This link gives a fair description of my '90 chassis 27' Rockwood Class A with the 12,300 lb GVWR. I do have the wimpy TBI and TH400 3 speed auto though! A mid-80's MH may have a carb instead of the TBI.
To the OP, you may consider changing to 4.56 gears or lower from the stock 4.10's in order to pull the weight of the car trailer. My MH is on the edge pulling a 3,500 Lb Jeep Cherokee toad. The added tongue weight of your trailer and dynamic loading will probably greatly overload the rear axle. You may want to swap it out for a 10K axle.
tom_kat wrote: we could compair mine is a 85 on a 14,000+ frame up graded to 17,000+ by adding a tag axle,around 12,000 gvw and under they had differant brakes they were smaller pads as well as the rotors and hubs ,the front end on mine is 5300 lbs the rear axle is a HD70 with a 4.56 ratio,front axle has 5 lugs on a large hub and rotor,rear axle has 10 lugs same brakes as the front ,disk brakes all around except for tag which is drum and a 1 ton + axle and it uses 1 ton ford rear axle brakes,maybe you can compair what yours has to it.
Interesting! Mine has what seem to be normal light truck style 8 lug 16" dually wheels. One of my questions is if the lighter GVWR chassis like mine can use the 19.5" wheels & bigger brakes of the heavier chassis.
You can see some pictures of my setup at http://www.maracing.com/MH/. There's shots of both front and rear wheels there... Does that look like the bolt pattern used on the 14k GVWR chassis?
Are there junkyards for RVs? What're the chances I could find a junked 14k chassis RV and snag parts from it for a reasonable price?
A bit unrelated... I see that Henderson has a track bar / panhard bar setup for the P30. But $500 seems a little steep... Any reason I can't just make my own? I've fabricated things like this for racecars a few times. Anything weird about making them work with leaf springs? All the race cars I do have coil springs in the rear and a 3/4 link or torque arm...
bacollins wrote: Going from 16" to 19.5" wheels and tires will gear up the final drive ratio. This could degrade the MH's ability to pull a trailer or toad.
That makes sense... I was wondering why the 19.5" wheel models would be running more than 4.10 rear gears... We already turn a good bit of RPM at 60mph or so. I wouldn't want to turn more, but if the 19.5" wheel/tires are larger in diameter I could see wanting some more gear.
Is a heavier duty axle swap fairly straight forward? Where would I look to find one at a DIY price?
Thanks!
Mark
(btw, just to be clear... I expect that what I want to do will absolutely go over the listed GVWR/GAWR... So what I'm trying to do is find out how to increase the GAWR on the rear specifically.)
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