Ordering New Minnie Plus bunkhouse

[Badlands Bob]

Hey Toymon,
I think your going to not like towing that big of a camper with your F-150. That thing is 32 feet long and I estimate the loaded for camping weight at around 7,500 lbs. Your tongue weight will be in excess of 900 lbs. You may be within the specs of your truck but you won't like it. I had a friend of mine go through the same thing with a 2016 F-150. He struggled for a year towing and finally gave up. He had to bite the bullet and fork over another $20,000 to trade into an F-250.

Good luck.

[Mayberry32]

I did check my hitch weight and I want to say it was in the 980 pound range.

I think the combination of the truck weight, wheelbase and the payload all played a role. I was fully within spec on everything and it could pull it, it just wasn't fun and didn't feel safe at times. I hate to say, given a few trips, I think your experience will be the same. Best way I can describe it is, if one thing occurred like a cross wind or a tractor-trailer Blowing by me, I was a little uncomfortable, but okay. If any other thing went wrong at the same time, I felt like there was nothing I could do to keep the trailer under control.

That being said, I feel completely opposite after buying the 250 diesel. I honestly forget the trailer is behind me sometimes and have to slow down. Crosswinds, tractor trailers, pulling uphill in mountains.... None of it bothers me in the least. I even pulled the camper to the RV repair shop with no Lake distribution hookup at all after I bought the truck, to get them to set up my weight distribution hitch properly. Even without WD hooked up, I could run 65 mph and didn't even feel the trailer behind me. It's that big of a difference.

I wish you luck, and hope your experience is different than mine. I just know I've pulled a lot of trailers and don't think it will be.

[toymon]

Thanks for your input guys!

I'm pretty sure our options will be to upgrade our truck or change to a smaller trailer. We want to do this for the experience. Kids are young and in 5 years they'll be busy teenagers and we won't have this opportunity. Also, we are expecting the mother-in-law to join us. She's a cool cat, so I look forward to including her, but I can't add another adult in my cab and know I'll be driving a safe load. This is also part of the decision to get such a large trailer with a larger bathroom. So many great bunkhouses have smaller bathrooms and didn't make the cut. And in reality, traveling with that additional adult, I'm probably in the same boat unless we get a much smaller trailer.

From everything I've read about diesels, I'll go with a gas F250 if I pull that trigger. I work from home and drive to/from the airport. These diesels need to be active and I have a 2011 F-150 with 45k miles on it. I like the idea of having the diesel torque and better MPG, but it would just sit too often and risk other problems.

If you have any other advise for gas vs diesel, I'm all ears. I've never towed anything this big before so it has been a learning experience, and I don't even have the trailer yet. I really like the idea of not stressing about weight every time we take it out or worrying about limitations on where we can take it; so we need to internalize if the cost of the trailer plus a new SD truck now is worth the end goal.

Thanks again!

[Jcolang]

Hello. I know this post is older now but did you go ahead and take delivery of your Minnie Plus? I ordered the Dark Blue in July and we've used it several times and we love it but recently we discovered a leak in the bedroom roof. It's at the dealership now.
Any issues with your model?

John in Seattle

[toymon]

Originally Posted by Jcolang

Hello. I know this post is older now but did you go ahead and take delivery of your Minnie Plus? I ordered the Dark Blue in July and we've used it several times and we love it but recently we discovered a leak in the bedroom roof. It's at the dealership now.
Any issues with your model?

John in Seattle

We should get it next weekend - behind schedule apparantly. Being a Winnebago I wouldn't expect any issues. These are best in reliabilty from what I've researched. We are expecting to install solar panels at the dealer. Did you have anything added to the trailer roof? I hope its a quick warranty fix and you quickly move past it.

[Jcolang]

Actually, the leak wasn't technically the roof. It is a manufacturing defect whereby the front cap (the section that is the bedroom) joins the body of the RV. Evidently, the seal that Winnebago manufactured is faulty on these models and it causes it to leak. It also seeped into the basement compartment and delaminated the sidewalls so they look like wet cardboard now. We took delivery in July and have had no other problems with it except this. I will keep you posted. We took it to a Winnebago approved Dealership and they have submitted the claim to Winnebago. We shall see what they say. There is nothing we could have done to prevent it. They may have to take the entire front cap off to fix it and replace all of the interior parts in the bedroom. We shall see.