vincentcampisi

We recently purchased a 2011 Entegra Anthem Coach with a 450HP Cummins Engine. This is our fourth motorhome and it is the only one that I have towed a vehicle with. We had a choice of towing our Chevy Suburban which weighs 5500 lbs or our Dodge Durango which weighs about 4500 lbs. Even though our Hitch and the coach are rated to tow a 10,000 lb vehicle we chose the lighter Durango. We also have a Brake Bufddy system installed in the Durango. The combination of our MH and the Durango is excellent we have towed the Durango on three trips ranging from several hundred miles to more than 3000 miles over various terrain including flat coastline and mountainous regions. We have not experienced any hesitation or vehicle sway on any of these trips. Our previous three motorhomes were powered by Chevy Workhorse 8.1 l vortec engines. This engine develops more torque than the Ford V10 engine even though it is only 8 cylinders. I did not tow a vehicle with any of these motorhomes which had GCWR weights of 26,000 lbs and weighed in at approx 21,000 lbs. My aversion to towing with these vehicles was due to my previous experience of many years of towing travel trailers which were approx. 24 feet in length and weighed around 10,000 lbs loaded. I towed these travel trailers with Ford and Chevy big block engines, 390 HP; while the vehicles towed straight and at a reasonable RPMs on the tow vehicle engine; going up grades was not a pleasurable experience when you feel big rigs climbing up behind you. Because of these experiences I decided not to tow and instead rent a car when we got to our destination. That has changed since we got our new MH which has ample power to tow. In my opinion you will probably experience difficulty in towing the Suburban with your MH. I would expect that it would also lead to possible power train problems. It is a costly experiment to have the Suburban fitted with a proper tow package to see how it would handle and then not have it tow properly. My advice would be to go for a lighter tow vehicle after getting advice from Itasca on what they would recommend. Vince Campisi