Thanksgiving Raton Pass. Survey

[davidkerryedwards]

Take the post about the 391 gasser climbing Raton Pass at 12mph, print it out
and tape it
to the dash just above the steering wheel. It will make you feel much better
during that 25
minutes.
Since I live in Denver, most of my motorhome driving is outside of Colorado with
only a
small percentage of steep hills. I decided I like the Bird enough, and the
other power
options being not much better, that living with slow climbs was acceptable. I
definitely
would not want to use it to commute from Denver to Grand Junction daily.

Kerry
82FC 35
Denver

--- In WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com, Doug Engel wrote:
>
> Bruce, I had figured that unless I went big (read:300HP+) I would not get
enough bang
for my buck. One of our issues with the new bird is while living in Gunnison has
its
benefits, you have to drive over a pass any direction you head out of here. For
instance, to
head east, Monarch Pass is the most direct route, 11K'+, the climb up is about 7
miles, at
20 MPH, that's about 20-25 minutes, not a great delay in the grand scheme of
things, but
fairly arduous, and I hate holding up traffic. I know that I could (if I were
able) spend
another $250K and scoot right up in some other, high HP bus, but then I wouldn't
have a
vintage Bird...oh the injustice of it all. It seems that the 3208T is the
easiest choice for a
repower, but alot of work and several $$$ for another 15ish MPH. I see some
folks doing a
Cummins conversion, but I can't imagine it would be alot better...if any, just
more work.
Seems like a medium duty Duramax with the Allison might be a good choice, but
now we
start
> re-inventing the wheel, we bought the bus for recreation, not another
project. Any
thoughts?? Doug
>