ours is getting fairly rare. If you're shopping now, our Brinkley fifth wheel floor plans comparison lays out what Brinkley lists today.

Would we buy the Model Z 3515 again? Yes. It gives us two offices, a kitchen we actually cook in, storage we still haven't filled, and a company that answers the phone when things go wrong. For a house that gets towed down the interstate at 65 mph, that's the combination that matters.

Our Brinkley 3515 videos, in order

• First walkthrough at the dealer, after five months in storage
• Picking it up with solar installed, and day one of 15 days boondocking
• The full tour after living in it, room by room
• Issues at three months, including the leaking jack
• Factory service in Indiana: what got fixed and what didn't
• The second service visit and the big repairs
• The bedroom makeover

If you're about to tow one, start with how to tow a fifth wheel and how we hitch ours to a gooseneck ball.