In the nine months that we have owned our Class C motorhome (we previously towed a trailer), we have noticed a couple of nagging issues that, after nearly six thousand miles, we finally decided to deal with. Our Class C, as with most, has about 10-feet of overhang behind the rear wheels. The considerable overhang limits the departure-angle of the vehicle, leading to an annoying tail-dragging when exiting many parking lots, gas stations and even our driveway (which is not at all steep). Another annoyance is filling the fuel tank. The tank would fill just fine until it was about half full, and from that point it would only accept additional fuel with the pump on its slowest setting. Sometimes, depending on the flow-rate of the pump, even the slowest setting would not work and I would be stuck holding the nozzle myself. Since the RV has a 55-gallon tank, this process took a considerable amount of time! After consulting with some folks in the RV.Net Class C Forum, I narrowed this problem down to fuel backing-up in the filler-tube as the rear springs compressed from the weight of the first 25 to 30-gallons of fuel. We were pretty certain that we could solve both of these problems by raising the rear of the vehicle several inches.
To raise the rear of our Class C, we first attempted to go the obvious route; air bags. Air bags are optional equipment on many RV’s, and use compressed air to offload some of the vehicle’s weight from the rear springs. When our local RV supply store attempted to install the air bags on our Class C, however, they ran into clearance issues with our particular model and the air bags would not fit. Rats! They suggested that we next try a product called SuperSprings®, which fit on top of the stock leaf spring pack and provide an adjustable level of increased ride-height.
The SuperSprings seem to have done the trick, raising the rear of the RV by almost two inches, even on their lowest setting (there are two other settings, for additional height). Since installing the SuperSprings, we have not scrapped the rear of the vehicle on anything, so that problem seems to be solved. Filling the fuel tank is also much easier, usually just requiring a “top-off” of six or seven gallons. In addition, the ride is not noticeably rougher than before, which is something that I was concerned about.
