Am I just nervous because it's all new? - Page 2

Ken / Claudia · 03-10-2019, 09:58 AM

Your getting good advice so far. My points are from personal and work experience. You said you felt that the front end was a little light. If you felt that, I say it likely is and that is real unsafe. Do what ever it takes to get the proper weight back on the front axle so you can maintain correct steering and braking.
Having the front axle too light is about as dangerous as driving in/on snow and ice. Not what you want with you, your family and grand kids.
Once the truck/hitch trailer all match up right you will have many great memories with the family and the trip will be easy.

5J's · 03-11-2019, 09:04 AM

White knuckle driving is no fun. I get it, your strapped for cash and can't make another payment. You've got some good advice here and it seems that if you can't make your current set up work, and it's sounding like you can't, then you may be able to trade up TV for little cost. Going the other route, trading down the TT, you'd likely be making the same payment and maybe a little more for a trailer that neither of you is completely satisfied with. Good luck and keep us posted.

CaptnJohn · 03-14-2019, 09:26 AM

Before you trade trailers ~~ please don't as you will get hammered! 1st your truck is light for that length and weight. The E2 hitch is fine for smaller TTs but I'd tell the dealer to trade that for the Equalizer 4 point with sway. In a heave wind you will appreciate the extra sway control. Check your tires, if P dump them for LT and make sure the LTs will carry the weight. Those 2 rather inexpensive changes may make pulling more relaxed. Your next truck ~~ make it a 1 ton as the price diff over a 3/4 is minor and when you nect upsize you will not be in the same situation.

skmct · 03-14-2019, 09:47 AM

I know from past experience the hitch can't be set up right. The trailer and tow vehicle must be loaded the same each time it is adjusted.If you add or relocate weight to either unit the hitch must be readjusted. It is possible to remove too much weight from the tow vehicles front or rear wheels with improper adjustment. Be sure both units are loaded with everything and everyone including the dog before adjusting the hitch.

FlyingAroundRV · 03-14-2019, 12:41 PM

Michael, if you're still watching this thread, I'll weigh in with my Two cents worth.

I would defintely go with a bigger truck as others have advised. Most people on these forums report graduating to bigger trailers after their first one. So in the long run you'll probably want that bigger truck anyway.
Now that you've bought the trailer you like, to trade down and take the hammering that you WILL take on the trade, then to later decide that you really did prefer the bigger trailer and trade up again, and then have to upgrade the truck anyway ... That is going to be a lot of wasted money.
WRT buying a truck. There are a lot of good used trucks out there and if you take the time to search, you can find some rare gems. We managed to find a 2015 F250 2WD with only 13,000 miles on it, last year. Even though it was 3 years old, it was still under manufacturer's warranty. I would suggest also to look for trucks in the southern states (away from the salted roads up north). We bought our truck out of Dallas. The biggest selection of trucks is there and they don't use salt on the roads as far as I know. Another good place to look is Atlanta. Depending on where you live, you might have to take a couple of days to go down and look at trucks, but it will be worth it in the long run.
We live in Australia, so I had to do my truck shopping real long distance. I went to Dallas with a list of 16 trucks I was interested in, from the online car ads site. We rented a car and hit the road. In the end, our truck was located 165 miles out of Dallas. We did a LOT of driving looking at trucks, but it was really worth it.
JMO! But I would suggest, don't downgrade the trailer, upgrade the truck. Move forward, not back.

BulletOwner1 · 03-14-2019, 09:08 PM

In my humble opinion, there has been a lot of good info and advice given so far. But so far I don't think anybody has touched on this point. (I could be wrong, I skimmed some of them)

You mentioned that this is your FIRST RV. And you've been out TWICE. Granted, some of the things you are experiencing are red flags like the light front end. But I think I would be white knuckled if I was towing a 30' trailer for the first time also. As time goes by you will learn that if you're towing something, its going to feel different than not. I've towed for years, from 15' to 30' TT;s and one 30' fiver. I've never forgotten that there's a trailer behind me. So my advice is to see if you can get your weight numbers squared away first, then your hitch issue if the weights are doable. If the numbers are not good then you probably need to change the tow vehicle. But understand that the more experience you have towing the better you will become in knowing what you should feel and what you should not.

Respectfully submitted.

FlyingAroundRV · 03-14-2019, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BulletOwner1

... But I think I would be white knuckled if I was towing a 30' trailer for the first time also.

That is a very good point and raises another point.
If you haven't towed something like a TT before, you might have a tendency to over control the rig, particularly when being passed by semi-trailers out on in the interstate where you'll be going at a reasonable clip yourself.
When the truck passing you comes up from behind, you'll feel his bow wake push you to the side. a slow steady resistance to that is all you need. Your rig should move as a unit if your TV is evenly matched to the TT and you have a good anti-sway hitch set up. There should be very little wagging back and forth of the trailer. If you do get that kind of wagging, you need to address that pronto! If you make rapid corrections against it, you will just make matters worse.
When I'm towing, I can feel the semi passing me before I'm aware that it is approaching (I'm usually focussed out the front more than the mirrors). I feel the rig push to the side of the road and I start a gentle pressure to keep it from going too far, but I let it move a little. When the semi passes, the suction from behind, pulls me back into the center of my lane where I want to be and all is usually well.
Just as an aside, I find that the wake from most semis is pretty even and predictable. However, the car carriers seem to generate a lot of turbulence in their wake. When one of those pulls back into the lane in front of me (and they always see to pull back in very closely) we get tossed around a fair bit until he's a couple hundred yards in front of me.

DonnieBlitz · 03-15-2019, 07:37 AM

Michaeldt hope your still reading this. We towed our toy hauler out to Sturgis last year and wondered why the front end was "Light" . Set up camp and proceeded to find out. Started talking with 2 people that had similar coaches....BOTH said this the same time..." got air Bags? ". Needless to say we are "Bagged" now and what a difference! Don't know your finances and don't really want to know but we bought a 2012 Dodge Dually Diesel fully loaded very reasonable, it was a Texas truck...no rust whatsoever! THEN we bought our Fuzion X toy hauler.

Michaeldt · 03-15-2019, 07:46 AM

Good morning everyone,

Well, I have thoroughly appreciated all the comments, remarks, suggestions and the PM's that have been sent. I apologize for not responding sooner but between work and church it's been a busy couple of weeks.

For those of you who mentioned the RV dealer would rake us through the coals...you were spot on. I talked with our sales guy who told me he would do his best to "make this right" and his best was us coming up with $3,000 down payment on another camper...not gonna happen.

So we are probably not going to do any further business with that dealer except any warranty or service needs that come up. I understand this wasn't totally their fault, I was at fault in many areas (not enough research, let them talk me into a larger camper than I planned for) and I've accepted that, but I just don't think they helped us as much as they could have...and I understand their bottom line is to make money, so lesson learned.

We are doing some research and talking with a few truck dealers service departments to see if upgrading our gear ratio on our current truck (3.31 to 3.55) is an option we want to look at. We're really not in a position right now to purchase a larger TV, but we'll look at it different times through the year and see if anything pops up that we can work with.

One question about the e2 WDH, and the four point system that some have posted about? Is that something we might can talk to our RV dealer about trading in, or would we have to purchase a 4 point system and try and sell the e2?

I haven't caught up with every post in this, but have read most of them and again, thank you and we appreciate the suggestions and teachings that many of you have offered. I do want to go through the e2 setup in their manual to see if that changes anything. If we can get a little more weight on the front end I think I'll feel better while we're on the road.

Will post as we learn more.

MarkEHansen · 03-15-2019, 07:54 AM

You'll have to ask the dealer about the trade-in on the E2, but I would expect he will not want it back.

It may not be as costly as you imagine to trade up to a better tow vehicle, so try to keep an open mind on that. You can get an older vehicle as a temporary truck for now, while you save up for a newer one. This was our plan (we were in the exact same position with a trailer that was too large for our TV) - but then I found a deal on a new truck that worked with our budget so we went that way instead.

Had that new truck option not worked for us, our plan was to purchase the a truck that would do the job, but be older and less feature rich, etc. because we figured it would be temporary. There were a lot out there that weren't that expensive.

Good luck with your search.

Michaeldt · 03-15-2019, 09:10 AM

First order of business is to get the hitch adjusted. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, so I think we'll go to the storage lot and go through the hitch manual and measurements and see if we can make any adjustments that might be needed.

We have some friends in our church who are more experienced with campers, so will see if they can join us and help walk us through this with the manual.

Number 4 · 03-15-2019, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkEHansen

It may not be as costly as you imagine to trade up to a better tow vehicle, so try to keep an open mind on that. You can get an older vehicle as a temporary truck for now, while you save up for a newer one. This was our plan (we were in the exact same position with a trailer that was too large for our TV) - but then I found a deal on a new truck that worked with our budget so we went that way instead.

Had that new truck option not worked for us, our plan was to purchase the a truck that would do the job, but be older and less feature rich, etc. because we figured it would be temporary. There were a lot out there that weren't that expensive.

I'll second this since we have truly enjoyed our significant upgrade to a used 2015 F-250. We test drove a few at CarMax but I continued searching web sites and found one on craigslist.com. Thankfully the owner was a lousy photographer (hadn't gotten much ad response) because the DW and I exclaimed, "WOW, that's a nice truck!" when we drove up. He was motivated to sell and after getting a clean CarFax report we closed that private party deal on a Lariat trim package with extras for the price that CarMax had offered him as a trade-in. There are deals out there, you just have to be patient and keep looking.

GMcKenzie · 03-15-2019, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michaeldt

We are doing some research and talking with a few truck dealers service departments to see if upgrading our gear ratio on our current truck (3.31 to 3.55) is an option we want to look at. We're really not in a position right now to purchase a larger TV, but we'll look at it different times through the year and see if anything pops up that we can work with.

Understand that while the gear swap will make your truck work better, you can't change the rating on the truck and you could still be stopped for being overweight.

skmct · 03-15-2019, 07:00 PM

From 2013 ford specifications CVGW 12,900 lbs max trailer weight 8100 lbs. I personally think he won't be happy with the pulling abilities of the 5.o motor . There will be a lot of down shifts on the hills which is nerve wracking. The biggest gain if he went to the 2500 would be the motor upgrade to the 6.2

66joej · 03-16-2019, 04:12 AM

Michaeldt If you go the diff upgrade I would suggest have the 3.73:1 gear set put in. Also don't know where you are but your estimate of $1200 seems quite low.
At the end of the day I agree with the consensus to get a bigger truck. Lots of good older ones out there that won't break the bank. JMHO

ctbruce · 03-16-2019, 04:51 AM

Theres a equalizer on sale in the classifieds for $350.

LFord · 03-17-2019, 09:30 AM

If you call Ford Customer Service, and give them the VIN on your truck, they can tell you how it came equipped from the factory as to "tow packages," rear-end ratios, wheelbase, bed length, etc., all of which go into the calculation as to max tow capacity for the truck. They can also tell you what the tow capacity is, as equipped from the factory, or you can download Ford's Towing guide and look it up yourself based on the engine installed, rear-end ratio, and type of tow package installed.

For example, my 2013 Ford F-150 XLT with a 3.5L ecoBoost engine, 6-speed auto, factory "trailer tow package," with a factory payload of 1744 lbs., extended cab (not "crew cab"), 6.5 bed, with only a 3.15 (I bought it used, didn't order it that way) rear-end is rated (with WDH) to tow 8,600 lbs. With an Equalizer hitch (1k/10k) with 4-way sway control, that truck pulls my 2016 Keystone Passport UL Express 199ML (3,600 EW; 5,000 max gross) quite well, and even semis blasting by on the Interstate barely cause the trailer to "wiggle" a bit.

However, for the length of the trailer you're towing, you may need "more truck" (e.g., F250) and/or a WDH with more sway control.

CaptnJohn · 03-17-2019, 10:32 AM

Dealers unload the e2 and other marginal hitches because they cost less and the bottom line for customers is more easy to swallow. I'd look on Craigslist for a used e4. Otherwise eTrailer generally has the best price. Then dump the e2 on Craigslist.

FlyingAroundRV · 03-17-2019, 12:27 PM

Another thing to consider when modifying a vehicle is what you'll do to the trade in value. When I went looking for a truck, I ran a mile from anything that was "modified" no matter what it was, whether lift kits, air bags, internal stereo mods, whatever.
IMO! You never know how well or otherwise those mods have benn done and what they do to the performance and handling of the truck. I particularly stayed away from lift kits. Suspension mods like airbags suggested that the truck had been worked very hard.

Michaeldt · 03-18-2019, 06:31 AM

Good morning everyone,

Ok the Mrs. and I were able to go to the storage space yesterday and measured our truck and hitch info. Here are the measurements that we came up with.

Truck uncoupled - 35 1/16"
Truck coupled (no sway bars attached) - 35 9/16"

If I read the manual correctly, when I add the sway bars it should have come back about 1/2 between the two, so was looking for 35 5/16?

When I added the sway bars to the truck coupled, measurement is - 35 1/2"

so, if I'm reading the manual correctly I'm under adjusted about 3/16?

Does that sound about right?

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