"Realistic" towing ratings

[ratdude747]

Unfortunately, I don't think I have a picture of the complete receiver setup on Darth. He has a V5 rated receiver that is integrated into the rear step bumper. Result being a massive chunk of bolted together steel on the back end of his frame. Original owner haul large horse trailers on that setup. I used a bed mounted 5th wheel hitch.

Got the hitch the other day... and finally completed the install tonight (wiring still a work in progress, still haven't gotten a controller yet ).

Specs:

I had to wing it on the mounting... Reese doesn't even recognize the part number due to being long discontinued. Thankfully, since it came off a bullnose, I had all the shim plates and the like I needed. Shim plates go on the rear four locations, no shims on the front pair. One side's connections:

I replaced all the bolts with 1/2 x 2" grade 8 cairrage bolts. All of the round washers, lock washers, and nuts were replaced with grade 8 serrated flange nuts. For the rear pair, I drilled/chiseled out the rear crossmemeber's hot rivets and drilled them out to 1/2". The other four I drilled once I had the former two anchored down.

Since I had to loosen the side bolts as well (to get the plates to line up with the frame bottom on both sides), I replaced the nuts/washers there with serrated flange nuts as well:

The hot rivets were a pain in the rear as always... just as much fun doing them on my 1995 ranger (transmission crossmember upgrade and radius arm brackets ).

[ratdude747]

Not trying to be pedantic here or step on toes but load ranges are different for passenger vs. light truck tires.

If you have tires that have a load range rating of XL or "Extra Load", they are passenger car tires and XL is the top load range rating for them.

Light Truck tires have load ranges from A to F and if you have anything with a GVW of 8500 pounds or higher, your tire spec often dictates a load range of E. Stuff like a new F450 chassis cab will often come with tires rated in the load range of F. After F you get into medium duty truck tires which are commercial level stuff and the rating ranges change again.

This site from Tire America explains it pretty simply: https://www.tireamerica.com/resource/guide-to-tire-load-range

But the biggest reason you want to shy away from passenger car tires, even if they are rated XL and have load ratings that exceed your GVW or GCWR is sidewalls. Not because they are more stiff like someone else mentioned but because they have more materials and belting in the sidewalls.

That's important because as tires load down, the sidewalls bow out. This is a design feature that allows the tread block to stay square with the road offering the largest contact patch for traction and control surface area. The extra belting and materials in LT sidewalls helps control the tire's contact patch under heavy load. If you load the tire down too much, the sidewalls bow out too much. The only draw back is that your nice, cushy new F350 King Ranch might need load range E tires on it and unloaded, those E tires are going to be like basketballs running 45-65 psi. It'll make your squishy King Ranch bounce around like a 1950's Land Rover.

But back to overloading, at the point where the sidewalls are bowing exceesively, instead of having a vertical bow to transfer the vehicle load to the road, the load is sitting on the air pocket sandwiched between the two sides of the sidewall U. When that happens, as the tire rolls down the road, the carcass and rim bead will get stretched and then relax at a very frequent rate. They are not designed to do that.

So that means that layers of the tire carcass are now rubbing against each other inside the tire and that causes excessive heat to build up. Enough heat that the tire layers soften and melt enough that they will delaminate. That delamination leads to catastrophic failure (aka: a blow out) and at highway speeds with a heavy load, that's crazy levels of dangerous.

Infrequent use of the truck as a heavy hauler you can get away with slick looking, smooth riding, quiet passenger car tires. But if you plan to do any kind of heavy load hauling or towing then you should consider light truck tires with an adequate load range rating.

Side note, when you drive down the highway and see those huge chunks of tires and rubber on the sides of the road that was caused by the same type of load as exceeding your load rating on your tires. Those failures happened, though, from under-inflation. The truck drove down the road dragging a trailer that had a tire go down in pressure and as it heated up, it caused the tread plate to separate from the carcass which then whipped around until it disintegrated and the carcass blew open. It wasn't overloaded when it was properly inflated but it did get overloaded when the air pressure in the tire dropped to the point where the tire was now longer capable of supporting it's rated load and the sidewalls bulged just as if it was overloaded.

If you are driving down the road and passing an 18-wheeler, you can hear that separation starting to happen. It usually sounds like one tire is perpetually rolling down a rubber gravel road despite being on smooth pavement. Don't hang around next to that tire too long because it can, honestly, let go at any minute once it's making that sound. Those tire chunks are heavy and they will damage your ride or even you.

BTW, over-inflating a tire can cause it to stretch in the wrong way too which will also lead to failure.

So, TL;DR, tire load range ratings are important and so is the difference between passenger car tires and light truck tires.

I don't plan to routinely tow, let alone routinely tow "heavy" loads... I'd want a beefier truck for that.

Noted for the next time I need tires...

[grumpin]

Got the hitch the other day... and finally completed the install tonight (wiring still a work in progress, still haven't gotten a controller yet ).

Specs:

I had to wing it on the mounting... Reese doesn't even recognize the part number due to being long discontinued. Thankfully, since it came off a bullnose, I had all the shim plates and the like I needed. Shim plates go on the rear four locations, no shims on the front pair. One side's connections:

I replaced all the bolts with 1/2 x 2" grade 8 cairrage bolts. All of the round washers, lock washers, and nuts were replaced with grade 8 serrated flange nuts. For the rear pair, I drilled/chiseled out the rear crossmemeber's hot rivets and drilled them out to 1/2". The other four I drilled once I had the former two anchored down.

Since I had to loosen the side bolts as well (to get the plates to line up with the frame bottom on both sides), I replaced the nuts/washers there with serrated flange nuts as well:

The hot rivets were a pain in the rear as always... just as much fun doing them on my 1995 ranger (transmission crossmember upgrade and radius arm brackets ).

Nice job!

[Gary Lewis]

Got the hitch the other day... and finally completed the install tonight (wiring still a work in progress, still haven't gotten a controller yet ).

Specs:

I had to wing it on the mounting... Reese doesn't even recognize the part number due to being long discontinued. Thankfully, since it came off a bullnose, I had all the shim plates and the like I needed. Shim plates go on the rear four locations, no shims on the front pair. One side's connections:

I replaced all the bolts with 1/2 x 2" grade 8 cairrage bolts. All of the round washers, lock washers, and nuts were replaced with grade 8 serrated flange nuts. For the rear pair, I drilled/chiseled out the rear crossmemeber's hot rivets and drilled them out to 1/2". The other four I drilled once I had the former two anchored down.

Since I had to loosen the side bolts as well (to get the plates to line up with the frame bottom on both sides), I replaced the nuts/washers there with serrated flange nuts as well:

The hot rivets were a pain in the rear as always... just as much fun doing them on my 1995 ranger (transmission crossmember upgrade and radius arm brackets ).

That should work very nicely. Well done!

[85lebaront2]

Not trying to be pedantic here or step on toes but load ranges are different for passenger vs. light truck tires.

If you have tires that have a load range rating of XL or "Extra Load", they are passenger car tires and XL is the top load range rating for them.

Light Truck tires have load ranges from A to F and if you have anything with a GVW of 8500 pounds or higher, your tire spec often dictates a load range of E. Stuff like a new F450 chassis cab will often come with tires rated in the load range of F. After F you get into medium duty truck tires which are commercial level stuff and the rating ranges change again.

This site from Tire America explains it pretty simply: https://www.tireamerica.com/resource/guide-to-tire-load-range

But the biggest reason you want to shy away from passenger car tires, even if they are rated XL and have load ratings that exceed your GVW or GCWR is sidewalls. Not because they are more stiff like someone else mentioned but because they have more materials and belting in the sidewalls.

That's important because as tires load down, the sidewalls bow out. This is a design feature that allows the tread block to stay square with the road offering the largest contact patch for traction and control surface area. The extra belting and materials in LT sidewalls helps control the tire's contact patch under heavy load. If you load the tire down too much, the sidewalls bow out too much. The only draw back is that your nice, cushy new F350 King Ranch might need load range E tires on it and unloaded, those E tires are going to be like basketballs running 45-65 psi. It'll make your squishy King Ranch bounce around like a 1950's Land Rover.

But back to overloading, at the point where the sidewalls are bowing exceesively, instead of having a vertical bow to transfer the vehicle load to the road, the load is sitting on the air pocket sandwiched between the two sides of the sidewall U. When that happens, as the tire rolls down the road, the carcass and rim bead will get stretched and then relax at a very frequent rate. They are not designed to do that.

So that means that layers of the tire carcass are now rubbing against each other inside the tire and that causes excessive heat to build up. Enough heat that the tire layers soften and melt enough that they will delaminate. That delamination leads to catastrophic failure (aka: a blow out) and at highway speeds with a heavy load, that's crazy levels of dangerous.

Infrequent use of the truck as a heavy hauler you can get away with slick looking, smooth riding, quiet passenger car tires. But if you plan to do any kind of heavy load hauling or towing then you should consider light truck tires with an adequate load range rating.

Side note, when you drive down the highway and see those huge chunks of tires and rubber on the sides of the road that was caused by the same type of load as exceeding your load rating on your tires. Those failures happened, though, from under-inflation. The truck drove down the road dragging a trailer that had a tire go down in pressure and as it heated up, it caused the tread plate to separate from the carcass which then whipped around until it disintegrated and the carcass blew open. It wasn't overloaded when it was properly inflated but it did get overloaded when the air pressure in the tire dropped to the point where the tire was now longer capable of supporting it's rated load and the sidewalls bulged just as if it was overloaded.

If you are driving down the road and passing an 18-wheeler, you can hear that separation starting to happen. It usually sounds like one tire is perpetually rolling down a rubber gravel road despite being on smooth pavement. Don't hang around next to that tire too long because it can, honestly, let go at any minute once it's making that sound. Those tire chunks are heavy and they will damage your ride or even you.

BTW, over-inflating a tire can cause it to stretch in the wrong way too which will also lead to failure.

So, TL;DR, tire load range ratings are important and so is the difference between passenger car tires and light truck tires.

I actually had a car that I ran LT tires on as it took 235/75R15 tires and I had a healthy class III receiver hitch on it. Darth has LT 215/85R16 LR E tires as that is what the school busses here use and as a result they are readily available and not too horrible on cost. My tires will actually handle more than the 7400 lb rear axle capacity.

[ratdude747]

Got the hitch the other day... and finally completed the install tonight (wiring still a work in progress, still haven't gotten a controller yet ).

Specs:

I had to wing it on the mounting... Reese doesn't even recognize the part number due to being long discontinued. Thankfully, since it came off a bullnose, I had all the shim plates and the like I needed. Shim plates go on the rear four locations, no shims on the front pair. One side's connections:

I replaced all the bolts with 1/2 x 2" grade 8 cairrage bolts. All of the round washers, lock washers, and nuts were replaced with grade 8 serrated flange nuts. For the rear pair, I drilled/chiseled out the rear crossmemeber's hot rivets and drilled them out to 1/2". The other four I drilled once I had the former two anchored down.

Since I had to loosen the side bolts as well (to get the plates to line up with the frame bottom on both sides), I replaced the nuts/washers there with serrated flange nuts as well:

The hot rivets were a pain in the rear as always... just as much fun doing them on my 1995 ranger (transmission crossmember upgrade and radius arm brackets ).

Quick update (pics will come tomorrow???)... Scored a barely used Primus IQ proportional controller for $35 and a 3 hr round trip to Cincinnati. Completed the 7 blade wiring too (minus tying up some loose wiring under the hood, which I'll nab tomorrow.

[Gary Lewis]

Quick update (pics will come tomorrow???)... Scored a barely used Primus IQ proportional controller for $35 and a 3 hr round trip to Cincinnati. Completed the 7 blade wiring too (minus tying up some loose wiring under the hood, which I'll nab tomorrow.

Sounds good. I'm sure it'll look good, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the pics.

[ratdude747]

Sounds good. I'm sure it'll look good, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the pics.

Long day at work... but I do have a few pics and more info from last night:

Yes, it's by the radio, but from what I read, since I'm 4W or under with a properly grounded (and in-tune) antenna, the only thing I have to worry about is the brake controller feeding noise back into the CB. Surely it can't be as bad as the chinatrash HID ballasts on my Ranger (they puke noise out like no tomorrow!)

Brake pedal tapping: I got creative as the brake pedal wiring is a pain to access in the dash. I soldered a tap wire to the switched terminal:

That wire is run through the wire guide used to keep the wiring out of the pedal mechanisms. To add some vibration resistance, I put some liquid tape on the back of the connector:

For the wiring: I used a hopkins 4 pin to 7 pin adapter kit with the 4 pin plug cut off and spliced into my existing spliced 4 pin wiring:

https://www.menards.com/main/tools/automotive/towing-cargo-management/trailer-lighting-wiring/hopkins-towing-solutions-reg-multi-tow-reg-4-flat-to-7-blade-and-4-flat-connector-kit/47185/p-7919224477045872-c-1527167451363.htm?tid=-8104667245428759666&ipos=27

I originally ran the ground to one of the front spare tire crossmember bolts, but I had second thoughts about the ground being adequate, so I ran it as one of the three connections up front. For such (Trailer Ground, Trailer power, and brakes), I used a 25' 12 gauge extension cord routed along the passenger frame rail like I did with the CB antenna wiring in another thread. Yeah, it was $30 for said cable1, but for the amount of super flexible copper in a rugged jacket, I figured it was worth it. The brake controller power and ground are also 12 gauge. The brake controller is powered from a 40A auto-reset breaker mounted by the starter solenoid (per the suggested wiring guide I found); the trailer power is on an inline 20A fuse. I don't' think the trailer I'm getting currently needs power, but I don't like incomplete wiring and like to be future proofed.

 

[RenoHuskerDu]

I wouldn't tow more than 2000 lbs with a half-ton pickup. Preferably only a light dirt bike trailer etc.

That's just me. I see a lot of half-ton pickups towing heavy trailers passing me out on the highway as I tow 21k with my F550 at 55-60mph. I suppose it's legal but I won't do it. We don't even own a 150 except for one we're building up for my teen daughter to drive. All our other pickups are 250/350.

 

[ratdude747]

Long day at work... but I do have a few pics and more info from last night:

Yes, it's by the radio, but from what I read, since I'm 4W or under with a properly grounded (and in-tune) antenna, the only thing I have to worry about is the brake controller feeding noise back into the CB. Surely it can't be as bad as the chinatrash HID ballasts on my Ranger (they puke noise out like no tomorrow!)

Brake pedal tapping: I got creative as the brake pedal wiring is a pain to access in the dash. I soldered a tap wire to the switched terminal:

That wire is run through the wire guide used to keep the wiring out of the pedal mechanisms. To add some vibration resistance, I put some liquid tape on the back of the connector:

For the wiring: I used a hopkins 4 pin to 7 pin adapter kit with the 4 pin plug cut off and spliced into my existing spliced 4 pin wiring:

https://www.menards.com/main/tools/automotive/towing-cargo-management/trailer-lighting-wiring/hopkins-towing-solutions-reg-multi-tow-reg-4-flat-to-7-blade-and-4-flat-connector-kit/47185/p-7919224477045872-c-1527167451363.htm?tid=-8104667245428759666&ipos=27

I originally ran the ground to one of the front spare tire crossmember bolts, but I had second thoughts about the ground being adequate, so I ran it as one of the three connections up front. For such (Trailer Ground, Trailer power, and brakes), I used a 25' 12 gauge extension cord routed along the passenger frame rail like I did with the CB antenna wiring in another thread. Yeah, it was $30 for said cable1, but for the amount of super flexible copper in a rugged jacket, I figured it was worth it. The brake controller power and ground are also 12 gauge. The brake controller is powered from a 40A auto-reset breaker mounted by the starter solenoid (per the suggested wiring guide I found); the trailer power is on an inline 20A fuse. I don't' think the trailer I'm getting currently needs power, but I don't like incomplete wiring and like to be future proofed.

More pics I took tonight:

Final hitch and trailer connector:

Wiring under the bed:

(That extra wire is the old crossmember ground... I was too lazy to remove it; out of sight, out of mind?)

Another shot of the installed controller:

Under the hood:

Not 100% tied up. Not happy with the extra battery grounds either... but the aux splice was already full (Head unit and CB grounds). And the brake controller ground somehow got extra tugging when setting cable lenghts, and is honestly too short:

Eventually I'll want to find a way to condense all the battery grounds back to 1 connector. But this will do for now at least?