Gulf Stream Endura - International or Chevy

dleslie125 wrote:

Gene in NE wrote:
I could be wrong, but believe the Kodiak chassis has a 10,000 lb towing capacity. I absolutely loved driving my brother-in-laws Kodiak back from the factory - about 600 miles.

My current neighbor's father brought his "Four Winds" motorhome on a Kodiak chassis pulling a 16' enclosed trailer to his son's place this Thanksgiving - looks great.

It likely has a 10,000 lb rated receiver (mine did) but that DOES NOT mean it can tow 10k. We bought the Jayco Kodiak gasser because it actually had a higher towing capacity than the Seneca. GCWR for both is 26,000 lbs. Our GVWR was 19,500 like Ron's, so we could safely tow a 2007 Tahoe LTZ that weighed almost 5700 lbs. The Seneca GVWR is 22,000 and if we loaded it to that limit there would only be 4,000 lbs left. We had plenty of room to load up our Kodiak with whatever DW decided was necessary. :)

One manufacturer (Thor) started purchasing the 30,000 lb GCWR Kodiak not long before the Kodiak was discontinued (after many attempts to sell the truck to International and others). The primary change was an Allison 2500 in place of the Allison 1000. I think they started to realize that a lot of owners want to tow more.

My current E450 can, in theory, tow 7500 lbs if fitted with a suitable receiver (it comes with a 5,000 lb receiver). I say in theory because it will likely depend on how any frame rail extensions were done and whether or note they can handle the 7500 lbs (GCWR of the E450 starting in 2011 is 22,000 lbs. GVWR is 14,500).

I haven't run across any of those Thor (Four Winds?) super c's in my search.

I guess one advantage of the International chasis would be more towing capacity but you definitely pay for it.

How do you find the driver comfort in the E-450 compared to the Kodiak? The Ford felt a little cramped to me; I've yet to sit in a Kodiak.