texasAUtiger wrote:
Tystevens wrote:
allen8106 wrote:
Your truck can do it but it won't be any fun towing. It's going to struggle mightily but it will do the job. I had a 2000 1500 Ram with the gas engine and towed a 32 foot TT from Walcott, IA to Wichita, KS and it was not a fun tow. Your only hope is that the fun stuff between the tows out weighs the not so fun tow.
No offense, but there is quite a difference between a 2000 Dodge w/ probably a 200 hp 4.7 (or maybe a 235 hp 5.9?) and a 4 spd transmission developed in the '80s, and a 380 hp 6 spd 2011 truck.
OP, you'll be just fine. Living in Utah, we tow similar grades/conditions all the time w/ our F150 and around 6500 lbs behind it, and it does the job quite well.
But you should have bought the Ecoboost! (just kidding ...)
Good luck!
Actually, I wish I had. If I recall correctly, this was the year the ecoboost came out and when I was shopping I didn't even know about them nor did the salesman pitch them. (Even if they had, I likely would not have wanted to be a first adopter.)
The next year my father-in-law who works for Caterpillar and their franchise owns and runs a lot of Ford trucks, their office all went with the ecoboost and raved about them.
What kind of speeds to you expect me to get on the bogger grades? (I'm not interested in racing up, just want to know to set a baseline for my expectations.)
Oh well. Maybe next time. Unless I go F250 SuperDuty diesel, that is. But that is an expensive jump up.
Thanks for the info everyone. It is just the type of input I'm looking for.
You will likely be able to go up any grades pretty much as fast as you want or need to. Towing with our '10 Suburban 5.3, I can keep it above 60 mph on virtually every interstate grade I have encountered. There are only a couple that I can't -- for example, the top of Parley's Summit just outside of SLC on I80 kicks up above 7% near the top, and we drop down to about 50 mph for a minute or 2. And the 5.0 in the F150 has 50 more hp along with a good torque advantage over my '10 5.3. So, on paper (I haven't towed w/ a 5.0, obviously), you should be just fine.
On the steeper and twistier back roads, it is the same story -- I can go as fast as I want to or need to. Usually, it is easier to maintain speed on the back roads, because you aren't pushing as much air at higher speeds, and you get the torque multiplication from lower gears. We have towed up to Mirror Lake (10,600 elevation, plenty of 8%+ grades on twisty roads with 20-35 mph rated corners), and the Suburban does just fine.
You just have to let the engine rev. Keep in mind that it makes its power well above 4k rpm. Honestly, that is the only thing that I don't like about towing with the Suburban (as compared to the Ecoboost) -- I'm around 3k rpm most of the time, and in the mountains it is more like 4-5000 rpm. Which tends to grate on me a little bit after a while.
I do love my Ecoboost, since you brought it up. The low rpm power delivery is just awesome for towing, particularly since I became accustomed to towing with a diesel. But the 5.0 should get the job done just fine.
