clamon4

I pull a 27' Bunk house trailer 2 or 3 times a month up into the mountains. Trailer is roughly 6500lbs loaded with tongue weight of 600. The problem is when I am hooked up the truck sags almost 4 inches. It almost looks like my leaf springs are parallel to the ground. I am running a weight distribution hitch but it doesn't help much. I have tried to adjust the hitch via ball height and bar height. Truck supposedly came with the heavy duty tow package but I don't think so since there are only 3 leafs in the spring pack.

So the question is with will help level out my rear end, AAL or a set of Airbags.

2011 Lariat, 5.0 Screw with 3.55 gears

BRUTE448

id do air bags personally. but i can almost deff. say ur truck dosent have HD package as it has a 3.55 rear.. dose it have hte 7-lug wheels? theres no max-tow 5.0's but there is HD <max payload package but i think those only come w/ 3.73 lim. slip rears. Ill be geting air bags after level when that time comes

Buck50HD

Even F250's only have 3 springs but the F150HD has 4. Doesn't mean it's stiffer but that is one way to identify it. I'd vote for air bags. I have them on my 250 now and it's nice being able to go back to stock ride. Plus, they are adjustable to any load.

On second thought, if you are sacked out that much, you are likely overloaded and may want to check it on a scale.

clamon4

I am leaning towards the bags. I was worried about being overloaded so I made sure and weight myself coming home from the holiday weekend camping trip. Scale total was just over 11k lbs. I don't have the actual break down with me. Funny thing was my 2008 chevy avalanche with 5.3 never sagged with the same trailer. I am figuring 6-700$ for the bags, compressor and the rest.

brulaz

Surprised your WDH doesn't do more. What size tension arms does it have? Common sizes are 600#, 800#, 1000#, ...

And I wonder if the tongue weight is really just 600#. A 4" drop with only 600# seems like a lot. And 600# doesn't seem like a lot for a 6500# trailer. Most people recommend about 12% of trailer weight on the tongue.

smurfs_of_war

I will be the odd man out and say add a leaf. I had the procomp AAL and was completely satisfied. Rides stiffer for sure but it's always there and no worries about lines, compressors, fittings etc. Been through 3 sets of bags now that continuously get destroyed on gravel and I got fed up with it. I'm probably one of the few that likes a stiff rigid ride though.

93Cobra#2771

iTrader: (2)

First, your WDH needs to be correctly adjusted. No way should it sag that much.

Rv.net, go to the travel trailer forum, and look at the sticky on how to set up a WDH properly.

I prefer airbags due to adjustability.

Boulevard

I'd check the WDH first. I had the same thing happen and it turns out the spring arms were just wore out much like sagging springs on a car. After that I would and have gone with the add-a-leaf because they also help to control spring wind up. I use long leaf kits instead of the short ones because they seem to handle the wind up better than the short ones.

Team Canada

I had the same problem when I first started using a WDH, but I was incorrectly pulling up the trailer stand completely before attaching the spring bars.

Do you lower the trailer until it is just sitting fully on the ball, attach the springs and tighten down, then pull up the stand completely? It shouldn't sag hardly at all if you do it this way. Or your spring bars might be bending too much, maybe try another set of bars if you can.

clamon4

I have 1200 spring bars and 12k EZ hitch by Fastway. The hitch/bars is just over a year old. I am going to try adjusting the angle of the ball and the bar height some more to see if that helps. Still planning on the airbags just trying to prolong the inevitable. team Canada, I have never tried to attach the bars with the weight on ball, always took the weight off the truck first, will try this as well.