Safe Towing Weight

[performancelaw]

I pull a 31ft fifth wheel camper that 13,500 I don't have any issues but then again I'm in Florida.

 

[jam0o0]

so a truck with a turbo, zf5, 4.10 rear, dually, and good trailer brakes. could it pull a 16k goose-neck trailer? or is that really f-superduty territory?

 

[robmoore11]

That's a loaded question. What kind of trailer are you talking about, bumper pull, gooseneck, 5er ,pintle hook ? with or without brakes? need a bit more information

It would be a 30' tag trailer with a dry weight of about 7000 lbs. I pulled it with my 95 dodge 3/4 ton diesel couple years ago. No problems.

 

[robmoore11]

With brakes ofcourse.

 

[Billyisgr8]

GCVW on my 1991 F350 crewcab SRW 4.10 rear is 14000 pounds, truck weighs 6800, so that leaves me with 7200 for a trailer and all our stuff. How are you guys legaly towing more than that? with your trucks?

My experiance towing a 6000 pound travel trailer is any grade over 6% and I have to use 2nd gear at 3000 rpm floored with egts at 1100, and when at elevation of 3500 feet+ it gets worse. I stop and use 4 low for one hill we always cross that is 7 miles long and 8 to 10 percent grade. We do about 35 mph up that one in 4 low at 3000 rpm. You guys who say towing a load is nothing for our NA trucks, try towing in the mountains on the West coast. Prairie hills are nothing compared to what we have and you make it sound like nothing will stop our trucks and make them slow down.

 

[TWeatherford]

My experiance towing a 6000 pound travel trailer is any grade over 6% and I have to use 2nd gear at 3000 rpm floored with egts at 1100, and when at elevation of 3500 feet+ it gets worse. I stop and use 4 low for one hill we always cross that is 7 miles long and 8 to 10 percent grade. We do about 35 mph up that one in 4 low at 3000 rpm. You guys who say towing a load is nothing for our NA trucks, try towing in the mountains on the West coast. Prairie hills are nothing compared to what we have and you make it sound like nothing will stop our trucks and make them slow down.

Try coming over the pass between Laramie, WY and Walden, CO. Elevation over 9000 ft I believe. About 10 miles of uphill. Coming down the other side I didn't touch the throttle for about 20 minutes. I actually drove north on I80 through Nebraska so I could avoid the section of the Rockies west of Denver on I70, that would have been awful. Push on the pedal and it feels just like you ran out of fuel, absolutely nothing happens (except the cloud of black smoke). My truck empty felt pretty gutless going up Eisenhower pass, and slowed to around 40.

I do not doubt some of the guys here who claim their truck does great with big loads on big hills. The difference between their trucks and my truck when I headed west in it was their trucks are in really good shape and mine was not. It still isn't tip top, but it is a whole lot better than it was.

Up to date fuel systems, proper gearing, good driving technique, proper compression, a good working turbo will do wonders to these machines. Problem is, most of them haven't been properly maintained in years, and they weren't powerhouses to begin with.

 

[robmoore11]

GCVW on my 1991 F350 crewcab SRW 4.10 rear is 14000 pounds, truck weighs 6800, so that leaves me with 7200 for a trailer and all our stuff. How are you guys legaly towing more than that? with your trucks?

My experiance towing a 6000 pound travel trailer is any grade over 6% and I have to use 2nd gear at 3000 rpm floored with egts at 1100, and when at elevation of 3500 feet+ it gets worse. I stop and use 4 low for one hill we always cross that is 7 miles long and 8 to 10 percent grade. We do about 35 mph up that one in 4 low at 3000 rpm. You guys who say towing a load is nothing for our NA trucks, try towing in the mountains on the West coast. Prairie hills are nothing compared to what we have and you make it sound like nothing will stop our trucks and make them slow down.

have you ever been over the coquihalla? thats the part of the highway im most worried about with my travel trailer.

 

[RLDSL]

GCVW on my 1991 F350 crewcab SRW 4.10 rear is 14000 pounds, truck weighs 6800, so that leaves me with 7200 for a trailer and all our stuff. How are you guys legaly towing more than that? with your trucks?

My experiance towing a 6000 pound travel trailer is any grade over 6% and I have to use 2nd gear at 3000 rpm floored with egts at 1100, and when at elevation of 3500 feet+ it gets worse. I stop and use 4 low for one hill we always cross that is 7 miles long and 8 to 10 percent grade. We do about 35 mph up that one in 4 low at 3000 rpm. You guys who say towing a load is nothing for our NA trucks, try towing in the mountains on the West coast. Prairie hills are nothing compared to what we have and you make it sound like nothing will stop our trucks and make them slow down.

One of the first things I did when I got my 5er before I had a turbo , was to take it up in the Ozarks to a road locally known as a log truck killer...20% and ran it both ways to see how it would take it. The thing had plenty of grunt to get up it and plenty of compression braking to get down . It wasn't going to set any speed records, but it was climbing at a steady pace Around here we don't have the epic long pulls, but we've got some short ones so steep they'll scare the dog water out of ya
These things are geared rather poorly as far as pulling, you can wind up down in first wound out tight as a drum and be going up a steep hill at a rather brisk clip

 

[Billyisgr8]

have you ever been over the coquihalla? thats the part of the highway im most worried about with my travel trailer.

All the time towing my race car/trailer that weighs 5000lbs. 2nd gear 50 kmh on the snowshed hill with trailer, 70 kmh with no trailer, is what I end up doing depending if I can carry any speed up to the hill. On any hill like this if I have to slow down from traffic I am stuck at that speed. I have had to do it in first gear too because of getting behind a slow truck, than all kinds of traffic passing and me not being able to pass, then you have to be patient and crawl up it. When I tow, the biggest thing to me is get the rpm at 2600-3000 rpm, and hold it and whatever the truck is doing then thats what I'll end up climbing at. Once I get a turbo installed then everything will change for how the truck is driven and what rpms. My truck is tuned for 4500' even though i live at 600' but I am in the mountains alot, and just get some black smoke when flooring it at 4500'. I can floor it all the way up the snowshed hill and maintain 1100 degrees, water temp gets to the A in normal and not any higher. Going towards Calgary I just keep my foot out of the throttle when EGT's climb higher than 1100., I have a napa special aluminum core plastic end rad with 2 large 1" tubes in it. I wasn't shure how it was going to do, but has lasted 70,000 km's so far with out leaking, and that is with many mountain passes each year. We go towards 100 mile and get the 12km hill out of Little Fort to go up at 8 percent grade every 2-3 weeks in the summer, and tow to Mission to race often.

 

[Diesel_brad]

so a truck with a turbo, zf5, 4.10 rear, dually, and good trailer brakes. could it pull a 16k goose-neck trailer? or is that really f-superduty territory?

A 16k trailer is WAY too much for an IDI. you figure a 16k trailer(including load)+ the truck weighs i at about 24,000lbs The new F450 that is 400hp is just rated to tow that, and it has 4 wheel disk brakes(14 and 15" rotors), a dana 110 rear axle, 19.5 tires

 

[robmoore11]

All the time towing my race car/trailer that weighs 5000lbs. 2nd gear 50 kmh on the snowshed hill with trailer, 70 kmh with no trailer, is what I end up doing depending if I can carry any speed up to the hill. On any hill like this if I have to slow down from traffic I am stuck at that speed. I have had to do it in first gear too because of getting behind a slow truck, than all kinds of traffic passing and me not being able to pass, then you have to be patient and crawl up it. When I tow, the biggest thing to me is get the rpm at 2600-3000 rpm, and hold it and whatever the truck is doing then thats what I'll end up climbing at. Once I get a turbo installed then everything will change for how the truck is driven and what rpms. My truck is tuned for 4500' even though i live at 600' but I am in the mountains alot, and just get some black smoke when flooring it at 4500'. I can floor it all the way up the snowshed hill and maintain 1100 degrees, water temp gets to the A in normal and not any higher. Going towards Calgary I just keep my foot out of the throttle when EGT's climb higher than 1100., I have a napa special aluminum core plastic end rad with 2 large 1" tubes in it. I wasn't shure how it was going to do, but has lasted 70,000 km's so far with out leaking, and that is with many mountain passes each year. We go towards 100 mile and get the 12km hill out of Little Fort to go up at 8 percent grade every 2-3 weeks in the summer, and tow to Mission to race often.

really? thats wierd. i have a 1990 with the auto E4OD and on the coquihalla all the way up on the way to edmonton i had to slow down because of traffic and still got up to 95 kmh. but towing my trailer i have a test hill that i take it on. on HWY 15 in surrey there. a big ol hill. and also on the sea to sky is a good test i find. seems to do fine with my 3000 lbs dry trailer. its about 3500 loaded plus the 1500 pounds of firewood in the box of the truck. pulls up the sea to sky not too bad. about 80 kmh on the biggest hill.

 

[Billyisgr8]

really? thats wierd. i have a 1990 with the auto E4OD and on the coquihalla all the way up on the way to edmonton i had to slow down because of traffic and still got up to 95 kmh. but towing my trailer i have a test hill that i take it on. on HWY 15 in surrey there. a big ol hill. and also on the sea to sky is a good test i find. seems to do fine with my 3000 lbs dry trailer. its about 3500 loaded plus the 1500 pounds of firewood in the box of the truck. pulls up the sea to sky not too bad. about 80 kmh on the biggest hill.

I don't like putting my truck at 2000 rpm or less pulling long hills, I keep it minimum 2500, I aim for 3000. Second gear is what keeps it in this rpm range and it is not floored. Keep the fluid moving in the tranny, and motor. My truck may pull the snowshed hill faster, but I don't feel I need to keep my foot into it. I'm a patient driver with a load, I pick a rpm and stick to it. I want to make sure I get to where I am going without breaking down. The snowshed hill is the only hill on the coq that slows my truck down, all the other hills I can cruise in 3rd 90 - 110 no problem. The hill on 176 is a steep one forsure. My dad lost the brakes on his concrete truck on that hill. The brake line was cut while crossing a picket line at a union job in the 80's luckly there where no cars in front and he just rode it out on the flats

 

[robmoore11]

I don't like putting my truck at 2000 rpm or less pulling long hills, I keep it minimum 2500, I aim for 3000. Second gear is what keeps it in this rpm range and it is not floored. Keep the fluid moving in the tranny, and motor. My truck may pull the snowshed hill faster, but I don't feel I need to keep my foot into it. I'm a patient driver with a load, I pick a rpm and stick to it. I want to make sure I get to where I am going without breaking down. The snowshed hill is the only hill on the coq that slows my truck down, all the other hills I can cruise in 3rd 90 - 110 no problem. The hill on 176 is a steep one forsure. My dad lost the brakes on his concrete truck on that hill. The brake line was cut while crossing a picket line at a union job in the 80's luckly there where no cars in front and he just rode it out on the flats

gotcha. and i dont have pyros and stuff so i dont know what my egts are. but my truck has never gotten passed the first line passed cold. ive never made it close to the N on normal. haha. it has an oversized RAD and an oversized trans cooler. im gonna be hooking up a manual TC lockup switch soon. the trans choosing when to lock up is ******* me off.

 

[Simp5782]

I have grossed 37,000 with my 85 6.9na 4spd almost everyday this week. Dual trailers loaded with scrap iron. 30ft GN and 30ft FB. Had to buy the permit that allows me to go up to 95ft long, 15ft wide, 15ft tall, and 46,000 lbs. It was a turtles pace at 45-50 the whole 80 miles with hills and what not.

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

I have grossed 37,000 with my 85 6.9na 4spd almost everyday this week.

that statement doesn't belong under this thread title;
Safe Towing Weight.

i hope you get fined up the ass before you kill someone rather than after.