You may not be nearly as interested in this unusual find as I was, and that’s understandable. But it answered a long-simmering question as to how these extended ’70s Dodge Class C motorhome chassis were built, since the Dodge cutaway chassis is unitized. I sort of guessed at the solution, but was a bit shocked at the execution. I shouldn’t have been.
Dodge vans (and cutaways) came in 109′ and 127″ wheelbase lengths. Some Class C motorhomes were built on the short 109″chassis, like this one.
Most were built on the 127″ chassis. In both cases, the cutaway chassis still had the center section of the van body’s floor, since the frame rails and floor were welded together as part of the unibody van structure.
But there were also these extra long Class C rigs, and I’ve long wondered how that came to be, as I’ve never seen any reference to Dodge actually building a chassis this long. And how would they, with the unitized structure?
The answer is starkly in front of us, in the form of this thing I found parked at a gas station by the freeway. It clearly didn’t get here under its own power, with that tow hitch in front. But it gave me the perfect opportunity to examine its skeleton.
Here’s the stark (and painfully crude) answer: a rough extension welded to the frame halves after they had been cut. Oh my; it looks so crude, but then these fly-by-night RV manufacturers during the great RV Boom in the mid-late ’70s were notorious for flimsy construction. The frame side rails to support the floor and body have been freshly cut off. This is the driver’s side.
Here’s a shot from the passenger side. This looks a wee bit cleaner. Obviously it was good enough, as it’s all still intact.
Here’s the back end of that splice.
And the section of the original van body floor (white) that has now been moved back is visible here, under the other frame and stuff strapped to its top.
The rear frame extensions have of course also been welded on. This was a mighty long motorhome, on a chassis that started out as a unibody van.
That raised section was the housing for the generator.
Here’s the front end of what used to power it: a 440 big block V8.
It’s so wonderful to have a big, hot throbbing V8 inches from your calves.
From the new-for ’78 dash, this must have been a ’78 or ’79, as Dodge killed its motorhome chassis business (and the big block 440) in 1980, in the recession/energy crisis that essentially killed the rv industry for a couple of years.
But thanks to this tow bar, this Dodge has at least one more final trip to make. To where is anyone’s guess, but the junkyard would be the obvious one.
Is the Romex running through the piece of wood just some junk, or part of the RV wiring? I know this is interesting, especially to you Paul as a former Dodge RV owner, but in a way seeing this is a bit like the cliché about sausage … you really don’t want to see what’s under the skin of some RV’s.
I’m guessing yes that’s romex.
Wow, I remember having enough trouble changing plugs in a 440 bolted into a 77 New Yorker (5 from the top, 3 from the bottom, as I recall). I cannot imagine trying the job in one of these.
For decades I have heard people say “A good weld is stronger than the metals that it joins”. I guess these welds must have been at least passable. I’m with Dman – I think it’s just better to not know. “If I can’t see it it can’t hurt me.” 🙂
Is it just me, or does your example shot of the blue and white super long RV look swaybacked?
Well, a weld can be stronger than the metals it joins, especially if the welding process weakens those metals 😀 A bolt-on outsert or insert is almost always better, especially if the bolts and their holes are near the center of the frame rail (halfway between top and bottom), the so-called “neutral axis” where stresses due to bending are lowest. But that would assume these mods were done by real mechanical engineers …
I don’t know that a bolt on in the middle section would really work long term, but as I noted below a lot of the rear extensions I’ve seen were bolted on with bolts in the center, where they should be and maybe a tack weld or two, presumably to hold it in place while the holes were drilled and bolts placed.
Actually changing the spark plugs, or the exhaust manifolds, weren’t that bad. Easier than a Small Block Chev in a van chassis.
And yes that blue and white one does look a little sway backed, but that could also be due to rot in the wood structure letting the body sag.
Engineering and RV companies tend to not go together (thou some of the big ones have changed that in the last 20 years). A friend of mines uncle who owned a body shop sis a fair amount of business shortening and lengthening medium and heavy duty truck chassis for various customers. Guys would bring him a box truck and he would cut it down to a dump, I once saw him take a day cab tractor and extend it into 24′ flatbed for a farmer.
Definitely crude. Interestingly it looks like there is some overlap between the old and the new on the one side, but the other side looks like they are butted together. Most of the ones I remember crawling under did overlap the extension by at least a couple of inches and had angled ends to increase the amount of weld and put less stress on the original sheet metal.
Lots of the rear only extensions were just bolted on with a good overlap between the extension and the original rails.
The first pic slightly reminds me of Aloha Airlines flight 243. The effects of explosive decompression on a Dodge motorhome. 🙂
Wow this was a great find! I love looking at any old/abandoned vehicles of any sort, anyway. I was recently looking under my View RV to see how it was lengthened as well. The Sprinter chassis wheelbase of 170 inches is retained, and then the factory rails cut off aft of the leaf springs. A u shaped extension is then bolted through the factory frame rails on each side, 4 large bolts per side. I was surprised to see it was not welded, but, there isn’t much it’s holding up either. The hitch vertical load would be the biggest issue. All the tanks, generator, etc. are suspended from the factory part of the frame.
Isn’t it wonderful to see what “red-neck engineering” could do?? Therefore you and your family could cruise the freeways of America in comfort and uhh…umm…OH-OH!!!
Some were definitely more “CREATIVE” than others, but remember: BUYER BEWARE!!!! 🙁 DFO
This is one example…whether from a “good” or “bad” RV builder, we don’t know. Probably they ran the gamut.
Old friend of mine swapped a 440 into his Dodge motorhome. He wasn’t satisfied with the 360 and since he was the Chief in a small police department, he arranged to buy a retired patrol car, a Plymouth with a 440. He rebuilt the police engine in his garage, overhauled the A727 TorqueFlite, and did the swap himself. He SAID there weren’t any problems with fitting it.
That’s because it was designed to accommodate the 440. The 440 isn’t actually all that much bigger physically than the 360.
A 440 or 383/400 in a B-body Mopar, however, could be a real knuckle-buster when changing those sideways-facing spark plugs. I remember working from below, in the blind, with an open-end wrench on the hex on a spark plug socket, with barely 1/6 turn worth of swing around the exhaust manifold. Platinum spark plugs claimed a longer service interval, worth the money if true; I splurged on them and never did another plug change on that car.
Wow, that looks interesting to say the least. Hopefully the driveshaft isn’t lengthened in such a sketchy manner. I wonder if this motor home was being towed to a scrap yard?
I’ve actually been looking at potentially renting an RV through Outdoorsy, which is like AirBnB for camping vehicles, for after travel restrictions are lifted. I’ll make sure to avoid anything that looks like this one, salvaged and re-bodied.
Someone will want that 440 for sure if it’s going to the junkyard (and even if it isn’t!).
> From the new-for ’78 dash, this must have been a ’78 or ’79, as Dodge killed its motorhome chassis business (and the big block 440) in 1980
The ‘79 vans got the new squared-off front styling. Did Dodge not bother applying the new look to the cutaways or campers with just one year to go?
Now I just want to know how they made those Xplorer campers with the radically dropped floor that ran front to back through the van allowing most people to have enough headroom to stand up in the central corridor under a low roof. Never figured out how that was done with a driveshaft normally occupying that space.
There are plenty of Dodge motorhomes with the new for ’79 nose.
I worked at Leisure Travel Vans from ‘93-,’03. We did the drop floors on the Dodge chassis as well. We dropped the floor 4” which leaves still about 2” till the nearest driveshaft point of contact under full jounce. We sprayed an inch of foam On the bottom side of the drop floor. We took many older units in for service and never was there ever any contact with drive shaft. These drop floors worked well on Dodge chassis due to the unibody construction.
The normal length camper has a fearsome overhang! The equivalent conversions here in the U.K. were mainly done on Bedford CFs in the ’70s which was available in chassis cab or chassis cowl form, originally 106″ and 126″ wheelbases (so very similar to the Dodge), but with 140″ added to the chassis options from 1974. There never was 140″ w.b. van though.
I’m curious as to what happened to the removed RV body. Well, really, just about ‘any’ RV body that’s at the end of its life. Those things aren’t know for longevity and they’re generally way too expensive to repair the inevitable rotted wood frame. How does someone go about disposing of one? Strip off and recycle the aluminum/steel exterior and pitch the wood into a landfill? It all seems like a lot of work for not much return.
Of course, then there’s the issue of what to do with the remaining cutaway chassis. I guess it could be repurposed for something else like, maybe, some sort of flatbed hauler.
I’ve seen a few that were repurposed into flat beds/car haulers, and yeah the one guy that I knew that did it just ripped it apart piece by piece and took it bit by bit to the recycling center, transfer station and burn pile.
The other problem is that wrecking/scrap yards don’t really want them if they have the body still on there, and may try to charge you, but they’ll happily pay for something like this, if you have the title, and maybe even if you don’t have the title.
Well Rudiger, the City of Portland, Oregon had a free RV drop off a year or two ago since scrapyards usually do not want them for a variety of reasons. I forget the details, but I think the RV had to be in your name.
I’m astonished at how long some of these Class C motorhomes can be. I see a lot of Cruise America’s largest rentals during tourist season and they appear to have a good 10-12′ behind the rear axle. I’m a little surprised there aren’t more motorhomes on medium duty chassis that would be more suited to that length and weight.
The stick built camper sections also disappoint me and I can’t afford Airstream so I have been looking at either fiberglass over aluminum frame trailers or fiberglass monocoque like Bigfoot or Casita.
Fiberglass is the way to go in my opinion. Big foots have a good rep.
RV makers have perfected building stick and tin camper in rapid fashion using somewhat cheap labor, they don’t last long but they look good at the RV show. Somewhere on youtube there is a video from the Jayco factory showing them building one in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Motorhome 440 you say?
Thermoquad!
That would be very difficult to get thru compliance here should anyone ever import one, but it seems to work ok in its home environment.
Might make a good flatbed conversion if the engine still runs.
Crude expediency is standard practice for motorhome builders. Want to see real hack jobs? Check out any wheelchair lift equipped Mopar minivan you see!
Some farmers strip down old motorhomes for hay trucks.
Crudeness isn’t limited to motorhomes. There are some really poorly built boats out there too. Trust me, speaking from 28 years in the marine biz.
Yep I worked in the boat biz for 22 years with a little bit in the RV world as well (now work on stuff for much bigger ships/boats). Late 70’s early 80’s boats seem to be the peak of how cheap can we build em. My 1984 Fourwinns being a prime example.
Somewhere I have a picture of a runabout we cut up where the hull deck joint was made of sheet metal screws thru both layer of glass into a piece of wood lath. I think the amazing part is that thanks to Fiberglass these things survive much longer then you would expect.
RV’s may be worse thou, I once was shocked to see wiring on a million dollar motor home that looked like it was done by a teenager who took about 1 day of electrical class. I worked at an RV dealer for a few months out of high school, I was tasked with tearing out some cabinets to make room for a new fridge. They were literally 1/4″ particle board held together with staples.
’80’s Bayliner: Hold my beer
It would be interesting to run something like that 75 Bel Air wagon from the other day into the side of one these hack-job motorhomes at say 35-40 mph.
Propane side or sewage side?
Ha!
It’s not too uncommon for Medium-Duty Trucks (Ford 750 and the like) to be converted to All-Wheel drive using a “Step Frame”, which is done to allow the cab to be lifted to accommodate the front axle, but keep the rear part of the frame at the same height. They cut the frame in two, and put some plates in to join the two halves together. Wonky, but it seems to work.
https://www.marmon-herrington.com/awd-conversions
The old school beverage trucks have a very interesting dropped frame.
When I was doing fleet maintenance on walk-in trucks there were a number of them that were built off of a Bus cowl and chassis. They had crazy narrowed center frames.
Paul, I am 99% certain this is a ’78 model. Like you say is has the new dash, and the front side marker lights are the ’78 and earlier style. For ’79 the side markers were part of the wrap-around turn signal and parking light assembly.
I am quite familiar with these as I had a 1979 model with the stacked rectangular headlights as a service van in 1979 as a cable TV technician at Indianapolis Cablevision. One thing I vividly remember about these was if the optional pop-out windows were in the rear doors, there was a warning posted in the lower right window about exhaust gas being drawn in through an open pop-out window. The best feature of this van was the location of the fuse panel to the left of the glove compartment, as can be seen in your superb dashboard photograph.
The best feature of a fuse block is never having to look at it. If they make them super easy to get to, the engineers know something you don’t.
The 69-75 International Pickups and Travelall have the fuse panel in the glove box too and I think it is a nice feature.
So Paul, did you count the number of ballast resistors in the glove box?
Class B gas motorhomes are built on a Ford cutaway chassis with a GVWR of 14,500 pounds. As a result some of the longer models. say those over 29-30 feet, can gave very low payloads; I saw some with payloads under 1000 pounds.
A nasty little secret of those Bs based on the Mercedes Sprinter diesel is the shockingly low payload some have; I saw some with under 700 pounds payload.
Transit bus built on cutaway van chassis is another shoddy build business. I got a call from a county transit authority, was having trouble with brakes on a couple of their vans. Vans were over weight as soon as you loaded passengers. Another one to waatch for are these stretch limousines, cut a vehicle in half, add 10-12′, weld it back together. What could go wrong? Two people in front, 8-12 people in the back. Only things probably beefed up are the springs because if they didn’t the vehicle would be laying on the ground. Probably still equipped with the original brakes and tires. One of the reasons they usually are driving so slowly is the driver knows he’s screwed if he has to stop quickly. So when your son or daughter wants a limo for wedding, prom, party etc I would discourage it. I drove limo for a few years and quit once I realized how these things are built. A factory stretch from Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercedes is one thing, that Hummer, not for me.