travel trailer

Just bought a new 21FBS north trail. Dry weight is 4923lbs. Does anyone pull one with a 1/2 ton truck? I'm concerned about pulling with a chev 5.3 engine.

Bob, Welcome to the Heartland Family & Forum. You won't have any trouble with a 1/2 ton with the 5.3 engine. I'd suggest making sure you have both engine and transmission oil coolers. Enjoy the Forum and your North Trail.

Welcome to the forum Bob!

You'll need to provide more info on the year make and model for accurate advice, but I'd say yes, we towed with a Toyota Tundra, and we could hardly tell it was there. But apparently, they weigh more than they used to! I checked our old cat scale weight, it was 4770, with advertised dry weigh of 4350, back in 2008.

Welcome to the forums. A wealth of info on here just ask. We have a NT 24-RBS that weighs dry around 5200 lbs. We pull with a 2010 F-150 with the 4.3-L aluminum engine. It pulls just fine. I believe the max on the 5.3 with the towing package is close or over 11,000 lbs. You can check the Ford sight. You are well within your towing range. That's why we got the 24-RBS. It is no where near our max towing capacity. No I did make some upgrades to make sure it would tow easily. I installed Bilsteins shocks on the truck. They are about $100 each. Also installed air bags on the rear to give me the option of leveling the rig if I needed to. Your WD hitch will also give you control over that aspect of towing. The last thing that I did was install shocks on the RBS. They don't come with them but I think it's essential for smoother towing and ride quality. We just came to FL (1200 miles). Had a lot of wind, rain and bumpy off expressway roads. Everything traveled just great. Do a search for my posts and you can read what I've done. If that does not work send me a message and I'll give you the post address. I'm not on my regular computer and out wifi is not to great here.

TeJay

Bob66, why don't you pull the new North Trail down to Spring for our rally on April 20-22nd?

I pulled my NT26LRSS just fine with my F150 4.6 3V supercrew just fine from a stability, towing and braking standpoint, but I thought I was a little underpowered (especially climbing hills) so I moved up to the 6.7 L Diesel. Since yours is a few thousand pounds lighter, I would think it would be fine.

Before the Bighorn and the GMC 3500, we pulled a TT that close to 6000 lbs. loaded with a 2002 5.3L Chevy Avalanche (that's a 1500 series). Other than sucking gasoline at 9 - 10 mpg, it handled the trailer just fine. Once the WDH was set up properly, everything rode level, and the anti-sway bar did it's job.

Weighed our NT 21FBS last summer at a CAT scale fully loaded. 6500lbs-400lbs below the max. Our 6 L Vortec engine just purrs up and down hills. Your engine should work just fine if you have a tow package.

As long as you have a full tow package on your tow vehicle, you'll be fine. We pulled our SOB which was 5000 lbs throughout the Rockies with our Tacoma. We have the full tow package. We did move up in the world and got the NT 22FBS. We love it. Our Tacoma pulls that trailer very well. However, We'll have to move up in the TV world if we want to go into the mountains. Our decision came down to buy a new TV and stick to the SOB we didn't care about or buy a TT that we really liked knowing that our TV could pull the TT to the camping spot we always went to. With only 30 miles round trip to our camping spot, We chose the TT. We feel that it was a great choice.

JohnDar said:

Before the Bighorn and the GMC 3500, we pulled a TT that close to 6000 lbs. loaded with a 2002 5.3L Chevy Avalanche (that's a 1500 series). Other than sucking gasoline at 9 - 10 mpg, it handled the trailer just fine. Once the WDH was set up properly, everything rode level, and the anti-sway bar did it's job.

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Hey John! Would ya believe the Avalanche is the exact same frame/suspension as a Suburban? Yes, still a basic 1/2 ton but with a really nice ride. I heard a while back they were considering a diesel for the Suburban 2500. That would be nice.

Ray LeTourneau said:

Hey John! Would ya believe the Avalanche is the exact same frame/suspension as a Suburban? Yes, still a basic 1/2 ton but with a really nice ride. I heard a while back they were considering a diesel for the Suburban 2500. That would be nice.

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With the upside down price on diesel vs. gasoline, I wonder if it will be a big seller. I really liked that Avalanche, though. It was still in excellent condition when I traded it for the GMC.