2014 vista winnebago vista35f

[michael j]

good morning all
as a newbie in motorhoming , and a retired bmw tech, im critical with safety and good handling on my coach , when we bought it it only has about 6k miles in 2020 ,its totally like new , what we discovered when driving and with the only vehicle on the road , so no turbulance factors nor wind at the time , when driving at speeds of 50 and greater , it was like driving thru a tornado , and flying for the first time , like what the heck ??? after much research and discussion with people i know with the same exact coach , i come to find out that the coach needs a front steering dampener and a rear track bar to correct, that they could almost guarantee it would fix the issues and since they have more experiemce than i and they took pics of what was done to their coach , i went with it , and wow, its another vehicle we actually took it up to 65 mph and nothing ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,ultra smooth
what im getting at is , how does ford , who made the chassis and winnebago who made the coach get away with thinking that the coach is ok to use as it is ??? and with no safety concerns , thou ill admit im not a fan of ford , and this is a cookie cutter chassis used by many rv builders , why is the needed parts NOT be included by ford since they made the chassis , i see this is a common complaint of the F53 CHASSIS , i know many people who had the gm chassis on older motorhomes and this was never an issue , i was told except for its size , it drove like a car
im thinking is it possibly where the NHTSA should be investigating the handling of motorhomes ?? im thinking of not myself but for all people since there are so many people involved with motorhomes
im being honest and open minded here , is ford motor company short changing the motorhome consumer ??
thank you much
michael

[creativepart]

Hi and welcome to RVing.

Ford makes the F53 bare chassis for many different uses - dump trucks, box trucks, gravel hauling, etc. That's what the chassis is built for. RV manufacturers buy it because it's cheap, its rugged and it can handle a lot of weight. Sure Ford is happy that RV manufacturers are buying tons of these chassis, but they don't really seem to want to produce an "rv specific" version. Probably because RV manufacturers want them as cheap as possible.

RV manufacturers are certainly aware of the issues but since RV owners seem to be willing to spend thousands of dollars to partially fix the problem they stick with a bad riding, bad driving chassis from Ford.

Other chassis manufacturers were in the market - Workhorse, Freightliner, GM but all have stopped building gas RV chassis.

A few RV builders add a Steering Stabilizer and even fewer add Sumo Springs at the factory to help gain sales. Newmar and Tiffin will even let you add Liquid Springs replacement suspension to your coach on special order - it fixes everything but costs $25,000.

So, the guys you talked to sold you on the Steering stabilizer and the rear track bar - but you could have just as easily heard from other guys the fix was Sumo Springs, Koni Shocks, or bigger sway bars.

The truth is... they all work a little to improve handling, but nothing gets rid of the "dump truck" ride except to replace the 1930's leaf springs and sold axles with the $25K Liquid Spring upgrade.

PS. We're long time BMW owners - from my first 1970 1602 to our brand new all electric i4 eDrive40 and ten others in between.