Rear end ratios 3.21 vs 3.92

Jul 19, 2006 42 Replies

Yeah, we have the Drawtite WD hitch... it was what the dealer that we bought the trailer from stocked and we wanted to keep the costs down..

It was intimidating at first, especially when they warned us about "severe injury probable" if you didn't follow all the steps involved in hitching/unhitching the spring bars... turned out to be a piece of cake after a little practice...

I remember when the finished putting the receiver on the Ram and hooked up the trailer... the back end of the Ram went down over a FOOT and my wife & I freaked! We thought we were going to have to put air bags or something on it..

The guy looked at our faces and laughed.. said he got that expression every time and not to worry.. he jacked the trailer to level, cranked on the WD bars and let it down and the truck was level.. amazing...

We've done several long trips and been through areas with cross winds and such, never a sway... love it!

They told us to start at "three links hanging"... that was how many links were free at the end of each chain on the bars... leveled it right out and handled well...

As we used the trailer more and added more "gotta bring that" stuff, we noticed that the truck bumper was down a little in the back and tried 4 links free... perfect!

That said, I have to do a "if I'd known then" thing:

We had assumed that 5th wheels were for huge trailers and 3/4 or 1 ton trucks... If we had known that there were fivers that were even shorter than our travel trailer and being pulled all the time with 1/2 ton trucks, we would have gone that route... YMWV

Mac

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Thanks, I need to set up my Dakota to tow just under 4K. Will probably go with a WD hitch. Probably marginal, however, if I don't think it will stand up to it I'll trade the truck up to something with more guts.

Frank

Like I said, the bearings are not total crap, just not the best available. Perhaps you got lucky and got a good set. They don't all fail, just an unacceptable number of them do.

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