Unimog becomes an Off Road Class C

sachilles wrote:
I know the rattles and squeeks our motorhome makes on paved roads, and well manicured dirt roads. I can't imagine the noise on whatever trail the unimog might tempt you to drive on.
I enjoy camping. I enjoy offroading. Often they cross paths, but offroading an unimog is too big for the trails in the northeast, let alone if you add a house to it.
That being said, if had enough disposable income, that might be a fun toy to own, knowing it isn't practical for any situation I'd find myself in, aside from a zombie apocalypse.

We take our 2WD 24 foot E450 based Itasca Class C off-highway (but still on "roads") as needed for exploring and camping when rockhounding. It helps with ruggedness, reliability, and stability that the coach underloads the chassis components by around one ton. It's 4:56 rear differential helps, too.

It has higher than stock ground clearance due to over-stock sized tires on it. We pack rubber shock absorbing material between stuff in the drawers and cabinets to help with damage and noise. I've installed double latches on vulnerable cabinet doors. All the drawers came from Winnebago equipped with gravity locks which hold the drawers shut on rough roads. It has no slides, which helps to maintain structural integrity on rough roads. Winnebago used only steel and aluminum framing in the coach walls and roof. There are no outside coach items (tanks, plumbing, generator, hookup electrical adapters, etc.) hanging below the height of the E450's main frame members - including the automatic coach step when it's retracted. All storage bays are steel lined, including their bottoms. The cab entrance steps are aluminum instead of fiberglass. Since all the heavy items are down low in the coach or outside along the chassis frame members ... even though it's 11'4" height makes it "look high"... it's center of gravity is actually down fairly low. It's dually rear tires contribute to it's weight biased drive axles riding on top of most off-highway road ruts for great dry road traction because the majority of the ruts are made by single wheeled drive axles which create ruts that are narrower than the track of side-by-side dually wheels.

Of course with 2WD, we go off-highway on only dry roads. We don't attempt anything like jeep trails or allmost-ATV trails and we don't try driving completely off-road illegally out across dirt, sand, or wild shrubbery. And most important of all, we off-highway travel SLOW ... our record slow-and-careful side trip so far is around 50 round-trip miles at 7-10 MPH.

We would never attempt what we do in a Sprinter based Class C and a full-on expedition vehicle would be both a wallet killer and in most places we go - only an over-sized feel-good crutch.

It can be done!