Ford Expedition

Mitch is dead on here.

I had a F150 nearly identical to his except mine was a 2wd. I had a 31 ft TT that weighed about 7000 lbs loaded. I pulled it all over the hills of Tennessee. I was under all my Axle weights but about 50 lbs over GVWR.

I remember going up a 7% grade in second gear. Never into first, truck slowed down, but it was not struggling. It pulled great.

Regretted getting rid of that truck. I "upgraded" to a Dually because we wanted to put a golf cart in the bead and we got a crew cab as a bonus.

I took a lot of time to make sure that the F150 was set up right, and after getting behind the wheel of the dually the change was ... not significant. My F350 had a V10, so the RPM range was about the same for the motor.

If you feel the 5.4 is struggling at 3400-4500 ish rpm's... its not.. its doing its thing. It will run at that RPM all day long.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

Define struggle please.

How big of a trailer are you towing? Are you within your towing parameters?
Performance will suffer as you exceed your parameters.

Yeah. Don't expect it to run uphill like it does on the flats. Even the big trucks, slow down on hills

Depends... What do you mean by 'struggling'? Is it that it downshifts to a lower gear and revs the engine more than you are used to? Say in the 3000-3500 rpm range and you slow down to around 50 mph?

If so, then that's "normal" when you are towing a heavy load up a grade... :)

What you are doing is letting your engine work and it's just running at it's peak levels, which it was designed to do from time to time.

Sure, it's louder and uses more gas, but it's not really 'struggling' IMO.

Now, if it shifts all the way down to first gear and you still can't get up the grade, that's 'struggling' to me.... ;)

Good luck!

Mitch