New to towing a Travel Trailer

[Sburn]

Originally Posted by TXWolf

The dry weight of this travel trailer is 7300 lbs. We are getting an equalizer hitch and electric brake controller installed.

Depending on your gears and tire size, you're at or near the top of the towing capacity shown on page 249, 2008 Owner's Manual.

I don't have a gearing calculator handy, but if you have 3.73 gears, then 35 inch tires are going to make it like you had 3.55 (or worse) gears. And with that comes lowered towing capacity.

Assume plain water is just over 8 pounds per gallon, so you could easily add another 500 lbs to the trailer in just water. Then you got all your groceries, beer, firewood, and such to add. I could see you getting up to 8000 lbs, easy.

1) Make sure tires, brakes, fluids, etc on the truck are inspected and in perfect shape. And don't wait until the last minute while you're hitching up. Smack yourself on the head if you ever think, "might be alright -- I'll just keep and eye on it", instead of fixing the problem before you go.

2) Go over your receiver, hitch, safety chains, electrical plug, trailer lights/brakes, and equalizer bars EVERY time you go to leave somewhere. Even if you just parked overnight, inspect it before you go in the morning. Get used to doing an inspection walk around the trailer when you stop at rest stops and the like.

3) Your brake controller should come with a manual that tells how to adjust the controller with the trailer hooked up. Find a vacant stretch of road to do that adjustment.

How hard is it to back one of these things up?

Not as bad as you might think. Lars is right, longer is easier. Borrow some orange cones or such and take some time in a large parking lot to practice. Work out with the wife what hand signals (flashlight, radio) the two of you are going to use when you're backing in or out of a space. And then practice again in the dark.

[88Racing]

Sburn has a good point on the gearing!

Some other thoughts.

Noticed in the post that you have 6 people taking this trip. Hopefully the lariat has the bench seat up front. That's what bites about mine. The consel doesn't make it a good people hauler 5 max, on the good side I get my space.

Make sure you bring a good bottle neck jack or floor jack and some 1'x1' pieces of 3/4" plywood just in case of a flat.

Lars

[Jackpine]

These guys have pretty much covered everything!

I don't have near the towing weight that you do, but, your truck SHOULD be able to pull what you have. My trailer is a mere 3600#, but when I bought it, I had a Nissan Frontier (max towing weight was 5000# with an equalizing hitch, which I got). I was able to pull that thing over Monarch and Red Mountain Passes in Colorado (above 11,000 ft) but I was in 1st gear all the way. I found I was starting to run hot pulling it up a long 7% grade in Arizona south of Camp Verde and that's when I decided I really needed a bigger truck. So I got the f150.

You have a similar weight to "pull" ratio that I did with the Nissan. If you have not already gotten the hitch, I recommend the Equalizer load-leveling, equalizing, anti-sway Hitch: http://www.equalizerhitch.com/. Others have said you don't need the anti-sway feature, but it's kind of free with the design and I'll take any advantage I can get. It's dead easy to adjust the hitch ball height and it sounds like you'll need to drop that ball quite a bit since you've lifted the truck.

The good news about backing a long trailer is that it won't want to jackknife like a shorter one (mine). The bad news is you can't see a damned thing while you're turning while backing and it's really hard to tell where the back end of the trailer is. You have to have an assistant (I think).

Get used to the stopping distance, don't overload the trailer, don't drive faster than 65 mph.

And, you MAY discover that you need to install gears with a higher ratio than you have. With larger tires, I can just about bet on it.

You WILL get single digit gas mileage! Sorry!

- Jack

[TXWolf]

Thanks for all of the advice, guys. I will definitely look into getting bigger brakes installed, and possibly different gears. I currently have the 3.73's, so I guess the upgrade would be 4.10's? And I definitely plan on doing some "practice towing and backing up" on the many country roads in our area. I've already reserved a site at an RV Campground at the coast for a week in August. I chose a pull-through site, in the hopes that it's easier to manuever the trailer into, instead of a back-in site. :o

As far as the equalizer hitch goes ... I had the dealer throw it in as part of the deal. So I emailed the salesman the website, to make sure that what they're planning on installing is comparable to what the site shows.

What about towing mirrors? I've seen some clip-ons at the JCWhitney website, and I think on StylinTrucks. Any recommendations?