Winnebago Trend - First Drive Impressions
My wife and I recently test drove a 2014 Winnebago Trend 23L (same as the Itasca Viva) and were very impressed. As previous View owners that was the benchmark for our comparison. We then drove a new...
Forum Discussion
In regards to all the discussion on towing, not much has been mentioned about tongue weight allowed when towing.
FWIW, my Itasca has a 5000 lb. towing capacity, but the rear frame extension welded on by Winnebago apparently only allows 350 lbs. maximum vertical tongue weight. This is not much for towing something other than a 4-wheels-down TOAD.
What vertical tongue weights are common on the chassis brands being discussed in this thread? Vertical tongue weight limits are especially important when towing trailers, including trailers with a small vehicle on them that can't be towed with front, or all four, wheels down. Also, if you want to carry a scooter or motorcycle on the back, then 350 lbs. on the hitch can easily be not enough.
X2 on what Ron says above about single rear wheels. For safety, if nothing else, I feel much better about having some redundancy in number of tires in the rear. My BIL was shopping for a Sprinter based RV some time ago. The one he wound up with could have been carried by the 2500 Sprinter chassis but I advised against it. He found a new one on the 3500 rear dullie Sprinter, instead, and really appreciated the increased stability and safety that the dullies provided. i.e. We had a rear tire go flat a couple of thousand miles from home and were able to limp along slowly for about 5 miles with only one rear tire at the one rear corner. Even though the remaining rear tire on that corner was drastically overloaded, we were nevertheless able to carefully and slowly make it to a small town for help. For some reason we couldn't get our ERS provider on our cell phones - maybe our cell phones couldn't connect due to signal strength (I don't recall).
FWIW, my Itasca has a 5000 lb. towing capacity, but the rear frame extension welded on by Winnebago apparently only allows 350 lbs. maximum vertical tongue weight. This is not much for towing something other than a 4-wheels-down TOAD.
What vertical tongue weights are common on the chassis brands being discussed in this thread? Vertical tongue weight limits are especially important when towing trailers, including trailers with a small vehicle on them that can't be towed with front, or all four, wheels down. Also, if you want to carry a scooter or motorcycle on the back, then 350 lbs. on the hitch can easily be not enough.
X2 on what Ron says above about single rear wheels. For safety, if nothing else, I feel much better about having some redundancy in number of tires in the rear. My BIL was shopping for a Sprinter based RV some time ago. The one he wound up with could have been carried by the 2500 Sprinter chassis but I advised against it. He found a new one on the 3500 rear dullie Sprinter, instead, and really appreciated the increased stability and safety that the dullies provided. i.e. We had a rear tire go flat a couple of thousand miles from home and were able to limp along slowly for about 5 miles with only one rear tire at the one rear corner. Even though the remaining rear tire on that corner was drastically overloaded, we were nevertheless able to carefully and slowly make it to a small town for help. For some reason we couldn't get our ERS provider on our cell phones - maybe our cell phones couldn't connect due to signal strength (I don't recall).
