Not bad for a 29 year old truck....

[jaluhn83]

I bought a 20ft container locally a couple months back and have been working around to getting it hauled out of here up to my parent's house in the desert. I'm also in the process of moving, so I had the bright idea of putting a bunch of tool and such in the container to haul out of here. Turns out I had a bit more junk then I thought - turned out to be just shy of 21,000lb gross. I was expecting something closer to 18k, which was about as much as I'd ever really want to pull with this rig. Didn't load it quite a heavy on the nose as I probably should have, I had right about 1400 lb tongue weight but she had a nice tendency to sway over about 45-50 mph which I think might have been helped with more tongue weight. (trailer was ~14k, so I only had 10%. Could have had another 750-1000lb without going over the rear axle or truck gvw)

The impressive part was that I was able to do 40-45 mph going up Cajon and several other decent hills with that much weight.... that HX35 really helps a bunch.

And of course it's a 29 year old truck and a 40 year old trailer.... nice day for old iron.

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[m885]

LIKE!!!

 

[towcat]

crosswinds low on the day of the run? I've seen plenty of disasters over the years in those hills.

 

[jaluhn83]

Yes, thankfully!

And I replaced the trailer brakes not long ago. But still, was a bit nerve racking, and it was a nice slow drive....... Actually handled pretty well going downhill, it was mainly just cruising along and every now and then she'd get started on a nice gentle swaying..... never was really bad, but with that much weight a little bit was more than enough to get the blood pressure up a wee bit.

 

[bookite03]

Good to hear that 6.9/ZF/HX35 combo is paying off for you. Gives me confidence its worth the work!

 

[chris142]

Ack! Get that ugly container out of my desert! LoL

 

[asmith]

just thinking out loud here. i dont know a ton about towing, but i just towed my dads 25' trailer to camp in for the weekend and we had one of those weight distribution hitches with the sway bars on it. If you regularly tow heavy on a trailer like yours, wouldn't setting it up for the sway equipment help out in situations like this?

 

[Greg5OH]

BAD ASS!

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

That bit of swaying you were experiencing was a warning that the tail was fixing to start wagging the dog, which is why I avoid even moderately heavy bumper-hitch trailers.

The same load on a goose-neck wouldn't have even been noticeable.


Enough about that ----


When I win the lottery, I plan to get four 40- or 48-foot containers, double-stack them on solid foundation with 24-foot between, and truss-roof the whole works.


It sounds --- errrr reads like you have a fairly strong engine that is doing the job.

 

[NO_SPRK]

EGT readings? and how did you get that thing on the trailer? atleast by the looks of it you were towing a empty container :-D

 

[mohavewolfpup]

Sweet, you took most of the same route I did to get my 85 back to vegas. Definitely a good stress test on a diesel, especially with a turbo. My egts are fairly high on cajon and mountain pass, but I hope to fix that with a new injection pump and injectors (suspect they are original) is a holset turbo more aggressive then a hypermax? i'm curious what you got for EGT's also. even on a cold night mine spiked pretty bad hauling a uhaul trailer with a malibu

 

[GOOSE]

Nice, you can get away with some impressive GVWR's when you know what you are doing, my best is about 28,000lbs.

 

[jaluhn83]

Let's see if I can answer everything in one go here...

In no particular order:

Yes, a weight distrubting hitch would probably help a bit. Not all that much though I think. Most of the use for a wd hitch is keeping the rear from squatting too much / front end getting light. Squat doesn't affect that much, and with the diesel there's not much worry about a light front end - with this load I had 3080# on the front vs 3380 with just the empty trailer. 2nd load I did this weekend (17.5 GCW) I had 3100# on the front loaded vs 3500 light. That was with ~1750lb tongue weight.

A swap bar would probably help more than a wd hitch, but then the sway issue was only really a problem for this one run and mostly due to the weight / high center of gravity / sheer size.

A gooseneck would for sure ride better. I was actually a rude shock to go back to the bumper pull since pretty much the only thing I've been towing in the past year has been my gooseneck horse trailer which rides and handles much much better.

On the other hand, the bumper pull is what I've got, and for what it is, she does quite well. Most of the time I'm running a fair bit lighter, it's just odds and ends that really get heavy. The official GVW on the trailer is 12.5k, and light weight is about 4. I try not to put more than about 6k on the trailer, which gives a GCW of ~17k. With that load it handles pretty well and I'm comfortable with it. Nice thing is that the trailer took that weight without complaining. It's an old Zieman equipment trailer and built heavy. Course, it also looks like someone abused that a fair bit, since at some point they broke the entire tongue off and bent both axles pretty nicely. My guess is they where hauling a full up backhoe or similar. But she does good for what I need a flatbed for.

Helps having new trailer brakes too. Never had any worries about stopping, though had the cable come loose or something it would have been a different story.

Getting it on was (fairly) easy - jacked the front up high enough to clear the dovetail, set it on a couple 2x12s and rigged my 4k winch from the front of the container to the front of the trailer. More or less just sort of slid right on up there.... Mind you, that was empty - empty container is only about 5,000 lb. After it was on the trailer I stuck another ~5k of junk in there.....

EGTs on this rig aren't bad, but then I pretty much drive off the boost and egt - could probably get them up there is I just put it straight to the floor and stayed there. I usually see 1050-1150 pulling and will creep up to 1200 on a real hard hill. Seen 1250 a few times but it's usually from the speed & boost starting to drop off before I let off the petal. She'll make 19-20 psi boost from about 1800 rpm up and it spool up nicely. Not sure how it compares to the hypermax honestly, but it works well for me.

Now, I'm still somewhat shy of 10k miles on her, so it's certainly possible that the downside here is that I'll cook the motor before too long.... hopefully not, but worth considering.

I also still haven't gotten the intercooler fully setup yet - that can't be helping matters any.

Coolant and oil temps seem pretty controlled as well. I saw up to about 225 for coolant and 235-240 oil pulling cajon with the container with the outside temp about 70-80. This weekend at 17.5k I don't think I even hit 210, though it was cooler and damper. I do have a serious heavy duty fan clutch though which helps a ton.

Got to dyno this rig one of the days - curious what I'm getting for power. My guess is somewhere around 300hp flywheel, but that's pretty much just a guess. No real experience driving a newer truck but I'm guessing we're about even with a late 7.3 psd. I can say with certainly that I can go up a hill with this rig at 17k gross faster than a NA idi empty.

This was this weekend's run:

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[iverger]

When I win the lottery, I plan to get four 40- or 48-foot containers, double-stack them on solid foundation with 24-foot between, and truss-roof the whole works.

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