Good and Bad about Blue Ox Sway Pro

Rescue16 wrote:

I have a short bed truck with a ARE Deluxe Walkin Cap which does away with the tailgate on the truck but the ARE Cap weighs almost 450 lbs and a Carry probably 600lbs of gear in the back of the truck when towing

Rides a little rough is kind of hard to explain. I towed a 6K TT no weight dis or sway control for the dealer on a 25 mile trip on the highway and did not even know the RV was back there it was a smooth ride the same road with my trailer you could feel every bump and the front end of the truck almost seemed like it was bouncing somewhat. Will try and answer the rest of the questions in a couple of weeks although it is going to take a while for me to get to scales. Thanks for any input or thoughts

Hi Rescue,

I see some things in your post now that point to a possible setup issue that I too found with my F350.

The next time you hitch up the camper and ready to roll, look at the rear helper springs (overloads). When I first started towing with this truck I set the WD to return the front end to come back to unhitched height & weight. At this time my camper only had a 1,200# loaded TW as that was all my prior 2500 Suburban could handle. The F350 did not ride well in this configuration. Here I have 1.5 times the truck, more wheel base, lots of extra axle capacity and the Burb towed smoother than the F350. It felt like the back of the truck was wandering up and down left to right.

I towed with it for a short while this way until I ran into a few things unique to this truck rear suspension. I added more bed weight and loaded the camper more so my TW was now up towards 1,400# with about 500# in the truck bed.

Then I tweaked the WD to lighten up just a little on the front end. This allowed the back of the truck to just kiss rear helper springs. OMG... there was a global shift in left to right stability. Like a different truck. The truck was now stable left to right. The rear helper springs are acting like a roll bar. Those 1 ton springs way high up in the suspension are, well soft and soggy. They allow the heavy TW camper to rock the truck.

Now I have even more TW and a little more stuff in the bed, still kissing only on the top rear helper spring and she rides even better. My front end is about 100# lighter than unhitched.

Here is the front spring, no where near the frame bracket yet


Here is the rear one, kissing it.


In my case I knew my weights so I knew the actual TW and front and rear axle weights so I could figure out what was going on.

When you get your weights, make sure you get all 3 set, all axle by axle.

1. TV & TT hitched with WD engaged.

2. Don't move the truck, drop the tongue jack, drop the WD bars, left the jack down and let the raw tongue hang on the ball. Take a weight.

3. Hitch up the WD bars, drive off, drop the TT and drive just the truck on.

Again, the front and rear truck axle will have their own separate scale, and both TT axles will be on one scale. This is a 3 segment truck scale. like this


From those 3 sets of weights you can sort out where you are at and your loaded TW. Just make sure you have all your stuff in the camper and truck and a full tank of fuel.

You can then check your WD bars are sized right and how the truck is adjusted. Also look at the helper springs.

Hope this helps and good luck

John