Mountain Driving

lonewolf80 wrote:
skiwhiz, a couple of years ago I toured around Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of SD with my then 2011 35 ft. Georgetown gasser. I was also pulling my wife's 4K lb. Kia on our 500 lb. dolly. The worst part of ascending a hill of any nature, no less some of the 9% grades around Mt. Rushmore is to have to start from a standing stop. That is exactly what happened to me, plus having to make a left-hand turn from a traffic signal to start the ascent. The Ford V10 is an amazing engine, and we climbed the grade between 35-40 MPH and the tach between 4500-5000. Easy as all get out, except for the folks behind me on this newly paved two-lane grade. Oh well.

Going down 9% grades, again encountered in and around Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood, Sturgis, SD I didn't rely on the Tow Haul Mode. I am a firm believer in using the gear to go down the hill as the gear the automatic chose to go up. So what I'm saying is I downshifted the tranny myself to the gear needed to keep it the speed I needed based on what I was comfortable with going down such steep decline's.
Even my DW who can be a scary cat barely winced. Did I say the V10 is an amazing engine already? When going down almost any prolonged decline and if braking is needed to check down your speed you "stab" the brakes somewhat hard (don't lock them up!) to drop speed. Never ride the brake to try to slowly reduce speed. Practice your technique on smaller hills so it becomes second nature to use your tranmission and brakes as a team.

Your rig will take you up any hill you encounter, and taking your time, downshift to a slower speed, get you comfortably down the hill too. Take your time, don't worry about the traffic behind you (when possible, move right) and you will be fine.

Great information. I know he was asking about his Class A, but most, if not all Class C's have the V10 if they are not a Chevy. A good Class C will most likely be our next RV when we get too old to want to mess with hooking up the FW.