Overloaded Towing Example

Early in my career, I had a lead who told me about towing a back hoe around with a Chevy Luv.

He said it wasn't so bad, except for trying to steer when coming to a stop headed down hill. Steering wheel moved really easy though...

If you posted this just a few days earlier, I'd have thought it was a prank.

Look close. The running boards are bottomed out on the trailer fenders.

OH BERK WRONG THREAD

I towed a 3100 pound street stock on a tandem axle trailer behind my 86, 4 cyl/5 spd S10 for two years and a lot of race dates. This is way better than that.

The driver is not in the store. He's around the back taking a pee break in the grass.

I once towed a military Dodge Powerwagon home on a 7k trailer behind a Chevy Colorado with the 5 cylinder. It had enough power, but I had to load the Powerwagon pretty far back on the trailer to keep the Colorado from bottoming out on its rear bump stops. And then the trailer was so rear weight biased it would fishtail wildly over 45 mph.

This is why I tow with full ton trucks, now.

This ones not overloaded. Fact it towed better then my 83 dodge pick up....it stopped better, didn't over heat, had A/C and you didn't have to blast the radio to drown out the bad OD noises. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=333434136763020&l=37e3badf2a

volvoclearinghouse wrote: I once towed a military Dodge Powerwagon home on a 7k trailer behind a Chevy Colorado with the 5 cylinder. It had enough power, but I had to load the Powerwagon pretty far back on the trailer to keep the Colorado from bottoming out on its rear bump stops. And then the trailer was so rear weight biased it would fishtail wildly over 45 mph. This is why I tow with full ton trucks, now.

Yeah, the only way to pull a car trailer well with a small truck is to build the trailer specifically for that use. Move the rear axle of the trailer back a few inches to spread them further and extend the tongue a foot or 2. That'll give you less tongue weight for the same stability (longer tongue means more of the weight on the deck goes to the axles, rather than the hitch, at no cost to stability). And moving the rear axle of the trailer back a few inches reduces the weight behind the trailer axles, which is what provides the momentum for sway.

Ideally, the trailer axles would be at the back of the deck for stability, but that leads to impractically high tongue weights, so it isn't done.

I'm pretty sure the worst I've done was a car trailer behind the Jeep with another of the same Jeep on it. Technically, it was a couple hundred pounds under the tow rating for the Jeep, but it really could have used a WD hitch setup and/or stiffer rear springs than what the Jeep had at the time (it was a lot closer to stock back then). It pulled fine for 350 miles doing 55 - 60 on the highway though (rear suspension had about an inch left to the bumpstops) and with the second Jeep loaded backwards on the trailer (but all the way to the front), it was even aerodynamic enough to get 11.5 mpg for the whole trip.

Towing a 1967 Riviera on a tow bar behind a 1st gen 4runner with too tall of a hitch. That car appeared to out weigh the truck. Thank god toyota put good brakes on that thing, but the back of the truck still tried to lift and slide it around when stopping.

Or an overloaded utility trailer behind a 1995 Maxima. Horse power rating mean nothing if you don't have the gears. The 4 runner had 4:88 gears 31" tires and 150 HP, it pulled way better than the 200 HP maxima with short tires.

When I worked for the NPS we towed a Bobcat T300 with 20" Tree Terminator attachment (big shear) on a 24' heavy steel, deck-over, tandem duals, fold up ramp dovetail, goose neck. All behind a worn out surplus CUCV. The only thing that distinguished that truck from its previous military service was the white paint applied directly over the CARC, and NPS arrow heads stuck to the doors, only thing missing were the radios, still 24V even. Talk about slow, often, when starting off up a grade, we had to engage low range on the transfer case. I'm confident that the trailer had better brakes than the truck.

I once had a friend with a Power wagon pickup late 70's POS with a holmes 440 wrecker body on the back. he had 4x4 stuffed on top of the axle as limiters so the truck sat hard tailed on the end grain 4x4. We towed a int loadstar 1700 dump truck 84 miles and picked up my 1st blue bird buss a 38ft and came back with it. We passed two Mass State police barracks..... to stay the steering was light was an understatement, but for Bob this was a normal everyday tow job.

I'm pretty sure this thread was made for my dad's style of shenanigans. Over 60 miles traveled like this.

I towed my first race car,a 1987 VW Gti on my 18 ft. trailer 200 hundred miles to the track with my wife's Taurus. Class I hitch,3.0 V6 and it dragged it's butt the whole way. The hitch for my Astro was back ordered and I had to be at the driver's school, so you make do.

If that bed doesn't at least tilt then i want to know how he didn't high center the Masi.

Damn. I'm sad that the pics are busted.

Pirate 4X4's Big Dumb Loads.

Some are broken due to the Photobucket blow up. Some still work. There's some scary sh-t in there.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/tow-rigs-trailers/376271-big-dumb-loads-post-your-pics.html