So I picked up this trailer in the spring. I have 3 kids that play travel soccer, so we spend a lot of time at weekend tournaments. We usually get to park on site, so it also saves time and hotel bills.....not to mention having AC,heat and a nice place to nap or chill out. The door tag said it was somewhere in the 5000lb range. I assumed it was a little more, so I was thinking I would gross somewhere between 12k-13k lbs. I finally stopped by the local scrap yard scale on my way out last weekend. Can in as 14,125lbs gross. My van is 6200lbs with a full tank of fuel and me in it. I had the whole family with me and a full water tank. Van is a 7.3 NA with 3.54s and a c6. Overall it handles the load well around here. I can usually stay in the 60-65mph range, but not much more. I think my vans owners manual says I am a bit overweight for my combination. Says 14k with 4.10s and something like 12.5k with 3.54s. Hoping to get the turbo kit that is sitting in my garage installed for next season.....then it will be time to go attack some real mountains to see how the setup does.


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That's great!

My dad owns an RV that is about the same size. I've thought it would be cool to borrow it and try to tow it with my IDI.

 

 

Your van will be fine with that load. When my IDI was NA, I once hauled 4200 lbs of veggie oil in the back, with probably 1000 lbs of tools, gear, spare parts, camera equipment, and whatnot. And two guys at about 200lbs each. It went to Prudhoe Bay and back without any frame/suspension/gearing problems. These vans can handle a lot. Me hauling 5600 lbs in the van isn't exactly the same as hauling your trailer, but it goes to show you can push it.

The turbo will help you with keeping higher speeds, passing, accelerating, and hauling up grades, but the bottleneck is the frame and suspension. Just make sure your Rust Belt roads don't degrade the frame and trailer mounts on that van. Undercoating might be prudent if you plan to use this trailer a lot more.

 

 

I once put a post up on here detailing my fuel mileage while I was hauling with my IDI. My old 6.9 with a C6 and 4.1 gears scaled at 13k, which is about 6k for the truck and 7k for the trailer I was pulling. I was able to do 65 without issue for 1,500 miles of road between Missouri and Montana until I hit the really tall passes. Then I was doing 35 up two of them. With a Turbo and what not I probably could have held 65, but elevations kills NA motors so bad.

 

Recently, when I've headed up to a decent elevation ( > 5000ft), I've pulled over to adjust the fuel screw down a flat and adjust the IP timing to make my EGT's a little lesser and keep the performance decent.

 

What a nice rig! This would not be street legal here in Germany.

 

How bad were your EGT effected by the elevation. I figured you would have more smoke at the same throttle position because the air has less oxygen to burn the fuel with. Would it accomplish the same this as turning down the fuel if you just reduced your throttle input? How much timing did you have to adjust?

Just curious more than anything....

 

The trailer, or the van? Due to weight or length?

 

On the latest trip with my latest rebuild, I got up to around 6000 ft and it was running fine. Some higher EGT's up some decent grades, but I could keep it around 60mph fully loaded keeping it under 1100 deg F. I stayed at a hotel around 6500 ft in the rockies, and I turned the IP down a flat or 1.5 flats. I can't remember. Then we went to Rocky Mtn Natl Park, which goes up to 12,000 ft. I had no smoke with the turned down pump up to about 10,000 ft, but after that, things got weird. Up around 12,000 ft, I got some decent EGT's and black smoke when I'd started from a stop. But once I got up to some decent RPM's, the smoke cleared. maybe a puff limiter would fix that, but I jsut don't want to invest in that yet.

The really weird thing at 12,000 ft was the vac pump gauge. My vac pressure raised up to 12-14 in-hg, which is about limit of what it needs to be to allow the C6 to shift and have brake assist. I drove down from 12,000 ft to the suburbs of Denver (at 5,000 ft) in about 3-hours time, and the vac gauge dipped back down to it's usual 20-some in-hg.

Overall, I'm glad I turned down the pump once I got up around 6,000 ft elevation. I think it would have coal-rolled a lot over 8000 ft.

 

that was with my 250 truck was 6400

 

The trailer.... You may tow max 3.5 tons gross here. Above that you would need an air brake in Van and trailer.

Max rig length is something around 17 m here, I think.

My envy is with you. I would like to have your possibilities.