1oldtimer

Hi All,
I just bought a 2011 25' TT that weighs in at 5940lbs dry with a hitch weight of 940. My F150 XLT has the tow pkg, but I added the Ford TBC. The hitch says 500/5000 and with WD ???/10,500. The sticker on the door I believe says 7500 lbs but the Ford sheet online says 7800 lbs.
I am curious as to how important it would be to have a WD hitch if I am not going to be pulling the TT up and down the road offten. Maybe 2-3 times a year at best and nothing major as far as milage. maybe 100 miles or so. I plan on keeping it at our timeshare like we have our smaller one. Any insight here would be very helpful and I thank you in advance for your thoughts and opinions.
Frank

blueovelboy

any time you tow over half of your trucks weight you need to use a w/d HITCH. and you sir are towing close to the same weight if not more than your truck

Adobe2X

Why would you NOT want to have a properly set up WDH when you tow? They only take a couple of minutes each time to fasten and adjust....

ClaySlayer

not sure about that...that wouldn't be much weight at all...

ClaySlayer

Basically, what that means is that you can tow up to 500/5,000 without w/d and anything above that to the limit in your manual would need to have w/d. I would think it would be especially important with TTs as they are usually more tongue heavy than say a boat would be. The door sticker usually just says what the max weight of the truck can be.

jonbar87

Not exactly. You don't "need" to use one...they help, but aren't mandatory.

zx12-iowa

You quote a dry weight. What is loaded weight? What is the height of trailer. Those will factor in benefits of a wd. How far you pulling and in what conditions? If I was pulling it a couple hundred miles a couple times a year I would NOT use a wd hitch but that's just me.

1oldtimer

What really sucks about all this is the fact that I drove TT for 20 years and know and knew exactly what I had to do to distribute the weight. I also knew what I could get away with; safely. But this whole wd hitch thing for some reason is kicking my arss. Maybe Im just reading to much into it. IDK?????

KR Kodi

iTrader: (1)

I bet your trailer wet and loaded will be up toward 7500 lbs.

I think you're confusing some specs. I suspect that 7800 number is the max loaded trailer weight for your truck in the "sales"brochure, but I suspect you won't be able to get close to that weight.

I don't think there were any 2011 trucks with a 7500 lb GVWR - I suspect your GVWR is 7200 lbs. Look on your driver's side door for TWO weights. There are two stickers - one with your truck's GVWR, and the other (the "tire pressure" sticker) has your payload capacity.

1. What is your GVWR?
   
2. What is your payload capacity?

After you know those weights, then you can start to figure out how heavy of a trailer your truck can tow.

First of all, the payload capacity is with nothing in your truck except for a full tank of gas - if you have added a bed liner, tonneau, or anything else that remains on the truck permanently, subtract those weights from the payload capacity on your sticker.

Then figure out who and what will be in the truck when you're towing. If it's say two normal size people and a couple hundred lbs of luggage and stuff in the cab and bed, let's say a total of 550 lbs.

If your payload capacity published on your door sticker is say 1450 lbs, subtract that 550 lbs and you have 900 lbs remaining to handle a WDH and the tongue weight of your trailer.

As you mentioned, the hitch is rated at max weights WITHOUT a WDH of a 500 lb tongue weight/max trailer weight of 5000 lbs, and WITH a WDH OF 1050/10,500.

So....any trailer more than 5000 lbs will definitely require a WDH.

In the example above we came up with 900 lbs of payload remaining after you load the truck with people and cargo in the cab and bed.

Your WDH will weigh about 100 lbs, so that leaves 800 lbs for the tongue weight of your loaded trailer.

The tongue weight should be 10% to 15% of the loaded trailer weight, with a recommended minimum of 12%, and that will limit you an absolute max loaded trailer weight of 8000 lbs, and a more realistic max of around 6500 lbs.

However....another weight limit you need to comply with is the GCWR (the "C" meaning Combined) of the combination of your truck and trailer.

Take a look at the 2011 f150 brochure, and in the last few pages are a bunch of specs:

http://www.ford.com/services/assets/...-150&year=2011


You can find your truck's GCWR in there, and I believe it's probably 13,500.

If so, and you've got your truck loaded to its GVWR of 7200 lbs, then subtract the truck's 7200 lbs from the GCWR and you get a max loaded trailer weight that you can pull of 6300 lbs.

Bottom line.....I suspect your truck will be limited to pulling about a max trailer weight of 6300 lbs, and you will definitely need a WDH to remain within the truck's published limits.

Butt....the truck WILL pull a heavy trailer, and like you say you're not going cross-country, so if it's just towing 100 miles a couple times a year - well, you can decide if you want to pull a little overweight or not.

.

Razorback150

Everyone seems to be making this way too complicated. If you are only towing this thing 2-3 times a year for a hundred miles or so...just hook it up and go. You'll be fine.