There are a few vehicles that seem to come up over and over amongst the Autopian staff, cars that always manage to catch our attention and distract us from whatever we’re trying to do. Cars like, let’s see – and of course these sometimes are more keyed to one write or another – Citroën SMs, Toyota Centurys, Yugos, BMW i3, Smart Roadsters, and so on. One of the perpetual, guanteed-to-get-everyone-excited vehicles, though, is the GMC Motorhome.
Incredibly, the GMC Motorhome seems to be the one vehicle our snooty British designer Adrian seems to share un-ironic esteem for along with all of us other drooling simpletons. And it’s easy to understand why! These things were cool as hell, and pushed the design and construction of motorhomes so far and into such a better path that, of course, like all GM great ideas, they eventually gave up on it and let it become a dead end. Another triumph, GM!
Still, we love them. And it’s easy to understand why: full aluminum/fiberglass body shaped like a land-zeppelin, a FWD drivetrain module from the Toronado, ’70s-tastic interiors – it has it all.
Here, take a half hour to watch this orientation video from 1973 or so, just in case you fall into a time-swamp and emerge in the 1970s and need to get a job at your local GMC dealership.
Okay, but let’s get to the one stupid point of this whole post, which, I promise you, is fairly stupid but in a fascinating way. Look at these diagrams of the GMC Motorhome:
Okay, see where that Toronado V8 engine sits in what GM called the Unitized Power Package? It’s kind of just over the front axle there. Now, because it’s underfloor, it’d not easy to get to, so for routine maintenance stuff, GM thoughtfully provided some access panels in the front to access things like washer fluid, brake fluid, and, yes, oil, to both fill and check.
So just look a bit at the distance between the front of the Motorhome and where the engine actually is in that little cutaway up above. Now look at this:
Here’s a GIF excerpted from the video:
Hot mangoes that’s a long dipstick! That thing just kept coming out, like a chain of brightly colored handkerchiefs coming from a birthday clown’s pocket moments before some kid nails him right in the crotch with a plastic whiffle bat, earning him the biggest laughs of the day.
It seems that dipstick is 54.25 inches long, which is longer than my mother is tall, or at least right about the same height, about four and a half feet tall. We’re shtetl hobbits, remember. Anyway, there’s something just fascinating about a dipstick that long, I think. You’re on one end, and the oil is a zipcode or two away, and the amazing thing is that for certain delivery vehicles, this is entirely normal.
Look, here’s a 55 inch dipstick that fits a Chevy P30 Step Van, perhaps one of the most common delivery box vans around. I’m so used to my small car engines with their sub-one-foot dipsticks, these all seem absurd and hilarious to me. I thought this may be just some private affectation, but there are forums of people discussing unusually long dipsticks they’ve encountered, usually on RVs. One poster claims to have had an eight-foot-long one!
I suppose the ultimate in long oil dipsticks has to come from the world of large-scale ocean liner engines and large oil tanks, which use special tools called “oil-gauging tape measures.” Here’s one:
These can be about 50 feet long and have a weighted end so they drop down to the bottom of the massive oil sumps or tanks.
What a world, right?
Not in the same league, but I still remember comparing the ~3-foot one in my Econoline to the ~1 foot one in my friend’s Dodge Caliber. Glad to know the ridiculousness goes longer than that.
That makes me 1 1/3 TM (Torches Mom) tall.
The Budget Builds series on that GMC motorhome is one of my very favorite series from any of what my wife lovingly refers to as my “rusty junk” channels. I couldn’t be more jealous.
And yeah, as for:
“These things were cool as hell, and pushed the design and construction of motorhomes so far and into such a better path that, of course, like all GM great ideas, they eventually gave up on it and let it become a dead end. Another triumph, GM!”
As I have said countless times in countless comments and countless threads on this site: The General gonna General.
Yeah…”rusty junk channels” occupy about half of my feed on YT. Probably don’t want to acknowledge anything about what lives in the other half.
My first ever automotive engineering project was a brand new engine, so every time the prototype parts turned up we’d crowd around them to check them over before sending them to me measured.
We were all sensible professional engineers, and any mistakes would mean delaying the first engine start, so we took this very seriously.
Within seconds of opening the box of dipsticks we were fencing with them.
Genuine LOL.
Oh no: “Orientation”, slides and the seventies. Now I have to watch LOST. Again..
It’s cute you were innocent enough to write a headline about a long dipstick and your mom, and extra cute that the commentariat here are adult enough not to make terrible jokes.
Edit: I just read the comments. I was wrong.
Back in 2015 we rented a 30ft motorhome based on a Ford chassis with the V10 engine. For whatever reason I decided to check the engine oil and the dipstick was loooong. The funny part was it was a bit of a challenge to get the bloody thing back in as it kept bending in on itself. I wrestled with it for about five minutes and after that decided to just hope everything would be fine down there and didn’t check for the rest of the trip.
That thing was a monster, had a 50 gallon tank (petrol, not diesel, which seemed wild for someone coming from a country where anything bigger than a regular car by default runs on the sooty stuff) and I swear you could see the needle on the fuel gauge dropping in real time when you got it up to speed on the freeway.
I went camping once with a childhood friend in their early 80s RV. I don’t remember a lot about how the thing drove, because I was probably only 12 and it was only a 20 minute drive down the highway to the campground. What I do remember was that we had to stop on the way back from the campground for gas despite leaving the house with half a tank.
Okay, let’s all have a dipstick measuring contest. But first we gotta establish some rules.
1. You gotta measure from where it goes into the tube. No handle included.
2. If your dipstick has those wrinkles in it, no stretching it out for extra length.
3. You gotta measure from cap to tip. You can’t go all the way to the bottom of the oil pan and say “Well, it COULD reach all the way down there if it wasn’t so cold.”
There are so many front wheel drive vans nowadays, I’m hoping somebody makes a new version of the GMC motorhome
Just please, PLEASE, not one based on the Fiat ProBastard.
Some of you may refer to it as the Ram ProMaster. I was forced to drive one at a job a decade ago. I will never call it by that name, because it is absolutely the biggest piece of shit brand new vehicle I have ever driven in my 53-year life.
We had the first new one for 3 weeks before the door latch on the rear barn doors went out. You know, on a delivery vehicle, those are pretty important.
All that made them special was the FWD (rare at the time but common now) rear tag suspension (relatively easily adaptable to FWD van frames as it was pretty self contained) and a lot of windows (this part might get expensive)
Layout wise between the old GMC and the modern generic camper van, they are actually pretty similar.
They had style
That’s what she said?
“Hot mangoes that’s a long dipstick!”
You know there’s probably some content filter that’s probably flagging this.
“ One poster claims to have had an eight-foot-long one!
Interesting brag.
Screw you guys I’m going home. I thought I had a rare fact that I could explode on you and become COD. I had a Chevy P30 step van as a work truck that knew was long. I read the whole damn story and you guys have it included. Interesting fact some of these were postal vehicles and as a result had totally different vin numbers that make ordering parts impossible because federal government needs their own parts number making the USPS more expensive to run and a used owner unable to order parts from the vin.
Oooooh, that orientation video talked about the turd burner “Thermasan” system you guys wrote about a while ago. I love the part about not winterizing with kerosene. I can see how that could be a problem.
My 2006 GMC Savana with the 6 L gas engine has a similar long dipstick. I don’t think it’s quite the same as that motorhome but … The first time I pulled mine out it to check on my fluid, I was truly impressed at the length of my stick.
Wait what!?
The oil dipstick on Savana/Express with V8 engines is a hair over 51 inches. Meanwhile, the transmission dipstick is 67-5/8 inches. And they both tend to bind up a little when shoved back down their tubes.
ahh yes – thats it. The tranny dipstick is the one that surprised the heck out of me.
Who else clicked on this article just to learn how tall Torch’s mom is?
I was hoping that Jason would give us a new unit of measurement – with a snappy name, of course – based on his mother’s lack of height.
What’s the Smoot:MotherTorch conversion factor?
Or did like I did – “RVs? Okay, so how tall IS Mercedes’ mom?!”
I had to backtrack and realize it was Torch’s article.
Yeah, I didn’t catch that until the “shtetl hobbits” reference.
I figure Torch just wants to get as much mileage from “shtetl hobbits” as he can, since Otto doesn’t seem to have inherited that gene.
Well, that long dipstick for the Chevy P30 seems to also fit ordinary Diesel Chevy/GMC vans from the turn of the millennium. Which makes it less impressive.
Had a Dodge motorhome with a 440 with a dipstick like that -worst it the thing was really hot and would whip around and make contact with your skin
Step inside my RV (or even worse, panel van) and let me show you my huge dipstick. Trust me you’ve never seen anything like it
I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to work the word “van” into any sentence without making it sound at least a little sleazy
I’m not sure whether to be offended or not.
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison remains one of the finest albums ever recorded, even if the man himself has devolved into a festering pustule.
(In related news, I only discovered last year that his real first name is “Ivan”.)
His name is George Ivan Morrison. Astral Weeks is one of the finest albums recorded. I don’t worry about his recent pestulistness. He’s got a lifetime pass for Sweet Thing alone.
Insert the gif of Batman 89 Joker pulling out his gun…
Or Crocodile Dundee’s famous line. “That’s not a dipstick. THIS is a dipstick.”
Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane used to have a couple of dipsticks working for him that were at least that length.
IIRC, Sheriff Coltrane was himself a dipstick.
Also, fun fact, the P stands for Purvis.
So you remember the episode where Rosco was being catfished too?
And his mom showed up, you bet!
Imagine pulling a 54″ dipstick out of the 657cc engine of a Suzuki Cappucino. That would be hilarious.
It just curls up inside of the engine like a drain snake. 🙂
You could use that as a whip and maybe kill somebody!!
No, no, of course that comment isn’t concerning at all. Imma just gonna take a few steps back…
I can’t see one of these GMC motor homes and not think of the EM-50. Thank for the smile, I needed it today.
Whistling the Stripes theme tune now. I think I’ll go out for a HulkaBurger after work.
At least it has a dipstick….
yes I agree.