Quote Originally Posted by AZBuck View Post
There's no sugar coating this. You have several significant problems:

1) You've got a 55 year-old under-powered motor home
2) It has no air conditioning
3) Its brakes are questionable
4) It starts to get unstable at speeds greater than 45 mph
5) Its top speed is 60 mph
6) It slows to 25 mph climbing grades

The fact of the matter is that I don't think your vehicle is safe for Interstate Highway travel. Period. Full stop.

Study after study by federal (FHWA, NTSB), state, and academic researchers have shown that speed differential is at least as important as speed per se in determining highway safety. You yourself note how scary it is to be traveling 30-40 mph slower than the rest of traffic. It is not everybody else on the road causing safety problems. It's you. No one can tell you how to make this trip safely because your vehicle itself makes every moment that you're on a road with a greater than 55 mph speed limit an accident waiting to happen. It's up to you to keep out of everyone else's way, not vice versa.

If I were you and I had to get that vehicle cross country, I'd allow an absolute minimum of 10 days for the task and stick to surface roads rather than Interstates. I wish you luck. You're going to need it.

AZBuck
The question is, how much of the fault is really due to this vehicle? If it is going 45 or 50, the only way for a 30-40MPH difference is for someone else to be going 75-90. While there may be a few places that those speeds are posted, most are not that high. Thus the speed differential would be much lower if everyone was following the rules (thus some of the blame goes to those speeding, possibly well above the limits to get to 90).

Same would be the issue on most of the surface roads (where speeds above 55 aren't terribly common) - the motor home going 45-50 wouldn't be as much issue holding up traffic as those behind it who want to go 60+ but shouldn't.