Hi everyone I am a sixteen year old that lives in Watertown South Dakota and I will be taking out my families camper to the campground before work. The reason that I am taking it out is because My mom can't back the camper up worth a &$@) and I have to go to work from 4-9. I have a couple of questions for you guys.....

Can my truck pull our camper?
I have a 1994 f250 with a 351 in it. I have the heavy duty rear suspension so i dont think it will be a problem with sqautting. Our camper is a 27' Starcraft by Travelstar. We used to pull it with a 2000 F150 with a triton v8. The camper would make our old truck really squat.

Where can I hook up the safety chains?
I have a luverne 10" drop bumper and it has holes on each side of where the ball goes. I was thinking about getting Some clevises to put the safety chains on.

My bumper is like this but 10" drop

 

your truck will pull the camper fine. and your idea will probably work fine for the chains

 

I dont trust those bumpers. Typically the brackets are weak link

 

Cons:

-trailer of unknown weight
-bumper hitch of unknown rating
-no safety chain attachment points
-young, inexperienced driver
-no mention of trailer brake controller

Just throwing that out there. Would I do it? Perhaps, but I sure wouldn't be in a hurry.

Jason

 

Looking at the luvern bumper website the 10" drop bumper will more than handle it. If it were me I would buy a couple of shackles that fit through the smaller outside holesin the bumper to hook the safety chains through.
Rear Bumpers

The travel trailer (for their 2013 model) has a dry weight of 5475 and a max weight of of 7500.
- Travel Star Travel Trailers - Starcraft

So while your bumper can handle it at max weight you will probably be over gross weight of the truck. One of the other guys that know the max weights off the top of their hed can tell you better

Matt

 

I am not afraid of the bumper brackets breaking because the PO added reinforcements to the brackets.

I am unsure on the weight of the trailer but 7500lbs sounds right. I will look on the side of the camper tomorrow for the dry weight. I looked at runnings today and they have a 5/8" clevises rated at 9000lbs working load limit.

As for the matter of driving expierience I have been driving ever since I was six (I live on a Farm ). I have also been driving the camper to the campground ever since I got my license 14. I also have been parking it since I was 10.

As for breaks the PO installed a trailer break controller and I am unsure on whether or not it works so I will have to test it. The camper has trailer brakes but they have never been used because our old truck did not have a brake controller.

Thank you for all of your help as I don't want to wreck our camper our my truck the first time out camping.

 

a 9k working load is to low for my taste, I work in entertainment rigging and all our working loads are generaly 4x for static hangs, and 8x for motion. If your hitch lets go, and i have seen it happen, you have 7500 pounds applying its full weight @ 55mph comes out to a total force of 11,114 pounds so you need a working load of 12k+ You would need a nominal shackle size of at least 1 inch which is really 3 and 3/4 at the opening with a pin width of 1 11/16ths

 

Make sure the trailer brakes & controller work. Otherwise you'll be fine. I used to tow my family's boat all over MN when I was 16. Weighed a little less but I had a lighter truck and only surge brakes.

Two shackles, 9k load limit EACH, 18k lbs total. The chains would probably break first, or the bumper would rip from the frame. Sure a class III or IV or V would be preferred but I know my Luverne looks more beefy than my class III.

 

I have a Luvern 6" drop bumper on my truck and it's AWESOME.

Biggest load to date (Also the dumbest, but I had no alternatives) was 11,360lbs total weight. Truck was 4,500 of those pounds. The rest was a truck/trailer I hitched onto my bumper. No sag, nothing.

 

Well the way I see it the chains are usually factory supplied with the trailer, if the chain brakes the insurance would have no problem writing it off. But using an underrated shackle they will probably have some issues with it.

the two shackles would give a 24k working load which is still shy for me but you also gotta remember that daily I hang multiple tons of cable, truss, audio, and lighting equiptment over audience so like I said I try to have 8x working loads at minimum and my Rigging insurance requires at least 6x.

 

I was wondering if their was a way to test my trailer brake system. The system I have is a Epoo PowerStop. I has two ***** one says sync control **** and the other says trailer brake. They each have an arrow that says increase. I am thinking that the trailer brake **** is to control how much braking is applied when you push the button. I have now idea on what the sync **** does do any of you?

 

Trailer Brake Controller Information | etrailer.com

The section about time delayed controllers applies to your setup.

The sync **** will shorten or lengthen the delay of full trailer braking power.

The trailer brake **** is exactly what you thought, it sets how much braking power is applied.

Is there also an emergency ****, button or slide switch on the controller? There should be something that'll allow you to manually activate the trailer brakes. What I've always had good luck with, is hooking up the trailer, setting the power to the trailer brakes, and driving slowly on a dirt or gravel surface. Manually activate the trailer brakes only (not the vehicle brakes), and keep adjusting power until the trailer brakes lock up the trailer wheels. Then, you can adjust your delay until it feels right to you.

 

Ya there is a manual button on top When I first got the truck and drove it home it was stuck down and my dad was following me and asked why I had my foot on the brakes for the last mile. I said I didn't and we looked and the button will turn on the trucks brake light. This works great for tailgaters because they see the lights and hit the brakes

 

Makes sense, as the trigger for the brake controller to turn on is a feed from the brake pedal switch. Surprised it didn't drain the battery like that!

 

I'm not sure how you figured the 11,114 pound load. And I'm not sure how anyone should figure the load. If the only thing the safety chains had to do was apply enough force to smoothly stop the trailer, the load would be a lot less than 11,114. I figure** 3821 pounds to stop a 7500 pound trailer in 200 feet or 5096 pounds to stop it in 150 feet. And you get to divide that between both chains.

BUT!!!!! that's not all the chains have to withstand. They also need to take the impact of when the 7500 pound trailer going 55 mph takes hits the 5000 pound truck going 54 mph. Impact loads with chains are way higher than the static loads. I don't know how to calculate what that would be, but it'd take strong attachment points.


** (for other geeks that want to know how I figured:
(55 miles/hour)*(5280 feet/mile)*(1/3600 hours/second)=81 ft/sec

(change in velocity)^2=2a(change in displacement)
(81 ft/sec)^2=2a(200 feet)
a=16.4 ft/sec^2 ("a" is acceleration)

weight=mass * g ("g" is acceleration due to gravity = 32.2 ft/sec^2)
7500 pounds = mass * 32.2 ft/sec^2
mass = 233 slugs (yes, slugs. Slugs are the main reason engineers like the metric system)
Force=mass * acceleration
=233 slugs * 16.4 ft/sec^2
= 3821 pounds