Well first of all I'm not a beer guy. But maybe a nice single malt Mcallan at the fire...
I can already tell you the ride is a 1000% increase over the Excursion (and I'm not going to entry level DP bash here. I still think the Excursion/Palazo etc are a great way to get into the diesel arena).
It is so much quieter while driving. I did a 1-hour final test drive and reconfirmed my original impression of the Discovery. The Excursion had tons of squeaks, groans and rattles. When the generator was on, you knew it was on. You definitely need to see the little Green "G" light on the dash to know the 8KW QD is running. You can definitely hear the stereo much easier because there is less ambient noise to compete with. With the Excursion, even cars would create enough blow by that you'd have to correct the wheel as they passed you (let alone trucks). The ride is far less "pounding" when you hit road bumps, potholes etc. At first, I thought maybe the dealer had deflated the tires on the Discovery to give it a smoother ride. But I checked the tire pressures and it was 120 in the fronts and 110 in the rears (hot, did not check them cold). With the Excursion I felt I was always correcting with the wheel. Much less so with the Discovery. Definitely more power and accelerates faster. I was cruising at 75 and it felt much less sporty than the Excursion at 63. Just a note, I still plan to keep it below 65.
I don't have a TAG, don't have a side radiator with full engine access. But the Discovery still gives pretty good access to the engine through the rear compartment doors. And having the generator on a slide (albeit a manual one) satisfies the nerd in me who thinks I might actually be able to do more than an oil change on my genny.
It was pretty cool today so we did not crank up the AC, but I can tell you that from our playing around on our first visit the ducted AC in the Discovery is much, much quieter on the inside than the Excursion. The Discovery also has the full sized Coleman Mach whatever ACs as opposed to the Mach III low profile ACs on the Excursion. I could hear the AC running on my Excursion from 100 feet away due to the the high velocity fans in those low profile units. It was really annoying to me when we'd be sitting outside and those suckers would cut on. With the discovery, you can barely hear them, which is as it should be.
Oh, and did I mention a ladder? I was so bummed when I found out that not only did the Excursion not come with a ladder, but they told me the rear cap would not allow an after market ladder to be installed. So I had to buy a collapsable ladder to get on my roof. That baby is going on Craigslist soon!
Oh, and the toilet. The vacuflush toilet on the Excursion will be missed by no one. If ever there was a candidate for the next Terry Gilliam movie it was that refugee of an airplane toilet. Not only did it wake up everyone in the coach in the middle of the night, but everyone on the outside could hear that vacuum "whoosh" when you had completed your mission, not to mention the "chunka chunka, chunka" as the system pulled a vacuum for its next task.
Anyway, we're very pleased with the Discovery so far. The outside is a little "rougher" than we'd originally realized. A fair amount of nicks and scrapes. But a decent waxing and it will be fine (at least from 50 feet). And I'm sure I'll add a ding or two as I go.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brian-nicola
Solo trip sounds great. A man, his DP, tunes and a six pack at the end, priceless. Curious to see what you think of the ride compared to the former.
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