Olympic Peninsula, WA

We made that upgrade to a Holiday Rambler Presidential we’d just bought back in 2005.  The Mor/RYDE IS and disc brake upgrade was sweet. We spent a week “camping” in the Mor/RYDE shop.  Daytimes were spent roaming the area and sitting under the shade trees in their parking lot.  Nights were spent in the coach inside the shop.  Yes, we actually lived in their shop after they closed and everyone went home.  We also had them install their rubber shackles on the rear axle of the ’04 F350 we had back then.  The suspension upgraded was huge. . . until we encountered the frost heaves outside of Winnipeg.  No matter what speed we drove, it was like riding a cutting horse I had years ago when he was PO’d.  OTOH, the brakes were outstanding.

Unfortunately, as much as we liked the RV, Monaco’s QC was so pathetic we threw in the towel on the thing and traded it for a Beaver Patriot.  We didn’t miss the HR or the ’04 F350.

Two photos are attached to this post.  The first is the trailer after the OEM suspension was torched off.  The second is the new axles sitting in their driveway ready to be installed.  A second post will show two more photos.

I was thinking about doing the Mor/RYDE IS system again for the Cameo, and mentioned the idea of making a run to Indiana to my wife.  She didn’t even flinch.  Hmm.  Economics are still a part of the equation.  Flipping the axles is about $300-500 job.  Add in replacing the springs & shackles and we’re in the $1,000-$1,500 range.  The IS suspension part of the bill back in 2005 was$2,007; with inflation that’s about $2,900 today.  So, if I ignore the transportation cost of pulling the Cameo 2,240 miles each way, we’re talking about twice the cost of redoing the suspension with steel springs.  OTOH, fuel alone adds over $2K to the bill.

Part of my thinking is that the HR Presidential was a travel trailer with a Hensley Hitch towed by a, ’04 F350 short bed 4X4.  While it towed well, it wasn’t winning any prizes for ride quality.  However, our Cameo is towed by a long bed crew cab Ram 3500 with air suspension and hitched with a TrailerSaver BD3 air hitch.  Our Northwood had a Mor/RYDE pin box, but the Cameo has a 5th Airborne.  To say that the combination of air suspension, air hitch and air pin box smooths out the ride is an understatement.  The bottom line is that while someone in the trailer might notice the better ride, I don’t see how we would be able to tell in the Ram.

Which would we get more pleasure (and resale) out of?  $5K on the suspension or $5K on replacing the decals on the coach?  My hunch is that we’d get more pop out of the coach looking brand new.

We live in the NW corner of the Pacific Northwest, so decals last forever up here.  OTOH, everything turns green.  The caulk doesn’t get dirty & dry up, instead it grows moss.

I could be wrong, but I think our Cameo was painted vs gel-coat.  The decals are old and heavily cracked, but the white sidewalls look and feels like LPU paint.  The end caps are obviously gel-coat and have a slightly different look and feel.  Not quite as smooth and slightly off-white vs the pure white of the sidewalls.  We found a set of decals for about $2,400 and are debating whether to DIY or have a shop do it.  What we get for an estimate will play a part in the answer as well as how easily the old decals come off.  I found several rubber wheels made for the job on Amazon and body shops.

My guess is that Carriage, like Excel, was building their 5th wheels for 2-wheel drive pickups instead of 4x4s.  We don’t have a problem with bed clearance, and if we did, we can adjust that with the air hitch.  Our problem is the ridiculous angle of departure and terrible ground clearance at the rear.  Our driveway is over 15% where it runs into the county road.  If you look at the photo of our Beaver Patriot, you’ll see the arrow pointing at the corner of the radiator just an inch from the ground.  That was after we had a contractor smooth the driveway.  Fortunately, one of our neighbors did something that got the county’s attention and they had to cut and pave the entrance to their driveway.  So, when we got home from Arizona with the Cameo, we entered their driveway, hit the 4X4 switch and crossed the field and gradually turned up our driveway.

The second photo shows the Cameo hitched to the Ram with the Ram’s rear suspension set to the low ride height.  We have adequate bed/trailer clearance and iffy clearance at the rear of the trailer.  Setting the Ram to normal ride height lifts the rear 2″, which lowers the rear of the trailer almost 2″, which is definitely too low to navigate our driveway.

The axle flip will lift the trailer 5.5″.  The outboard spring eyes could be moved to the lower holes, giving us half of 1.5″.  And, as you pointed out, the Mor/RYDE equalizers are definitely tired, starting to separate and sagging.  My “plan” is to stop on my way to the RV shop for the axle flip, and take careful measurements while hitched up on flat concrete to see how much lift we actually need to get the trailer level.  I’d like it to be spot on so we can open the slides while hitched up.

We had the same experience when we converted the 32′ Holiday Rambler to disc brakes. The difference was noticeable in town and even more so on downgrades as the F350’s engine braking wasn’t that good at controlling our downgrade speed.

Our Cameo’s actual weight is 13,320#; only 9.4% heavier than the HR.  Plus, our Ram has much better brakes than that F350, as well as much better engine braking.  The result is that we rarely use the service brakes to slow down, unless we want to stop.  We towed our Northwood over 50K miles and had to do 2 full-on emergency stops along with a number of quicker than normal stops, and they worked well.  Interestingly, the normal braking with the Cameo feels better than the Northwood.  Time will tell how well they work when pushed to the limit.

The issue we have with upgrading to disc brakes is economic.  There is only so much available in the budget, and the net cost of upgrading to discs would be well over $10K.