Which engine for a used Winnebago Journey?

siguccs wrote:
I'd like to buy a 36 ft used Winnebago Journey. For the price I can afford, there are two engines available, Cat 7.2 liter or Cummins 5.9 liter.
Do you think one is significantly better than the other? My main concers are power in the hills and reliability.

Thanks!

As usual, there will be biased opinions here. I've only owned a CAT in our present coach, a coach that is simaler but, a step up from a Journey. Ours is an '04 Itasca Horizon 36GD with the C-7 330HP CAT and the Allison MH3000 trans. It's been a great coach and, a great engine. I've had "0" problems with that engine. Yes, there are reports of issues with certain parts of the later generation C-7 engine but, the one thing that's important is, you only read of reports on here.

What about the zillion owners of CATs out there, in motor homes, trucks, long haul machines and more, that have not had any issues and, don't report every spit and sputter on a forum??? And, I'm by far, no Cummins expert, not even close but, as I understand it, Cummins has had its share of issues over the years too.

Those of you that know Cummins better might chime in here and speak of wrist pin issues, something about a warning of heating but, it's too late by then, something like that. Again, I'm not trying to sway you one way or another. Keep an open mind.

One thing that no one can deny, there's no substitute for Cubic Inches. The 7.2 C-7 is a larger engine than the 5.9 Cummins. The C-7, in all three versions, 300, 330 and 350 horse power, all put out, 860 ft. lbs. of torque at around 1400 or so RPM. If I recall, that 5.9 puts out around 600 but, I need Cummins experts to verify that number is either high or low.

One of the benefits of owning a Cummins is, Cummins has sort of "authorized" the use of things like the "Banks Kit" for its engines. CAT, on the other hand, is very "tight-lipped" about just about everything on their engines and, to the best of my knowledge, there no approved Banks type kits that can be installed on them. You can "chip" them if you like but, there's mixed results on that too.

So, while CAT has ceased production of over the road engines for at least the U.S. Market, as has been stated, there's tons of parts still available, there's plenty of CAT techs hanging around, that is IF YOU SHOULD NEED EITHER ONE OR BOTH.

Scott