DrewE wrote:
Even with four wheel drive, an average class C is hardly a superior off-road vehicle: it is tall, wide, has a high center of gravity, poor departure angle, and poor turning radius. While there certainly are occasional situations where four wheel drive on a motorhome is useful, they aren't super common. A truck camper on a four wheel drive pickup often makes a better off-road camper, at least for people who aren't made of money. That being said, I've taken my quite ordinary class C over some pretty rough roads without any real difficulties besides bouncing around, and on the occasion I've had to do some driving in a bit of a snowstorm it behaved reasonably--but I deemed it wiser to rest up and wait things out when I got to a good place to stop and do that.
Actually, I've seen some slide-in truck campers on the road that I would definitely hesitate to take off-highway ... but perhaps the ones I'm thinking of were never used that way, anyway.
Some slide-in TCs are very tall and on top of that ... they off-times have only single rear wheel axles, instead of a dually setup in the rear. A dually setup has inherently superior side-to-side stability on side-slanted road surfaces, on curves, and in high crosswinds.
I'm also not sure about slide-in truck campers having a lower center of gravity than a Class C. A Class C may "look tall", but most of it's heavy weight items such as a propane tank, a grey water tank, a black water tank, a built-in generator, their batteries, and stuff in their exterior storage bins are mounted down low right near to, or below, the height of their truck chasis frames. Slide-in truck campers have most of this weight ABOVE (hence higher than) the truck chassis frame.
So in the case of a small cutaway van based Class C motorhome with it's Ford or Chevy wide-stanch rear duals and a 159 inch or shorter wheelbase - including perhaps non-stock tires with more aggressive tread and a larger diameter for improved ground clearance over stock -> a 4X4 conversion of it could provide a decent off-highway package .... for SLOW travel when traveling off-highway. I would NOT drive a 4X4 Class C FAST in any off-highway situation - unlike some ot the 4X4 pickups I see blasting along a washboard gravel or dirt road way too fast.
In the case of the excellent, but expensive and hard to find used, Tiger models ... their coaches are built starting right down low onto and beside the truck frame with probably many heavy items mounted there ... just like on a Class C. But I'm not sure "what a Tiger is" ... a Class?? In the old days we used to call campers built like that a "chassis mount" camper. We once had a GMC 35 (ton pickup chassis) dually Chinook chassis mount truck camper and it was excellent in and for it's time, but of course based on ancient technology as compared to modern RVs.
We take our E450 based 2WD 24 foot Class C off-highway SLOWLY, but it has larger non-stock M&S tires on it and does not have any low hanging items under the coach. It's coach walls also start slanting upwards immediately after the rear wheels, so it has a decent (for a Class C) rear approach angle, especially if one takes off-highway washouts at an angle. No roller wheels are required on the back of it's frame for entrance into parking lots or upward sloping driveways.
2005 E450 Itasca 24V Class C
