School Me on Towing

LBarr2002 said:
Oh you'll know...
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Not always. My trailer is a 50ft wedge...the 3 axles are pretty far away from the truck, and at night the tires are impossible to see when nobody is on the road behind you. Pulled over one night to get some fuel and discovered that the rear passenger side tire had blown at some point and all that was left was the rubber that could no longer touch the ground because of the limited droop. Never felt anything and couldn't see any smoke. Now I have a few running lights over the axles so I can see the smoke when a tire blows. On a 3 car trailer with 3 jeeps on it, you don't feel anything even when a tire explodes, you can only look for smoke or hope to catch a glimpse of rubber go flying, because if it's not the front axle you aren't going to see anything.
 
I was very impressed how well the 1500 handled the tow. With the tow tune installed it never once chased gears. The hemi pulled very well. I was pleasantly surprised.

It sagged very much stock as you can imagine even with the WD hitch. I put on AirLift 5000 bags. Def noticeable stiffened up the ride. It certainly supported the tongue weight with ease tho it was a little tricky to use bags with a WD hitch.

Brakes were upgraded with ceramic pads. Stopped no problem and the brake controller recommendation worked very well

The problem was that the truck was too light. Too subject to passing semis when towing the trailer.

Anyways long story short, have now upgraded to a 2018 Ram 3500 with the 6.7L and G56
 
ckruzer said:
I was very impressed how well the 1500 handled the tow. With the tow tune installed it never once chased gears. The hemi pulled very well. I was pleasantly surprised.

It sagged very much stock as you can imagine even with the WD hitch. I put on AirLift 5000 bags. Def noticeable stiffened up the ride. It certainly supported the tongue weight with ease tho it was a little tricky to use bags with a WD hitch.

Brakes were upgraded with ceramic pads. Stopped no problem and the brake controller recommendation worked very well

The problem was that the truck was too light. Too subject to passing semis when towing the trailer.

Anyways long story short, have now upgraded to a 2018 Ram 3500 with the 6.7L and G56
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Nice. Last year the big three made a real truck.
 
On a bumper pull check the the pin that holds the main pin in. Husband caught some kids pulling the hair pin off that would cause a nice wreck. A locking pin would help in that case. We have also heard of kids putting penny's in the winch controller plugs letting the winch run away.
 
Halftrac said:
On a bumper pull check the the pin that holds the main pin in. Husband caught some kids pulling the hair pin off that would cause a nice wreck. A locking pin would help in that case. We have also heard of kids putting penny's in the winch controller plugs letting the winch run away.
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when I worked on the farm, one kid that worked for us switched the insert out. He put the pin around the cross pin instead of through it. Trailer came unhooked while it was unloaded at slow speed. Fortunately. I told boss man to go buy a locking pin and to put the key with the truck key so that you had to shut the truck off to change the insert, and the pin lock wouldn't let you get the key back until it was locked again. Never had any issues after that. When that happened, the chains bent where they hooked up and since, I don't place much trust in safety chains keeping the trailer hooked to the tow vehicle in case of coupling coming loose. There was also that time fifteen years ago some dude related to me by marriage (I may or may not been with him) had a boat come uncoupled, no chains either. It ran a fence line and came to a stop. He was intending to ditch it anyway, and left it where it came to rest and continued on to the coffee shop.. SMH.
 
Heading home up US52 the other night, a couple of "winners" were towing a golfcart (not bad looking) in a small utility trailer with a [cough] Escort [cough] when it (cart/trailer) had enough and jumped right off the ball... and into the inside guardrail! :D

No sign of a pin in the actual latch, safety chains, etc... just them pointing at the other "it was your fault" :rolleyes:
 
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