In January of 2019 our home of 8 years, a 1986 Rockwood motorhome was beginning to fall apart. We spent some time looking for a new home to live in, and for the price we were focused on Fleetwood Bounder motorhomes. I’d had enough of the Rockwood’s over-taxed chassis and wanted full airbag suspension. The Ford V-10 engine kinda made me wanna look at that option. Until I looked, but even then I was willing to block out the $2,500 dollars a spark plug change gone wrong would cost. I am single minded if nothing else. Then my husband suggested Foretravel.
Now we both had heard that Foretravel was a top of the line motorhome when new, ans we wondered just how ancient we would need to go to fit our resources. After doing a 200 mile or so day to visit a 1986 10th Anniversary Foretravel FTX, Foretravel 10, get it? I returned home convinced that we should make a serious search so we made a list. We needed through bays underneath for storage. We needed a little more length, because the 32′ Rockwood wasn’t really designed for full time living, unless you wanted to wear either a bathing suit or jeans and a sweater. I did some soul searching and recognized that if I have a fault, it’s that I “go too cheap” when I really shouldn’t and I found some more money. Lynn found this 1992 U225 in west Texas. It’s one of two entry level motorhomes that Foretravel made, the U240 with a larger more powerful engine being the other. It has Goodyear Velvet Ride Torsionaire suspension rather than the more complicated 8-air bag system Foretravel uses on the bigger coaches. 1992 appears to be the last year for a diesel engine with a mechanical injector pump, the same goes for the Allison 4-speed transmission. The transmission looks much the same as the second generation General Motors Hydramatic, and I can live with that. Then Lynn said the magic words, if you have the built-in washer dryer you lose 1/2 of the Cedar Wardrobe. My head snapped around and I repeated cedar wardrobe?
Some further research showed that the rubber mounted torsion bar suspension pieces were being manufactured by an aftermarket company called Silastic. Check. We decided that we both liked the ride quality of torsion bar suspension. Chrysler Corporation used torsion bars on everything from the Plymouth Valiant to the Imperial at one point in time. And we decided to go for it.
