Underweight! EMPTY!!!

[whizbang]

I'd heard that many small RV's were overweight empty. So, I was a little concerned when we bought our 2002 Minnie (24-1/2 feet) without first weighing it.

Fortunately, my concern was unjustified. With full gas (50 gal), full water (46 gal), my wife and I and two dogs, we tipped the scale at 10,460 pounds.

GVWR on the E350 is 11,500, leaving us 1000 pounds for "stuff".

So far, it handles much nicer on the highway and on forest service roads than our old Alpenlite/F350 truck camper combo.

It looks like the rear springs are sagging a bit but I probably wont mess with them.

[pnichols]

Whiz,

I waited and waited until Koni finally offered an FSD shock for the Ford E450 motorhome chassis. I even called them to encourage getting it to market.

The trouble with any other shock model is - what stiffness do you go with? Soft means poor handling. Stiff means an even worse than stock ride in the rear. The FSD shock acts both ways as needed, so I had two installed in the rear a couple of years ago ... much better now in all situations, but they're a bit pricey to buy.

[whizbang]

pnichols,

The very first thing I did was remove the OEM shocks and replace them with Bilsteins.

The Minnie had 38K on it at the time.

BIG improvement!!!

Whiz

[pnichols]

whiz,

I looks like you're the opposite of this thread's title - you're Underweight FULL!

We have an ~24 foot Itasca on an E450 chassis that is REALLY underweight at any fullness we can load it up to. We're around 11,800 - 12,000 fully loaded, but the chassis can take up to 14,050 lbs.. That's exactly what we wanted when we bought it -> chassis overkill.

Enjoy you great smooth ride! It took several years before we finally were able to eliminate a lot of the sting out of the rear of our rig using specific shock absorbers that weren't even available for the Ford E350/E450 chassis until many years after we had bought our Class C.

[carringb]

It looks like the rear springs are sagging a bit but I probably wont mess with them.

E-series rear springs normally sit flat to inverted.