Why We Bought a Gas RV Instead of a Diesel Pusher

hi everybody and welcome to why we chose a class a gas Motorhome instead of a diesel so this is one of our most popular questions we get asked this and we always get asked when are you going to upgrade to a diesel we have now driven 70,000 miles with our class a gas Motorhome and just felt like this is the best time to do this video so reason number one we knew that we would be traveling all across the country mainly in unfamiliar areas and if we need its service done to our RV we knew that we would be able to find a Ford dealership to do work to the motorhome our class a gas motorhome is on a ford f53 chassis it's the v10 6.8 liter engine with a five-speed transmission also made by Ford so we knew no matter where we were we would always be able to find a Ford dealership unless if we were in a very small town and maybe possibly they did not have a Ford dealership but the other advantage of the class a gas motorhome is that any certified mechanic will be able to work on a Ford everybody knows how to work on a Ford engine that was a big reason for us with a diesel pusher if we needed some type of work done we would have to find a certified diesel mechanic and there's just not as many of them as there are gas mechanics or gasoline engine mechanics I should say so if that was a big reason for us reason number two the ford f53 chassis is very easy to maintain and it's very inexpensive to maintain oil changes vary between 75 to 95 dollars we've even spent as little as 55 dollars but that was just one time so compared that to what these will pusher we have friends with diesel pushers and their oil changes they tell us are between four hundred to six hundred dollars that's a big difference yes a diesel pusher does go further in between oil changes so they don't need them as often but that difference doesn't equal two dollars winning taken in consideration number three easy to find a gas station that sells 87 octane fuel that is the fuel that goes into this are viii and every gas station has 87 octane it's very easy or 88 octane I should say there have been times that we couldn't get the 87 and had to go to 88 but they also gasoline fuel whereas with a diesel pusher not that's not always the case you might go into a gas station and they don't have a diesel pump for us that it just took a little bit of the planning out of it we could go to I'll throw out the word wah-wah out there if you live in a certain area you'll know what that is or a 7-eleven or anywhere and be able to fill up our RV so that was a another little reason a nice little perk is just it took out a little bit extra planning while doing our trips we can just stop anywhere but anytime we need fuel we just pull over and get gas no big deal number four is going to be a big one for most people upfront cost so a class a gas Motorhome are typically much cheaper than the Class A diesels and this is usually what happens is people get the the sticker shock and they're like nope I'm not going with a diesel I don't want to pay that extra money for for that engine I'm going to go with gas for now and maybe I'll work my way up to a diesel later on now I will say you're getting much more than just an engine when you choose a diesel there are many many advantages to a diesel pusher and honestly it's the superior chassis is the diesel pusher and towards the end of the video I'm going to go into all the benefits of a diesel pusher reason number five life expectancy we knew that this class a gas Ford chassis was going to last as long as we needed it to the average our beer does about 5,000 miles per year if you throw in the full timers it goes up I think something like 6,000 7,000 miles a year for the average that's not a whole lot of miles the Ford chassis with this v10 is a very reliable chassis if you go into forums you can see that they're lasting well over 200,000 miles at 5,000 miles per year the average that is 40 years we knew that we wouldn't need the RV or went the RV after 40 years we do do a lot of miles so we do well over the average we do full-time we do drive over 20,000 miles a year but even at 20,000 miles a year we will still get 10 years out of the chassis maybe even a little bit more because we're planning on slowing down as we go this year we're hoping to do under 20,000 miles if we can continue to do that we could get 12 to 15 years out of this chassis which is way more than we actually want to get out of it we'll be ready for a new RV before the chassis is completely burned out I guess you could say or dead number six is a bit of a question and I'm gonna answer it sue and it will become a reason I guess you could say so we get asked all the time what about hill climbing going into mountains we have done all that we have traveled on 8% grades 9% grades on the highway we've done greater grades than that on back roads and we make it up the hills just fine and that's with towing our car it's does get louder up front but it never gets so loud that we're shouting to talk to each other the engine does work harder to get up the hill but it still has no I shouldn't say it doesn't have any problem we get up the hill just fine a lot of times we even have to get into the passing lane to go around the trucks because they're moving so slow and we'll just you know pass them and get back into the right lane again we don't hang out in the left lane that would be we're not going that fast but we're definitely going faster than them a diesel pusher will get you up that hill quieter smoother and quicker but for us hill climbing for us is only about five percent of our driving most of the driving that we do back and forth all across the country and all the different states it's relatively flat you might hit two percent three percent and that's nothing that's easy for the RV to do it's so rare that we hit these 7% grades 8% grades and 9% grades to us to have the extra horsepower and torque hit it didn't really matter to us we're just towing a small car reason number seven is size we wanted a Class A RV that was under 30 foot so that actually kind of wiped out all of the class a diesel motor homes there used to be a class diesel Colombia they don't make it anymore it was a very very small class a that was a diesel but other than that I cannot think of any other class a diesel are bees that are under 30 feet so that was a big decision maker for us right there because we couldn't even we couldn't even find one all of your diesel pushers are going to be over 30 feet I think that the smallest one that I can think of right now is a Tiffin makes one that's 31 to 32 feet and it's a diesel pusher but other than that that's the only one I could think of and it's still like I said it's it's over 230 feet so there are all of our reasons the class a gas RV just met all of our expectations or even exceeded some of them so we're very happy with the class a gas Motorhome we get that question asked a lot would we buy another one absolutely we really do enjoy it we have 73,000 miles on our RV now and it has been fantastic it's been in the shop one time for an oxygen sensor and when we first bought it within the first month that was 67,000 miles ago or something like that so I don't want we haven't had it in the shop since it's been a very reliable engine it's been very easy for us to maintain and it has gotten us everywhere we need to go so there are all the reasons that we purchased it but now I want to talk about some of the benefits of a diesel pusher advantage number one is towing capacity so with a diesel pusher you get more horsepower you get more torque you get a better transmission and a stronger chassis which equals more towing capacity we are limited to 5,000 pounds on our gas coach so that will allow us to tow a large car or a small SUV like a Ford Escape with a diesel pusher though you get 10,000 the 15,000 pound tow capacity and that will allow you to tow a large SUV or our large pickup truck and you can put a golf cart in the back or you can tow a trailer and put side-by-side ATVs in there you're really not limited the way you can tell you could almost tell whatever you want that the tow capacity is really incredible you also get more cargo capacity so with a class a gas if it's just Sabrina and I we can load up our cargo base and not really worry too much about our overall weight and not going over capacity for the chassis if it was Sabrina and I and maybe two teenagers that are going to take up some of our weight and our cargo capacity then becomes something that we have to think about about how much we can carry and put in our base with a diesel pusher your cargo capacity is so much greater that shouldn't really be an issue you should be able to have a family of four and still load up all your cargo base with everything that you want you should still take a look at the specs and just be sure of that and have your motorhome weighed because there are a lot of people out there driving around with too much weight they are overweight and that's that can become dangerous but with a diesel pusher you do have that increased cargo capacity and it's nice not to have to worry about what you bring on a trip with you the other nice thing about the diesel pushers is with the engine in the back of the RV it stays very quiet up in the cab area you don't hear it revving and making noise or anything like that so when you are climbing these hills and the engine revs it's really not going to affect you too much your your all your over 30 feet away from that thing so it does stay quieter with the extra horsepower and torque your don't climb the hills a little easier a little faster smoother one of the other advantages to the diesel chassis is that most of the time you're on an air suspension that's just it it outperforms the gas chassis so it's going to absorb bumps and shaking and all that a lot better so you're going to have a smoother quieter ride in a diesel pusher so if they're like the major advantages to a diesel pusher and I honestly believe when you stack them side-by-side that these will pusher is the superior of the two choices but what you got to do is you just got to take a look at how you're going to be traveling what are you doing be carrying what do you want to tow where will you be going and just decide what makes more sense for you for us it's the class-a gas it just makes more sense for what for what we need would we buy a diesel pusher sure if there a floor plan out there and we really liked it and we could get a good price we would go with a diesel pusher we have nothing against these will push shirts so I think that's all of our points I hope you enjoyed the video if you liked it you can give it a thumbs up if you disliked it you can give it a thumbs down if you'd like to share it with all your friends if you disliked it share it with everybody you hate and subscribe to the channel and we will see you next time bye everybody take care and safe travels

Channel: Moving Forward Adventures

Views: 314,970

Keywords: Gas vs Diesel RV, Gas Class A RV, Class A diesel, RV travel, RVing, RV fulltime, RV Shopping, deciding between RV's, RV video

Id: bedu9SWUneA

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 08 2020