Class A, Motorhome Handling Upgrades that had the MOST IMPACT

scary white knuckling driving almost everybody that has a motor home and especially a gas motorhome has experienced these kinds of scenarios but there are several things you can do and that i've done to make our motorhome drive and handle better and easier today we're going to cover the upgrades i made to our chassis that had the most impact to make our motorhome handle better and drive a whole lot easier details coming up on rv street [Music] let's get this out of the way right off the bat there will be some nuggets here for diesel pusher owners but this video is basically going to focus on a class a gas motorhome and the things that you can do to fine tune it to make it handle better and drive easier but without a doubt the chassis upgrades that i made these are bolt-on upgrades man it changed the whole dynamic of the way our coach drives and so i'm going to share with those with you today so let's crawl underneath the coach and take a look and we'll start up there you can see i've already got my cardboard slipped up underneath there i've got a light that i'm going to turn on so we can see and joanie's going to be doing the filming so here we have our sway bar and the sway bar comes all the way around here the same way on the other side and this sway bar from the factory connects to this upper link there are two holes in the end of this sway bar and this link from the factory connects to the front hole right here now this fix here is called the cheap handling fix the cheap handling fix was found by a guy in 2010 on his way to alaska so now over the past 10 years there's been tens of thousands of rvers who have made this what they call the cheap handling fix and there's been some modifications and some changes and i ran into a film became a friend of his and he ended up making this bracket these brackets are no longer available so don't ask me where where i can get them what he did is he designed and welded with an adjustable holes up here there's four of them and that way you can put it in a different hole to give you the best ride but the second thing it does is it keeps the geometry of the sway bar 90 degrees or almost 90 degrees from the sway bar itself just bear with me here if this bracket wasn't here and you put this link down here that's going to raise this bar up you can see this picture right here and that does work but over the years we've found that if you keep the sway bar geometry more level then you will get a much better ride and less sway so he came up with this design and i have applied this design i did this four years ago we've got tens of thousands of miles on this thing and this did help in the rolling and the rocking of the motor home a couple other things that people do is instead of using this link on a bracket uh hellwig sells a an adjustable length it connects up here and it's two-piece it's big it's a lot beefier than this and it's adjustable by screwing it in you can make it shorter screwing it out it'll make it longer and i'll put a link in the text about that where you can get that but people have been finding it if they adjust that out to about 11 inches and then hook that up to here to the second hole that also gives them a good effect on controlling the sway this was not one of those upgrades that i did that had the biggest impact but it did have an impact this was the very first thing i did trying to get some of the sway out of the front of the motorhome now a second thing that people do is they go to a larger sway bar this is factory and it's inch and a half if you go to a third party and get a larger sway bar they're inch and three quarters in diameter the brand new 2021 ford chassis that have the new v8 engine in them they come up with an astounding two inch diameter sway bar so i hope i explained that good enough to show you how that cheap handling fix affects that sway bar that sway bar when when you're moving and diving into corners or down curves that sway bar it twists and by moving that link back about three inches further it's much stiffer it's much harder to twist it makes the rolling uh more rigid uh and not so bouncy and loose and i remember when before i did that i was like i mean i come out of the out of a driveway or and boy that thing would dip down and it would sit there and rock back and forth like this i mean you know what i'm talking about but by moving that it stiffens the twisting action and makes it much more rigid and a whole lot less roll but there are some other things that i've done that's taken out even more of that role that i'll get to in a few minutes but first i want to show you the next thing i did and that was to install a safe t-plus let's get underneath the coach and take a look okay so here we are under the coach and we are right behind the front axle so you have to get access from the back right behind the front tires and this is it right here what this is is basically a stabilizer in here it's a spring that's inside this casing and it's mounted over here on this bracket with one bolt here and it's mounted with a bracket right here with another bolt and these two u-bolts this is really an easy install now what the safety plus does is basically two things uh you're in wind right or an 18-wheeler is coming by and the front wheel is going back and forth you're trying to correct for it well what the stabilizer does is just that it stabilizes the steering and it makes handling and driving a lot easier it has a push pull effect in here so if you have a wind that pushes you to the left it'll assist in bringing you back to center and the other main feature that this stabilizer has is it's a safety feature that's why they call it the safety plus if you ever have a front blowout whether it's passenger side or driver side that side of the motorhome is going to dive into that side the steering wheel is going to really yank to one inside or the other depending on what tire blows out well the safety plus resists that diving and it'll help keep the steering wheel straight so it doesn't pull you to one side or the other that's main reason why i bought this was for a safety feature just in case i ever had a blowout but as it's turned out driving in high winds or when 18 wheelers are coming by or whatever this self-centers and it makes my adjustments on the steering wheel very minor i drive one-handed most of the time but again it's a very easy install one bolt here one bolt here and it's adjusted here now the safety plus is a stabilizer it keeps the motor home from wandering in its own lane and you know as well as i do a lot of these lanes they'll be leaning or they they have rivers in them and the safety t-plus keeps that suspension tight and as it tries to wander it's always constantly pulling and pushing and keeping that suspension straight so you can go down the highway straight and in your lane without a lot of forced effort it's a it's a great upgrade if you have a class a motorhome and especially a gas motorhome i think having a safety plus on there is an excellent idea and it really keeps you from fighting the wheel and it's a safety feature too if you ever have a blowout it's going to be very helpful in you recovering and getting off to the side of the road safely now if you decide to to install a safety plus i highly recommend that you get a front end alignment first that you're going to have to take to a shop that's not diy once your front end is aligned and you've got all those parameters set and those specs are correct then you come and add the safety plus and the reason i'm telling you this is because i did a video on how to adjust the safety plus i did not have my front end aligned in the beginning and i installed this and i was having some issues i got all those figured out and you need to watch this video it'll explain everything i don't need to go rehash that all over again but get your front end aligned first install the safety plus and then adjust it and i'll tell you you'll be glad you did now the next thing i did is i installed sumo springs up in front let's get back under the coach and let's take a look okay so here we are back under the front of the motorhome and this is where we were just talking about the sway bar and the brackets and directly up in here i have installed sumo springs now when these uh ford chassis these f53 chassis are delivered they ride on leaf springs right up here uh from the factory you have a a rubber bumper that bumper is probably about i don't know three inches long or whatever about two inches wide around from the bottom of that to these leaf springs is probably five six inches so as you're driving along on rough road this chassis is bouncing up and down like this on these leaf springs and that's where you're getting the pounding and the in the uh rough ride that you hear because you're riding on these leaf springs and you got this big gap the install is quite easy you have a bracket up here with one bolt and you have a bracket down here with four bolts it's two pieces you have an upper piece and a lower piece and they're cone-shaped and they fit inside each other so they're constantly giving and taking as you're riding down the road this without a doubt has been the best upgrade i have made it absorbs all of that pounding on the road it has removed this gap between the leaf springs and it cushions the ride and it has reduced a ton of the roll remember we were talking about the chf the cheap handling fix well that's why i didn't want to go to a bigger bar a bigger sway bar because i knew i wanted to put these sumo springs in first because i wanted to reduce this distance in here between the chassis and the leaf springs and i was right once i installed these my wife and i looked at each other and said man i wish we would have done this long time ago so this has been a tremendous suspension upgrade now these sumo springs are made of a micro cellular urethane material and they're maintenance free some people will install airbags and that's fine but i decided not to use airbags and i went to the sumo springs in the front for three reasons number one they're easier to install number two they're maintenance free and number three they don't require any putting air in there and adjusting the air some air may leak out over time you have to put more air in them and i just didn't even want to fuss with any of that and after looking at the sumo springs i thought man this is the way to go and i'm really glad i made that choice now if you've installed airbags or you want to install airbags i'm you know i'm not against that i'm just telling you the reasons why i chose sumo springs over air bags the last thing is is i only put the sumo springs up front i did not install them on the back and i'll show you why when we get to the back of the coach and the next thing i did is i replaced all four shocks uh i had stock uh bill steins on there they were going on four years old and they were shot i wanted to buy a little plastic motorhome toy to kind of show you the different effects of these things i could not find one uh so let's just pretend that this is a motorhome it's a box right pretend there's a this is the front when your shocks are gone you're gonna get what they call porpoising so as you're rolling like this you're gonna you're gonna get a front to rear roll like this so when you hit a bump it's gonna come up and roll and roll and roll like that if your coach is doing that you need new shocks so i replaced all four of them with coney fsds there are two in the front and there are two in the back and they provide a real nice rebounding when you're hitting bumps and again they also aid in turning and rolling your shocks are nice and tight it's not the the sway bar it's not the stabilizer but you put all these things together as a unit and together they work in orchestra to really make a smooth ride replacing your shocks with fsds is a fairly easy diy job but if you have an air gun or which i didn't or a socket and a breaker bar and a cheater pipe you can break those bolts loose you don't have to jack up the motor home you don't have to take off any wheels you don't have to do anything like that you just remove the old you put on the new let's get underneath the coach let me show you what they look like now like i said it's not that hard to remove these it's just that because of this engine bay area where you have the axle and the chassis and all these things you can't really you don't have a large turn with your ratchet but what i did is i just used a socket right here with my breaker bar and a cheater pipe and once i got it loose you know it comes off pretty easy uh the same thing down below but your travel with the ratchet is very limited so it takes you have to do a little bit at a time but once it's broken loose they come right out once you get those two bolts out you just remove the old shock you put the new one in and what i did is i put a little bit of anti-seize on those bolts and put them back in there and then i snugged them up now when i was looking on what the torque was on those men i'll tell you what it was all over the board i was getting 90 pounds 250 pounds this that and the other but with a little bit further digging and because you are confined with the amount of space you have in there the consensus was about 165 foot-pounds but i'll tell you i'll make this really easy for you put that socket and that breaker bar on there and put your cheater pipe and just get those as tight as you can you're going to be fine and you're not going to ruin anything it's going to be just fine so in summary the five things that i did to the front here are number one the cheap handling fix number two i had the front end aligned number three i installed the safe t-plus number four i installed new shocks number five i installed the sumo springs all those things working together in concert has greatly reduced the role and going into turns it has stabilized the steering and as i'm going over rough roads those shocks and sumo springs have absorbed a ton of that pounding and hitting on those leaf springs and so now it's running smooth and straight down the road and because of these upgrades that i did i did not need a bigger sway bar up front now some people will do that and that's fine that may be what they need for their coach but for what i did to our coach and our chassis and the weight that we carry i did not have to upgrade that sway bar i'm still running on the factory sway bar so that's what i've done to the front of the coach let's go and take a look at what i did in the back after we look at what i did underneath on the back of the coach you and i are going to kind of go over some other items and some other things to consider when you deciding on what you should do to your coach so stay tuned for that so in addition to adding new fsd shocks in the front and in the back i also installed a super steer rear track bar this is also an easy diy job but it delivers some big results the rear track bar keeps the motor home in that pushing and pulling effect for example when an 18-wheeler comes by you and you can feel that wind kind of pull you and then you try to correct for that driving well now your rear end begins to wag let me use my motor home example so when you have a truck coming by you or you got crosswinds and it's pushing on that back uh part of the motorhome you try to correct it up front here with steering and you get this pivoting right here on the rear axle you get this tail wag well what the rear track the bar does is it locks and stabilizes that chassis to the differential and it eliminates that wagging how many of you have experienced tailwag going down the highway and if you're towing a tow car or a trailer where you have an additional piece back here and more wind is hitting it can even be worse so a rear track bar man i'll tell you it was just an enormous upgrade for me so let's crawl back up underneath the coach and let me show you what we did there okay so here we are underneath the coach in the back this is the differential right here and here we have the the rear sway bar and again i have kept this stock but you can also see i have put the cheap handling fix brackets on here and i have put the link right here down to the third hole if you don't want to use the bracket you can put this to the second hole on the sway bar just like i showed you up front but i wanted to show you how i did the cheap handling fix here here you can see the rubber bumper above the the rear axle right here this one's a little larger than the one that's up front but this is the one that i was talking about earlier up front this one was removed up front to put the sumo springs on i decided not to put the sumo springs on the back because the ride was fine once i put on this rear track bar so here is my super steer rear track bar right here it's mounted with these three bolts one two and three right here on the differential and then there's a bracket right here that bolts to the chassis and then you have this torsion bar right here and it's adjusted by this nut right here to do this install it takes about maybe a couple hours you have plenty of room to work with in here one thing i did do just as an added precaution as this part of the track bars sticking out i wanted to make sure my brake lines never ended up touching this so i pulled them out a little bit of the way and i put a safety zip tie here just to make sure that they don't fall down and hit the side of this track mark but it really has never been an issue and by the way you can see that these are all wet my brake lines because i just got through conditioning them also but once again what this track bar does is it locks onto the side of the chassis right here and then bolts to the differential and that keeps that twisting and that tail that tail wag going back like that i was shocked at how well this thing worked uh this absolutely removed 90 of tail wag now of course if i get a really strong crosswind i mean you know you're going to get some movement out of that but this thing here in my opinion on a gas motorhome is an absolute must so on the back side of the differential you can see the koni shocks i installed back here back here is a whole lot easier you see how much room you have you have one bolt there one bolt back up in there and you got all this free room here you don't have all of the confinement of the engine bay so the rears are much easier to install than the front so in summary on the back of the coach i did three things i installed a rear track bar new shocks and my cheap handling fix with those blue brackets and i did not put a larger diameter sway bar either so now let's look at the last hardware upgrade that i made many of you who follow our channel know that i'm not a big fan of using powders and beads to balance the tires for many reasons but having properly balanced tires is important on the way that the motorhome travels down the road so as the final touch the last upgrade i made is i installed centromatic rings on both the front and the rear tires they come in all kinds of different configurations you can put these on motorhomes light trucks heavy trucks trailers motorcycles all different kind of things but these centromatic rings they automatically balance your tires continuously even as your tires wear now you know normally with your car that you have or whatever you would normally take it to the shop every six seven thousand miles have the tires rotated and while they're off you'd have them rebalanced and put them back on with centromatic rings you don't have to do this as the tires wear and the weight changes on those tires the centromatic rings will automatically re-balance your tires while you're underway so as a one-time install let's just think about this as far as the cost is concerned if you didn't use centromatic rings and as your tires are wearing and you have to rebalance your tires well you got to go to a tire shop and have them pulled and they're going to probably charge you about maybe 20 bucks a pop to dismount the tires then there's going to be an additional charge to have them balanced again and then put them all back on you you do that with six tires and all of a sudden you know you spin a little piece of change that could go towards the centromatic rings and you'll never have to rebalance your tires again and besides the cost you're going to have to find a shop that can do the work take the time to take your your coach down there and have it done and all of that in my opinion the centromatic rings are a number one choice it's a one-time purchase and when you replace your tires you just put those citromatic rings on with your new tires now when you buy new tires systematic rings you do not have to balance the tires even the first time you do not have to pay to have those done but for me you know me i like to do everything with a little bit of overkill so when i buy new tires i go ahead and have them balanced with lead weights like you normally would that's just something that i like to do as an added precaution i like to have those tires as balanced as good as possible to start with then i put on the centromatic rings and then put on the rim and the new tires so with centromatic rings you never have to have your tires rebalanced it's easier on your suspension on your kingpins your bushings but having those balanced tires is going to be easier on the whole entire drivetrain now if you decide to buy centromatic balancing rings you're going to need four of them two of them go on the front and on the rear dualies they go in between the two tires okay so there is no one solution for every motorhome because there's a lot of things that affect the way the the motorhome will have tail wag the way it dives and rolls the weight distribution and so forth so let's look at this recent chart that was released by the rv safety and education foundation out of nearly thirty thousand rvs fifty seven percent of them were overloaded this can have a profound impact on handling so here you have motorhomes that are all these different length of chassis and they all have their own gross vehicle weight that they can handle now when you buy these motorhomes some of them will have a big double door residential refrigerator some of you have a washer and dryer some of you carry a lot of water in the back and so forth all these things that shoot that are in the motorhome that came with the factory and what you put in it all your gear and everything that you carry with you where it is put and how it's distributed is going to also affect the way the motorhome handles and travels down down the road here's my motorhome example let's just say that you decide that you're going to go boondocking and you want to fill up your fresh water tank you put 50 gallons of water back here or 75 gallons or whatever all that weight that those tanks are usually at the back of the motorhome right you put that additional weight down here and it's going to raise the nose of the motor home some well that's going to affect the way the front end handles weight distribution is so important that's why i so encourage all of you to weigh your coach you need to know if you have one side that's that's heavier than the other and move stuff around and try to get it as even as possible i covered this all in a video when i talked about air pressure in tires so in addition to these bolt-on diy upgrades that i made to the chassis we all need to look at all those other things that i just talked about the weight distribution having your tires balanced and the last thing is air pressure you really have to watch your air pressure and the only way you're going to know what kind of air pressure you should be putting in your tires is going and weighing your coach and then inflating your tires to the proper psi according to the tire manufacturers charts but i'll put a link below in the description text about that video and you can read up on that too but what i'm trying to say is and it's kind of difficult doing such a complex video trying to make it all make sense so it's not any one thing that i did but it's all these different upgrades that i made watching my weight watching my air pressure the kind of chassis it was on and then i listened to my coach i watched the symptoms and i knew okay in order to solve this problem this is what has to be done okay so what did all this stuff cost me well oh before i get into that if you like this diy stuff maintenance stuff upgrades and all that kind of thing you need to go to my playlist right up here and when you click that playlist i've got several playlists of covering a multitude of items you really need to go to that playlist tab and see all the different videos i've got there they're going to be very helpful to you and it'll explain all the other stuff that i've covered here in more detail and don't forget to subscribe subscribing to our channel is free click the red button and ring the bell off to the right and when you ring that bell click all and what all means is i want to be notified all the time when martin uploads his next video so subscribe ring the bell all okay so where was i oh yeah what did this all cost me okay so all these upgrades they cost me about three thousand dollars i did them all diy and that did not include the front end alignment i mean i have to take that to a shop so i did have to pay for that the tools needed for these upgrades and these bolt-ons you should be carrying these with you at all times anyway so after three thousand dollars of upgrades always watching our tire pressure redistributing my weight we now go down the highway and i do not get shoved around by 18 wheelers i don't worry about what's coming up from behind me our coach rides smooth it stays in its own lane it doesn't wander anywhere and it's a whole lot quieter because of those sumo springs i had to martinize my chassis if you're interested in any of the things that i've discussed here it's all in my amazon store except for the centromatic rings i'm not affiliated with them but i really believe in their product but i will put a link to their website in the description text so you can read up more on them but any gear you need any parts if it's even if it's not in my amazon store you can go to our amazon store and find what you need put it in the cart and check out and that's a great way to say thank you martin for taking the time to do these videos and helping the rv community so this is the conclusion yay of the upgrades that i did to our coach that had the most impact that made the handling and the steering and the running of our motorhome down the highway so start thinking and paying attention to your motorhome and what it's saying to you and what you need to do to martinize your chassis so that's it for now this is rv street stick around [Music] you

Channel: RVstreet

Views: 68,200

Keywords: ford F53 motorhome chassis upgrades, F53 chassis, F53 chassis upgrades, gas motorhome handling upgrades, driving a class A gas motorhome, class A gas suspension upgrades, F53 sway bar, cheap handling fix, class A maintenance, F53 sumo springs install, class a handling upgrades, F53 suspension upgrades, class A Safe-T-Plus, F53 rear track bar, Installing Koni FSD shocks Class A, class A sway bar, Class A steering control, Class A tail wag, Class A Motorhome Handling Upgrades

Id: PceY3hcsJSk

Length: 29min 9sec (1749 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021