A good driver doesn't need breaks and it makes things interesting especially in stop and go traffic or at stop light.

you have to change your driving habits when towing, it best to pretend you don't have breaks, even good breaks fail.

 

Jay, I am commercial with FF/tanker endorsement and pull 14k on a bumper pull with juice brakes (dozer) if you feel my advice is not relevant, that is your prerogative.

 

I agreed with you. Towing safely is all about being able to control the load....mainly stop it quickly snd safely. Do you have any recommendations on what I should add to the van to make it do this?

The setup I will be using have a correctly rated frame mount hitch, anti-sway, weight distribution and a brake controller. The van has up to date maintinance along with a large trans cooler and gauges to monitor coolant, egt and trans. Brakes will have new rotors, calipers, soft lines, pads and fluid. Is there a specific type of pad you recommend? Napa has a specific HD pad listed for heavy duty use?

 

Besides the setup it is also about having safe driving habits. Awake/alert, looking far enough ahead to anticipate issues, greater following distances, brake controller adjusted correctly for terrain etc.

 

The really scary things towing big are brakes and sway. Balancing load properly helps a lot with sway, as do properly inflated rear tires- heavier duty tires fight sway quite a bit. If you are going to be hauling a lot, switching to polyurethane spring bushings helps a bit as well.

Anti sway devices help a lot, but are pricey. Same with weight distributing hitches. I don't use either of them. I do run big rig rubber ("H" 265/70r195's) on the pickup truck though, and it helps a LOT with handling when hauling a load in the bed or pulling a trailer. But they rattle fillings out going fast on bad roads.

One last issue to be wary of is lack of low range and automatic. Very steep inclines may stall you out. Just something to be cautious of. I haven't had it happen to me because my rigs are 4x so I just go to low range. But I have a buddy who have smoked a clutch trying to get up a boat ramp, and another buddy who smoked an auto in a similar situation.

8k isn't gigantic, I'd do it. But it's a stout load, and I'd try and be nice to the auto. The cooler is great, gauges even better.

One other thing that helps with braking is to apply then drift, then apply. This allows air to flow onto the hottest contact surfaces on the brakes to keep temps under control on long downhills. This issue pertains less to lighter vehicles due to the effectiveness of discs to stay cool during application, but still is valid and will really help keep the rear drums and trailer brakes cool.

My first comment was sort of fueled by surprise. Brakes IMO are the #1 thing to be worried about in a roadworthy but heavy trailer pull. In regions with flat land brakes are less of an issue. Where I live, smoking your brakes on a hill is a death sentence- mountains.

I wouldn't bother with fancy shoes/pads. They make virtually no difference in performance. Theoretically some will "gas" at higher temps, but driving by brake smoke is bad news to begin with. I like to run cheaper pads because they usually are "softer" and thus do less wear on rotors. Going larger diameter on brakes helps a LOT but it's also expensive on most vehicles. I went larger diameter on my main tow vehicle and it was a lot of WOW. But it had *terrible* brakes from the factory.

I'm gonna venture that you aren't just pulling something across town, but intend to haul this regularly, so something to consider is the trailer brakes themselves.

Some trailers have brakes only on one axle, some have both. It's not particularly hard to add brakes to the second axle, but there is a benefit to not doing so: Control. If you lock up one axle, you still have control. If you lock up both, wow, not cool. Where this is likely to pop up is on snow/ice or when you transition from highway to dirt road. Having the trailer try and trade ends is no fun. I do like brakes on both axles, but it is worthy of caution. e-trailer.com is where I get my trailer parts. Very competitive.

 

Not knocking ya guy, but i think youre getting a little carried away with the whole brake thing. Hes talking 8k not 80. I have 10-20k behind me pretty often and my trailer brakes arent hooked up. Granted few things to consider like, i know the road extremely well, manual, and i dont have to go that far. However there is one hell of a grade around here. But even grossing 20k in 4th requires only very little braking to maintain speed if any on a 6%.

 

It wouldn't have surprised me -- I never noticed any issues until I was cruising down a hill with a trailer on and (fortunately) a relatively light load(Note: Manual, clutch in/in neutral, idling). I was doing the push-release-push-release thing every few seconds and got about halfway down and my pedal became hard. Scared me quite a bit. Gave it a few seconds and it came back... but that lost my faith.
I have no doubt that if I'd had the RPMs up and left it in gear, the pump would probably have kept up, but...
Anyway, at that point, faced with hauling the same trailer and a load over the mountains a couple of months later, I decided I *needed* to fix it. And why replace it with the same crummy system when you can go hydroboost?
Now, I can lock up all four tires if I want, with a single foot and just a bit of force(i.e. it feels like my mom's 02 F350), and I can use it as much as I want, at idle. More importantly, there's a nice even gradient between 0 brakes and *all tires locked up*. I've driven several of these trucks, and all of them have good response from 0 to 'normally slowing down', but sort of lose assist between that and "oh ****" breaking, meaning you don't think it's slowing down fast enough and really reef on things.

With my setup(hacked hydroboost from an '03, everything else more or less stock), I get everything except for the front-hunching. But then again, I've not considered it worth it to try to replace a rear axle, especially not to a more-expensive one with differing wheel bolt patterns.

 

I was tempted to mention hydroboost. For towing it doesn't help with heat management but there is another advantage in reliability: you aren't relying on a belt driving another belt to make your assist.

One thing I'll point out though is that with hydroboost if you have a hydraulic failure you lose steering AND brakes at the same time. This has happened to me three times over the years. Once from spitting a sector shaft seal on the steering box, twice from the pressure relief on the PS pump hanging up on debris (I'll spare the AGR garbage rant). This type of failure is quite rare though. I got "lucky". The most realistic issue with hydroboost is loose PS belt. My primary tow vehicle has gear drive to the PS pump (yay!) so I'll never have that one.

"I pull 20k with no trailer brakes" Glad it works for you, I wouldn't advise a stranger to try it though. ***No such thing as brakes too good***. OP specifically asked me, I gave the best advice I could short of mentioning hydroboost.

Steep grades aren't too bad as long as they aren't met with hairpins at the bottom. Maintaining 60 on a 10% is one thing. Getting down to 30 on a 10% to make a hairpin at the bottom is a whole different story. And the latter is the story for most mountain road driving IME. Keep in mind, Kansas is different than Colorado. Kansas heavy tow rule bending in Colorado mountains will get someone killed.

IDI's are good at bleeding off speed due to thermal inefficiencies (combustion chamber) and high compression, but a lot of that is lost when ahead of an automatic. Even more so when the auto has a non-lockup torque converter.

 

Thanks for the advice. I agree about having good brakes. It is possible to successfully tow without the trailer brakes, but it gives you a lot less margin for error. Since the consequences could be pretty big I would prefer to have them and not need them rather than need them and not have them.

I will be pulling a TT in a 75 mile radius 2-4 times a month and then 1-2 longer trips (Indiana to Texas,Florida etc) a year. Gonna avoid any snow covered times though.

 

Ah, I was tempted to ask, but suspected something like that. Nice thing about a TT is that it's already factory balanced! I assumed since your prep for it was somewhat extensive that it wasn't just to haul a tractor across town.

Using trailer brakes keeps the service brakes on the truck cooler giving you more margin for a panic stop. All the careful planning and conservative driving goes out the window when some fool on the road places more faith in your brakes than is merited. Having said that it's nice to do a *safe* test of stopping without trailer brakes to get a feel for it.

Sounds like you will know your route most the time. That's a big plus. Where I live, one of the routes I run (CA253) I can't stay off the service brakes even with an empty trailer. And that's with a six speed stick and a full closure exhaust brake. A bunch of the stretches are 12% followed by 15-25mph hairpins at the bottom. This is the kind of thing I'd plan for on unfamiliar roads. I've seen some *pretty spectacular* commercial truck rollovers on this particular road.

I do agree that 8k isn't huge as other posters have suggested. But I perceive 8k behind an auto differently than 8k behind a stick due to engine braking. I think 10k is about the limit for what I'd pull behind my Ford pickup except in a pinch, and 8k would be the limit if I had a van with an auto- but I don't have a van with an auto, so I may be off base on that one.

 

Pssst, hey guys......


rolling coal

 

I found that braking style can do alot to help with fade. While I haven't experienced it towing, I have experienced it at track events. Braking hard in short bursts maintains brake function a lot better than braking lighter for longer periods. Gives more time to dissipate the heat.