Downsized and Regretted it?
I am considering downsizing from a 39 foot pusher with three slides to a 24 foot diesel class C (Navion/View). Have any of your downsized and regretted it? If I go this route, I cannot afford to go ba...
Forum Discussion
I have decided not to change what we have. The issue was I am planning to do some big upgrades to the coach and was doing the math to figure out if it was worth putting the money into the one I have or upgrading. We are both engineers so we study things to death with spreadsheets and getting as much information as we can. We decided it was not worth putting in a lot more money to compromise so many things we really love. We did a payback period and it ended up it would take about 8 years to payback the extra money we would have to come up with (this takes into account the money to upgrade the existing coach, the fuel savings, maintenance savings and money to fix things that may break in the older coach).
We wanted a diesel and were looking at the Mercedes engine but it just does not have enough GCWR. We were looking at the Winnebago Navion or View. We pull either a Honda Fit or a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The Fit was fine but the curb weight of the Jeep is 4500 pounds. The GCWR of the Sprinter/Mercedes chassis is 15,250 pounds. The GCW of the 24M were looking at is 9800 pounds. 15250 - 9800 - 4500 = 950 pounds. That means you cannot put more than 950 pounds in the RV and Jeep - including us and the dog. When pulling the Jeep, we will definitely go over the GCWR.
Of course, all the sales people told me I could pull the Jeep just fine. I called Winnebago and the first person said the Jeep was too heavy. They sent me to someone else, and interestingly, he said, yea, we would be over the GCWR but as long as we just exceeded it by 500 pounds or less, we would be fine(!). I thought that response was interesting.
My other choice was a small gas C but we did not want to go that route. So this is a long explanation of how we decided that upgrading what we have will work best for us.
We wanted a diesel and were looking at the Mercedes engine but it just does not have enough GCWR. We were looking at the Winnebago Navion or View. We pull either a Honda Fit or a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The Fit was fine but the curb weight of the Jeep is 4500 pounds. The GCWR of the Sprinter/Mercedes chassis is 15,250 pounds. The GCW of the 24M were looking at is 9800 pounds. 15250 - 9800 - 4500 = 950 pounds. That means you cannot put more than 950 pounds in the RV and Jeep - including us and the dog. When pulling the Jeep, we will definitely go over the GCWR.
Of course, all the sales people told me I could pull the Jeep just fine. I called Winnebago and the first person said the Jeep was too heavy. They sent me to someone else, and interestingly, he said, yea, we would be over the GCWR but as long as we just exceeded it by 500 pounds or less, we would be fine(!). I thought that response was interesting.
My other choice was a small gas C but we did not want to go that route. So this is a long explanation of how we decided that upgrading what we have will work best for us.
