Nate, From what I have been able to gather it all stemmed from the
early recall. In the early 70's when the gas crunch hit Chinook was
about the only small RV on the market. The big RV builders were
dieing because of slow sales while the little Chinooks were selling
like crazy, so everyone wanted in on the action and started building
toyota based RV's, a little bigger a bit heavier and so on till they
started having the axle problems. Most of them would try to pass the
buck and blame toyota because they built the chassis. Toyota tried to
remedy the problem by building the 1 ton chassis even though it
wasn't there problem. After the introduction of the 1 ton the DOT
mandated the recall and a lot of the coach builders went out to avoid
the cost of the recall. Now that the coach builders had a stouter
platform to build on they started building them even bigger and
heavier which started causing other problems, trans, engines, ect,
and like before the coach builders would pass the buck because Toyota
built the chassis. So by 93 to avoid the hassles and liabilities and
warranties ect, Toyota said to heck with it, let someone else have
the headaches.
