Fishsizzle
06-08-2018, 10:12 PM
Sooooo, some of you know about the stressful situation I put myself in with my choice of 5th wheel, given the Truck I have.
I had to take a break from here. What was meant to be an awesome time buying a new 5th wheel, was nail biting. I wanted some miles under my belt so to speak.
I’ll talk a bit about the Alpine, then the truck. And don’t worry dually guys, in the end you will win.
So first the Alpine, it’s a 3661FL and we love it. Have two trips in it, everything has worked great. I had a hiccup with the Anderson 4 way, mainly because I thought it was 3 way, but have that down.
The unit pulls very nice and straight. My Wildcat pulled like a wildcat that was strung around it’s neck and drug. It’s was never right from day one. No matter what level I set the tension on the bars, or air in the bags, this thing always tried to swap ends on me. I was absolutely spent trying to keep this thing in my lane. Even empty to get rid of it nearly swayed us off the road. So glad its gone.
Now the truck. Me being dumb, gullible, stupid whatever you want to call it, I read Fords tow guide and thought that what was printed was the weight I could tow. It was brought to my attention several times in various threads that there was no way my Truck could handle this Trailer. I won’t recommend this truck for this application, as it is considered overweight. I will instead tell you how it did.
The 6.7 gobbles up the road., I mean flats eats it. While I know that the 5th wheel is there, going down the road or up hills, the truck doesn’t care. I’ve been over Hood, over Satiam and Willamette Pass, and I swear I could go as fast as I wanted. Until you need to take a curve. Now this is where I see the need for a dually. This truck could get someone into trouble. Because it can tow so well, it makes you feel rather invincible. But there is a fair amount of roll and understeer. You must slow down, which it does fine, in order to not be pushed by the 5ver. I have never towed with a Dually, but I imange this is where they would shine, as well as a more smother all round ride.
Jake worked great, set it at 45 and never touched the brakes going down Santiam Pass along Suttle lake. It held pat. Set the brakes in the truck to heavy for the trailer, and it stops fine. However, again, I do not recommend sticking with this Truck, I won’t. HW and I have already decided to purchase a F350 Dually sometime after the new year. As we start to add all this stuff needed to “camp” I will need to be able to put more gear in the truck, and less in the 5th wheel.
I’m having the HW ride behind with her “gear” to keep weight out of the Trailer. We have to run with setup as we have biz stuff to invest in and can’t really take a loss on this new truck with only 7500 miles on it. I’m a little more set up as I have load range F tires, 5100 billstiens, riderite and hellwig. I do these upgrades on everything I get, include HW F150, so I’m cheating in this review and it would make a stock Truck even more susceptible to the weight of this 5th I would think.
After all that. Thanks to those who reached out to me while I struggled with even being able to be here based on my Truck. I took off what I drive in my Sig, as I do not want anyone to follow in my footsteps. I’ll post a few pics here, but that’s it for the Truck until I get a new one.
Thanks for reading this far, and now I’ll get back in work on the inverter 😜😜😜
I had to take a break from here. What was meant to be an awesome time buying a new 5th wheel, was nail biting. I wanted some miles under my belt so to speak.
I’ll talk a bit about the Alpine, then the truck. And don’t worry dually guys, in the end you will win.
So first the Alpine, it’s a 3661FL and we love it. Have two trips in it, everything has worked great. I had a hiccup with the Anderson 4 way, mainly because I thought it was 3 way, but have that down.
The unit pulls very nice and straight. My Wildcat pulled like a wildcat that was strung around it’s neck and drug. It’s was never right from day one. No matter what level I set the tension on the bars, or air in the bags, this thing always tried to swap ends on me. I was absolutely spent trying to keep this thing in my lane. Even empty to get rid of it nearly swayed us off the road. So glad its gone.
Now the truck. Me being dumb, gullible, stupid whatever you want to call it, I read Fords tow guide and thought that what was printed was the weight I could tow. It was brought to my attention several times in various threads that there was no way my Truck could handle this Trailer. I won’t recommend this truck for this application, as it is considered overweight. I will instead tell you how it did.
The 6.7 gobbles up the road., I mean flats eats it. While I know that the 5th wheel is there, going down the road or up hills, the truck doesn’t care. I’ve been over Hood, over Satiam and Willamette Pass, and I swear I could go as fast as I wanted. Until you need to take a curve. Now this is where I see the need for a dually. This truck could get someone into trouble. Because it can tow so well, it makes you feel rather invincible. But there is a fair amount of roll and understeer. You must slow down, which it does fine, in order to not be pushed by the 5ver. I have never towed with a Dually, but I imange this is where they would shine, as well as a more smother all round ride.
Jake worked great, set it at 45 and never touched the brakes going down Santiam Pass along Suttle lake. It held pat. Set the brakes in the truck to heavy for the trailer, and it stops fine. However, again, I do not recommend sticking with this Truck, I won’t. HW and I have already decided to purchase a F350 Dually sometime after the new year. As we start to add all this stuff needed to “camp” I will need to be able to put more gear in the truck, and less in the 5th wheel.
I’m having the HW ride behind with her “gear” to keep weight out of the Trailer. We have to run with setup as we have biz stuff to invest in and can’t really take a loss on this new truck with only 7500 miles on it. I’m a little more set up as I have load range F tires, 5100 billstiens, riderite and hellwig. I do these upgrades on everything I get, include HW F150, so I’m cheating in this review and it would make a stock Truck even more susceptible to the weight of this 5th I would think.
After all that. Thanks to those who reached out to me while I struggled with even being able to be here based on my Truck. I took off what I drive in my Sig, as I do not want anyone to follow in my footsteps. I’ll post a few pics here, but that’s it for the Truck until I get a new one.
Thanks for reading this far, and now I’ll get back in work on the inverter 😜😜😜