Still looking at the Bounder 35K with questions

For those with this coach, how much does your rig weigh fully loaded? Have you performed any modifications to the chassis for a better ride?

well I will tell you this, I have a tiffin 36 LA which they put on a 252 inch wheel base and a 24,000 pound chassis. Mine handles great with no mods. Fleetwood puts the same size coach on a 228 inch wheels base and a 22,000 lb chassis. Now that aint right. I would be concerned

Just about any of the gassers you look at in this length are going to have a 9' -11' overhang, it's just part of owning a gasser. The overhang is easy to get use to and just requires some paying attention when making low speed turns and watching the "swing".

The majority of them have a high upsweep in the back that prevents dragging. The only issue most run into is towing. Because of the high upsweep, the hitch is placed way off of the ground and it becomes difficult to get the hitch height down low enough for towing, especially towing a small/low toad.

I agree with dahkota. You can drive off highways. Just be careful. I'm more hesitant because back in the 90s with no cell phone I buried my MH 50 miles from nearest town. About 12 hours later, no shovel, but I did have a jack and lots of outside carpet we tore into pieces we got back to the main road. MHs are heavy. The Bounder was my choice after shopping. Just saw a Monaco gasser that had a too good to pass up price.

Mine will drag when backing into or driving over a severe slope. I have the wheels on the back installed by the previous owner (or they may have been a factory install...don't know). They have obviously engaged the ground several times as the missing chunks from those little wheels will attest. I try not to make it a habit to enter severe slopes with the coach, but sometimes it can't be avoided. With that said, I doubt you'll be able to completely avoid dragging, depending on where you travel, but it won't be the norm for it to happen in teh majority of campgrounds and parking lots.

Of course the back end "CAN" drag. (Does it have drag caster wheels installed?) This is due to two things. 1 the coach being long..... However, I think it is more due to unreasonable roads and driveways. It can happen though so get casters.

We have a Bounder 33C (its ratio is 50 percent). You are looking at a 35K (its ratio is 52 percent). We have a shorter wheel base and a slightly longer (4") overhang than the Bounder you are looking at.

We have driven our Bounder off road. Miles and miles of dirt and gravel all over the country. While we do take care to avoid extremely potholed, rutted, dirt roads, we do take ours many places others wouldn't. The only time we have 'dragged the rear end' was once, in Alaska, when we drove down a 6' embankment to park on a river edge. We took the bank at an angle and one skid bar of our reese hitch scraped the dirt. If you understand your departure angles, you can pretty much avoid ever scraping. Had we taken the embankment straight on, we probably would have bent the frame as the entire rear end would have been buried in dirt. If you take potential rear end drag situations very slowly and at an angle, you should have fewer problems. Typical RV drivers will find these at gas station and store entrances on occasion.

What we have to pay more attention to is high centering. The Bounder has a little more ground clearance that many other class As, which suits us fine. But we still have to be careful, particularly with built up railroad tracks (High centering is getting stuck or scraping the space between front and rear tires). The longer your wheel base, the greater the chance of high centering. Take them slow.

We looked at the new Bounders and the main reason we did not buy one was the windows. The windows on the new Bounders are frameless. They look good, but they barely open. Since we boondock and dry camp quite often, we like our windows to open as much as possible. The additional feature changed in the 2016s that turned us off was that the driver's side bays no longer slide out with the slide. While this allows great storage and pass through space, it makes getting to the storage while the slide is out a royal PITA. We loved many of the other upgrades - the added window in the bedroom, the better floor and wiring - but couldn't get past the window issue.

Our Bounder has been a great vehicle and home for two years now and we haven't come across any other class A we would trade it for. We think of ours as the little engine that could because it has taken us so many unexpected places without a complaint. Best of luck in your decision.

WyoTraveler wrote:
What year is 30 yr anniversary?

1986 - 2016

Wheel base Vs length should be about 53% or more. If you look at the back of the Bounder the bottom slopes upward. All that said, A MH of any type is less likely to be driven off road. We drive off road just to get to a camp sight. A MH is just too heavy to risk off road driving. On the highways you'll never have a problem. What year is 30 yr anniversary? The shorter the wheel base the easier it is to maneuver in tight areas and the more the back end swings in the opposite direction in a turn. The longer the wheel base the better it will handle on the highway. The shorter the wheel base Vs length the more you will spend on anti away. I do not have a Bounder but it would have been my choice except I found a great deal on another MH I couldn't pass up. If I recall the Bounder has a W/D option.