The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Towing Capacity Conundrum

New to towing, and I want to get a vintage travel trailer. I have a 1951 1/2 Chevy truck with a 350 V8 engine. I just had an R4 700 transmission put in with an additional electric gear. So, after looking at the old charts, it says the original truck has a 4200 to a 4600 Gross Vehicle Weight depending on the tire size. I will be having an electric brake installed if need be. What do you think, is a 2000 lb dry weight trailer too much? I have a chance to look at a 1967 17' Forester trailer tomorrow. Or should I stick with a smaller canned ham, lol?

I think it will work fine if you have a good hitch and a brake controller. I've hauled more than that many times.

I've been towing RV's and race cars since the early 1960's, and here's a few things I'd suggest: Keep the transmission out of overdrive while towing, and definitely get the trailer equipped with brakes. I highly recommend getting the biggest transmission cooler you can find installed while you're at it. 700's are notorious for boiling the fluid while towing.

If you go over 2000 lbs. trailer gross weight (ready to tow) you'll need a Class 2 weight equalizing hitch (Reese, Valley Tow-Rite, etc.) to put part of the tongue weight on the front axle. You need 10% of the trailer weight on the hitch, and a Class 1 hitch is only supposed to have a maximum of 200 lbs. on the ball.
Jerry

Any idea what gear ratio your rear end has? That may come in to play. Make sure you take note of what Hotrod Linclon mentions.

You not only have to consider weight, but wind resistance plays just as much a part if not more in killing an automatic that really wasn't designed for towing in the first place. Pulling a car hauler doesn't catch near the wind as a high profile trailer. I can figure about 20% more fuel when our trucks pull a dry box in a side wind compared to a flat. The R4 700 is a good transmission for smoking the tires around town, but it just wasn't designed for towing. As Hotrod suggests, get the biggest cooler you can find and make sure you can sop the thing. Have you done anything with the suspension on your 51? They weren't the most stable in the world for towing to be begin with.

For my 2 cents worth, after many years of towing all kinds of weird things, that combination should tow just fine but there are 3 things that are equally important.

Install the strongest hitch possible, I always use a class 3 receiver. You don't need it, but when bad things happen there is no such thing as a hitch that is too strong.

The trailer brakes are more important than the truck brakes. The trailer should be capable of stopping it's own load.
Because of that I always use Surge Brakes. I'm sure that will open up a lot of discussion, but in hard braking, panic stops (you never know when), down hill grades or slippery roads, nothing works better.

I had a panic stop with a 3/4 ton truck on a heavy trailer being pulled by a 1/2 ton. Skid marks from all 8 tires, stopped straight and in the same distance the truck alone would have.

Trailer balance is so important. 25lb shift in tongue can make a trailer into a monster or a pussycat. Always load the tongue a little heavier the book says.

And it should go without saying the truck has to be in good shape. Worn spring shackles, old shocks, loose front end, are asking for problems.

My only gripe about surge brakes is the inability to apply ONLY the trailer brakes. If the trailer gets into a sway, locking down on the trailer brakes and using full throttle on the tow vehicle is one way (usually the only way) to stop the sway. I saw my father get a travel trailer under control after two almost 90-degree fishtails like that, after a speeding Peterbilt had blown the trailer off the road with its bow wave. I was watching that scene in my rear view, after the truck passed me at what looked like 100 MPH+. The jerk was out of sight before I could get a plate number.
Jerry

If your in the flatlands, you can tow a lot with a little. I've done thousands of miles with my Tracker 4 door with V6 and auto, towing a 5 x 10 trailer loaded to the gills. I would bet I've hauled over 4000# up and down I-75 from MI to FL, including the hills of KY. I run all synthetic fluids in the vehicle, and had the optional trailer brakes installed. Now I use it for hauling fill, mulch, etc. and try to keep the weight to the 3500# trailer rating. Currently have over 101,000 miles on the car. Keep checking your lug nuts...on the trailer and on the tow vehicle! Get an auxiliary oil cooler if you can (none fits under the Tracker). I never tried it, but I think you can actuate the brakes from the controller while driving. You could easily jack up the juice to the trailer brakes in a second, and make them come on before the car's.

In a sway condition, if you have lots of room ahead, brake briefly then accelerate and it will calm down. Slow steady braking will do the same thing, the cars behind you will already be giving you room when they see the trailer swaying.

Had to do it once or twice before I learned to always load the tongue a little extra heavy.

If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his bottom when he jumps. I prefer to be able to deal with a dire emergency RIGHT NOW, not under some mythical ideal set of circumstances. I've had to recover far too many wrecks that resulted from someone who lost control of a vehicle to trust my safety or the people who share the road with me to luck. The only thing I've got with surge brakes right now is a 2-wheel tow dolly, and I'm seriously considering converting it to electric brakes to match the rest of the trailers I own.
Jerry

My worst concern about surge brakes is that if hydraulic fluid leaks off, there are no trailer brakes. This month marks 50 years ago that I bought my first semi with air brakes and bumper pull trailers scare me. But sometimes using a semi just isn't economically feasible. Last week I hauled a load of truck parts to an auction in Dallas. The stuff weighed right around 10,000 lbs. My GMC 2500HD and trailer with 2 7K axles and E rated tires handled it fine. The pickup has diagnostics and it flashes a warning on the speedo if there is a fault in the trailer wiring and I occasionally used the trailer brakes only right before a red light just to make sure they were still working. Everything went ok, but It would have been a whole lot more enjoyable ride in one of my semis.

How is the tongue weight determined. How do you know when you have 200 or 500 weight on the tongue?
Roy

The simple way is to drive to a truck stop and dolly the tongue jack down on a scale. Back when I was part of a race team, we had a lever-type multiplier that we used along with a simple bathroom scale to measure up to 1,000 pounds per wheel. It was set up so the scale indicated 1/4 of the actual weight bearing down on the device.
Jerry

Once you determine what is comfortable, you can just look at how much closer your landing gear gets to the ground. With the suspension I have on my 2500HD it doesn't seem like I can too much tongue weight. We have been cleaning up our truck yard and my scrap trailer starts out on a block, but it usually slips off the block and I wind up lifting it with a fork lift. Not long ago I had over 12,000 in brake drums on the trailer with them triple stacked in front. It was heavy because I had to twist my chains to keep them from dragging the ground, but it handled just like usual.

Hmmm, well all this info has sure been helpful. Thank you all so much. I think the best for me is going to be to look at a smaller trailer and avoid any potential complications. I am a newby afterall and I think I am going to break myself in with a smaller one, lol.