I have one but fail to see it's usefulness. If you have one, what do you put in it?
I am thinking about removing it for solar space.
Spare tire/wheel. Cover.
Dropping a wheel causes large bounces. Customer showed me a primitive video of a tire bouncing down a hill into a river in Alaska
Well dere hey (U.P. talk) we use ours a lot because of the small lower compartments. I put lightweight "stuff" up there. Things like empty water jugs (3) 6 gallon ones, (2) folding recliners, Artificial Xmas tree, plastic 6' eaves troughs that I use to support the stinky slinky when in an RV Park and cover the top from birds. Some LED rope lights and whatever else might fit.
Never EVER! (A) you got to climb up on the roof, and (B) are you SURE that's where you stored something you can't find? :facepalm:
Spare tire/wheel combo is too heavy to put on the roof. Tough to get up and tough to get down. Foretravel missed the boat when they had all that unused space behind the front bumper. Our Greyhound's front bumper just rotated down and the spare pulled straight out. Back bumper on a hitch mount would be 10x better than the roof.
Our 36' does not have as much storage space as a 40' but I keep the spare on the driver's side. Easy out, easy to rotate to vertical and roll over to the needed side.
Pierce
If you have enough storage down below go ahead and remove it. If not use it. All of the stuff that I carried in the 3 storage pods on my '81 fits underneath the '99 and then some. The '81 had very little side compartment storage.
My 280 came with one and I didn't care for it.. Catches a lot of air and the only reason I never took it off was because the roof didn't leak and I decided to leave it alone. Never wanted that fiberglass box to be a reason for climbing up top for me.
Having two Joey Beds alleviates the need for a 'coffin'. Even though we've only had the coach four years, full timing, it's about time to pull everything out and see what I DON"T NEED!
First trip without the huge coffin. 700 miles and GPS corrected MPG of a hare over 11 . Last best tank of 10.4.
Towing 4000# , so combined weight of about 28K . @63mph
Maybe related .
My '81 FTX has the aero of a brick, I don't think a parachute would have lowered the mileage. The GV's do have that advantage.
I also removed the nose AC stuff and blanked the grilles. Maybe the little bit less of "sq in of involvement" makes for a little cleaner nose aerowise.
10.9+ mpg toad less running 65-70. Narrow and less tall than the unihomes. Cat 3208 is very efficient powerplant that just breathes and performs very well and I can't be happier. Kinda like a 289 vs a Boss 302 the engineers all stand around trying to figure out which tiny parameter just created a Frankenstein.
Have you checked your speedo to your phone GPS? Mine reads 67 @ 63 true, and the ODO reads 10% low .
Our U300's speedo is dead on with the ODO slightly low but very close.
P
GPS is pretty accurate on straight level roads for a check. That being said I have not fiddled with my smartphone while driving. The 10.9 mpg figure quoted was a 2 day run from Barstow to shamrock tx, based on Google driving distance between those two cities, but that did not include three or four off ramp adventures for snacks and decent evening meals. Quite happy with that mpg as an average for typical trip that would include those diversions.
The 300 ORED got 10mpg at 70-75 mph. The amazing thing was the 8 mpg at 2,950 rpm at 89 mph. Did a bunch of 400 mile stretches wide open. Not recommended of course. Unsafe fun. We were sick from skiing at minus 30f. Needed to go home. Straight drive from Telluride, ca to Costa Mesa, ca via Gallup to pickup I40 then west. Too much snow any other way. 870 miles. First 150 on icy frozen roads. Tender