Possible CCC Upgrade
Wondering what I am missing? It seems like it would be pretty simple and inexpensive. We recently moved up from a 2003 Dolphin on a W22 chassis with 22K GVWR and 26K GCWR to a 2019 Newmar on a F53 c...
Forum Discussion
What is really going down here is that our old coach, the 35ft Dolphin, legitimately had about a full 2,000 lb. more CCC than our new 37ft Baystar. I weighed the Dolphin fully loaded several times and was really never close to its full CCC capacity whether we were loaded for a 10 week trip to Alaska or loaded with all the tailgating gear and planning on taking 7 full size adults to a football game.
With the new coach, I do have to be very careful on how it is loaded for each trip. As I said, the sticker says the 80 gallon water capacity is 664 lbs. and is to be subtracted from the CCC leaving only 1,300 pounds for occupants and other cargo.
Also, the frame section and steel strength is exactly the same. Everything is exactly the same on the spec sheets except for the capacity of the rear leaf springs. The raw curb weight of the stripped chassis is 7,381 lbs for the 24K frame and 7,394 lbs for the 26K frame with the same 252" wheelbase.
I know manufacturers constantly struggle with cost creep on every design they put forward to build and sell to the public and chassis manufacturers, in this case Ford, offers a pretty wide varied of chassis capacities and wheel base lengths to accommodate desires of their manufacturing customers, but if the difference in cost is for 13 more pounds of steel in the springs to get another ton of CCC, why not. But my original post is not to be critical of manufacturers about this CCC topic or to disregard the need for any one to not fully understand the loading of front and rear axles for any type of trip one is packing for. Those are both topics for another post.
I just want to know what am I missing in considering replacing the rear leaf springs?
With the new coach, I do have to be very careful on how it is loaded for each trip. As I said, the sticker says the 80 gallon water capacity is 664 lbs. and is to be subtracted from the CCC leaving only 1,300 pounds for occupants and other cargo.
Also, the frame section and steel strength is exactly the same. Everything is exactly the same on the spec sheets except for the capacity of the rear leaf springs. The raw curb weight of the stripped chassis is 7,381 lbs for the 24K frame and 7,394 lbs for the 26K frame with the same 252" wheelbase.
I know manufacturers constantly struggle with cost creep on every design they put forward to build and sell to the public and chassis manufacturers, in this case Ford, offers a pretty wide varied of chassis capacities and wheel base lengths to accommodate desires of their manufacturing customers, but if the difference in cost is for 13 more pounds of steel in the springs to get another ton of CCC, why not. But my original post is not to be critical of manufacturers about this CCC topic or to disregard the need for any one to not fully understand the loading of front and rear axles for any type of trip one is packing for. Those are both topics for another post.
I just want to know what am I missing in considering replacing the rear leaf springs?
