Rocking B wrote:
We are going to look at a 2012 Keystone Cougar 30 RLS does anyone have any experience good or bad with this model of TT ? Thanks in advance.
Hi Rocking,
While I do not have the Keystone version, we are now on our second rear living camper. We truly like/love both of them. For 2 people you have plenty of room, and the rear living area makes a great view out the back of the camper. I can go on and on about why we like this floor plan but I want to give you a perspective the dealer may not know or tell you which deals with rear living floor plans.
Ours is a Sunline and the layout is similar to yours. Rear living area, couch and table slide, mid bath, front bedroom. Just we do not have the front wardrobe slide. That is a nice feature, wish we had it.
Ours layout is like this,
The one you are looking at, looks like this.
That pic came from the Keystone web site, here Keystone 2012 TT
Yours is 33' 6" ball to rear wall and ours is 32'
What is odd is, wonder why Keystone did this. From the online Keystone catalog, the declare the GVWR as 8,200#. Split as 6,860 shipping weight and 1,340 cargo. They also say "XLite" on this series. More odd for Keystone, they have put ST225/75R15D tires on it. This tire size is very good and they are rated for a little over 10,000 lb. Now, do not get me wrong, having 10,000# of tires on a camper rated at 8,200# GVWR is a really good thing.
Our Sunline camper is rated at 10,000 GVWR and it has 7,150# a shipping weight. We have 2,850#'s of cargo capacity. More than double what the Keystone has and less TT length. And... when we travel with full fresh water, the same 43 gallon tanks as the Keystone, we have managed to fill it all the way to 9,950# GVW. We seem to have a bunch of "stuff" even not considering the water....:B
Basically 43 gallons of fresh water is 357 pounds. On the Keystone, if you have to haul fresh water to camp, well your cargo is going to have to be less than 1,000# as your out of capacity. That may be hard on you with a 33' 6" long trailer to manage down to only put 1,340# of cargo in it. You may find, you cannot haul fresh water to the campground. You have to find water there. That really is not a show stopper, just a heads up in case there is bad water at some places you camp you're going to have to work through that. It is not hard to create 1,000# of camping gear. I know is sounds like a lot, and it is, but it really adds up fast. You need to realize you are going to have lots of storage space but are limited by how much you can put in that space. You need to manage down to the 1,340 # of cargo space.
Keystone "often" only puts tires on a camper right at or even under the GVWR letting the truck carry part of the GVW rating. It all meets specs, but it is bare minimum and has tricked many a camper who have not read the fine print. Here in this case, you have a big camper and good tire capacity. I wonder if they created "XLite" by just derating the cargo capacity and really did not change much about the camper how it was built?? H'mm, Good question! Many manufactures "use" to do this in the early days of Lite campers, they created a Lite model just by lowering the cargo capacity. I have no idea if that is the case here but, Point: Look at the VIN sticker on the camper. There they will by law state the actual GVWR. The online catalog may be incorrect. Know what it is you are getting.
Another heads up, while we truly love this floor plan, it comes with a price per say. High loaded tongue weight. Your Keystone is starting out at 780# dry on tongue weight. That is with no battery and no LP gas in the tank and no camping cargo inside. Ours started at 950#. With having a front slide that holds cargo, a nice big pass through cargo hole, storage under the bed and cabinets for storage in the front bed room, your tongue weight could easily be 1,000 to 1,200 pounds maybe higher. The rear living floor plan has that nice big window in the back and those 2 nice swivel rockers, but not a lot of storage to offset the front storage and as such, the tongue weight will go up.
As far as towing stability, this high tongue weight is a good thing. The realization is, you need a truck that can handle the weight.
In our case, if we are fully loaded and have the bikes on the front of the camper, I am at 1,600# of TW. This is 16% of the GVW. Bikes off, I am at 1,500# TW or 15% TW. And we have 500# of stuff in the truck bed on long trips. Remember though, I have the ability to carry more cargo and since I can, we do....
Point: I do not know what truck you have, but it needs to be a 3/4 ton something or larger as the tongue weight, truck bed weight, the camper weight and being a 33' 6" length is not going to work well on a 1/2 ton truck. If you try and fit this camper into a 1500 truck, sooner or later you will not be a happy camper. The way gear loads on this floor plan, the truck has to be able to handle the weight.
Hope this helps and good luck on the camper search.
John
