Seneca Driving Impressions

[Dustdevil]

Originally Posted by Mark S

All your responses are making me feel better. How is power climbing mountain passes with a toad. We go to Colorado each summer and I will be towing a Jeep Wrangler. I know I won't doing 65 mph while climbing but what is a reasonable expectation while going up step grades?

I have the older Seneca, with the Chevrolet Kodiak chassis, Duramax engine, and Allison trans. The Cummins in your Seneca likely has similar power characteristics to ours, and it worked great for us along the Million Dollar Highway from Durango to Ouray and beyond. We did a lot of hills on that trip, and pulled our Jeep Wrangler behind the Seneca. As mentioned earlier, you'll likely get passed by all the pickups and passenger cars, but not by many trucks. It's about as good as you're going to get with a rig weighing 28000-32000 lbs. Also as mentioned, the turbocharger allows the diesel to live in its own atmosphere at high altitudes. No discernable loss of power. Pretty good setup. These weren't designed for acceleration, just torque. It will not even notice your toad.

[Colombo]

There are times when were traveling up a steep mountain grade and would be passed by a pickup hauling a 5th wheel and it's a bit disappointing but overall and for the price we were so happy with our 14' 37fs. We always had a full load with 2-3 mid- school aged kids, all ther stuff and ours and our toad was a 06' Hummer H2 with bike rack hauling 4 bikes. If I had more power I would just push it harder and might end up in a bad situation. Over all it always handled like a dream and got us where we were going with pleasure and ease. The whistling noise that was the loudest and worst was the shift cable that was a SBA (I think ) from Cummings and freightliner that when driving at highway speeds in overdrive made a loud whistling / chirping noise. Once we fixed that we could here each other talk again in cab. Even in crazy downpours of rain and 30-40mph winds it would truck on through as if it was nothing at all ( just stay away from 90+mph winds!!! No fun....). We are sold on jayco seneca of safty durability and general layout. Only two things I like about the Dynamax is that the cab floor is nearly level to coach floor so it gives it a bit larger appearance and also the option of larger motor of which we don't need but other than that I love all of the Senecas lay out better like placement of generator and also we did like our tankless water heater unlike many others here.

[ready2retire&drive]

I found on my 2015 37rb it would run away on cruise down hill. My dealer was able to program the engine brake to come on at 2 klm over the set speed with the cruise on. So now it runs true up and down the hills.

[anav8or]

Originally Posted by ready2retire&drive

I found on my 2015 37rb it would run away on cruise down hill. My dealer was able to program the engine brake to come on at 2 klm over the set speed with the cruise on. So now it runs true up and down the hills.

Mine did the same thing and I learned pretty quickly to kick the cruise off on the down grades.

[Robbbyr]

Originally Posted by ready2retire&drive

I found on my 2015 37rb it would run away on cruise down hill. My dealer was able to program the engine brake to come on at 2 klm over the set speed with the cruise on. So now it runs true up and down the hills.

Did they charge you to alter the parameter or do it under warranty? I saw on the Cummins powerspec webpage there are all kinds of things that can be "adjusted" in the engine's computer if you can find a dealer willing to work with you.

[ready2retire&drive]

Yup they charged me. They can pretty much set the program to whatever parameters you want but not sure if they do it for free down south , but up here any time they look at it the meter starts.

[Robbbyr]

Thanks!