When we went to the Binder Bee my wife informed me that it was past time to upgrade our portable living quarters.
To be fair, our 1978 avion 26' legrande suffers greatly from the po disease. On a good day it is only a few short steps above sleeping in a tent which is why we have referred to it as our tin tent.
After checking out craigslist for most of the summer we ended up purchasing a 1981 avion 34v. I think the fact that it has three axles makes it look a lot bigger than it really is.
It is a real step up in everything and not just in size.
Surprisingly, the extra length didn't come with that much more weight.
Loaded up it only weighed about 2000 pounds more than our 26' avion for a total gcvw of less than 14,000 pounds. Loaded the trailer weight is less than 8000 pounds.
I will admit, the sv304 gets to breathing pretty hard going up steep hills. But I can still motor down the highway at 55 mph in or and 60 mph in wa--which for those of you that don't know, those are the speed limits for vehicles with trailers in or and wa.
On our recent trip to the astoria/warrenton koa in warrenton, or, every hill we encountered was climbed at about 5-10 mph slower than we did the same hills in May with the 26' trailer. And we did the same trip with the big trailer with almost identical fuel mileage--just a little over 8 mpg.
So when you see a '65 d1200 t-all pulling a really long silver bullet, wave because it is most probably us.
To be fair, our 1978 avion 26' legrande suffers greatly from the po disease. On a good day it is only a few short steps above sleeping in a tent which is why we have referred to it as our tin tent.
After checking out craigslist for most of the summer we ended up purchasing a 1981 avion 34v. I think the fact that it has three axles makes it look a lot bigger than it really is.
It is a real step up in everything and not just in size.
Surprisingly, the extra length didn't come with that much more weight.
Loaded up it only weighed about 2000 pounds more than our 26' avion for a total gcvw of less than 14,000 pounds. Loaded the trailer weight is less than 8000 pounds.
I will admit, the sv304 gets to breathing pretty hard going up steep hills. But I can still motor down the highway at 55 mph in or and 60 mph in wa--which for those of you that don't know, those are the speed limits for vehicles with trailers in or and wa.
On our recent trip to the astoria/warrenton koa in warrenton, or, every hill we encountered was climbed at about 5-10 mph slower than we did the same hills in May with the 26' trailer. And we did the same trip with the big trailer with almost identical fuel mileage--just a little over 8 mpg.
So when you see a '65 d1200 t-all pulling a really long silver bullet, wave because it is most probably us.
holy moly. Bring that beast down to rmihr next year and park next to me. ![0705131742a[1].jpg](https://forums.ihpartsamerica.com/data/attachments/16/16689-97b9499013f54186516c9170bf64f29c.jpg "0705131742a[1].jpg")
