2003 lance 1171 and 2017 Srw f350 am I asking for trouble?

Taphillip wrote:
I’m looking for real world experience. I just bought a 2017 srw 6.7 F350 diesel. A local guy has a 2003 lance 1171 with one slide I would like to buy. It’s 3700 lb dry weight.

If it’s not glaringly obvious, I’ve never owned a truck camper. I keep finding conflicting info. The guy with the camper has used a 2008 6.4 diesel F350 to haul this camper. He has airbags, frame mounted tie downs etc. he says it can easily handle the load.

My new truck is rated 11500 gvwr. I weighed it at a DOT scale at 8380lbs.
The sticker inside my door panel says 3296lbs as max passenger and cargo load.

Am I asking for more trouble than it’s worth, especially if I’d like to tow a trailer with a couple four wheelers on it? The ford dealer told me I didn’t need a duelly but now I’m wondering.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Cheers!
Terry

I would ask him to take his pickup and camper for a ride so you get an idea on how the camper rides.At the very least,ask him to take you for a ride in his truck and camper..That will tell you alot knowing the modifications he has done to make it ride that way.Then you atleast have an idea how it would ride on your truck with mods.

Seeing semi-trucks on autobahns doing 130 mph, I think the issue is not the weight, but vehicle design.
I drove several luxury DP and lot of them had brakes working "let's push it and see what happen".
It took Prevost with DD3 system (drums not rotors) where I was confident to stop "on a dime" regardless over 16 tons of weight.
I hope never to test it, but I think on my F350 brakes are way stronger than camper ties.
But real issue is how the combo would handle emergency avoiding maneuver.

What Jaycocreek said!
Throwing the blatantly irresponsible aside (like an 1171 on a half ton), a person's knowledge, abilities and comfort level come into play as much as the OE ratings.
OEMs are required to tailor to the least common denominator for liability reasons. Think "don't use in shower" stickers on hair dryers and the "you'll cut your hand off" stickers on lawn mowers.
For someone with limited knowledge, they will generally be safe staying within mfgs published ratings.

Having haules steel for years over the road and being stupid heavy on occassion (and avoiding the scales). I know what happens when you are heavy. Your ability to stop quickly becomes a fantasy and you'd better anticipate every stop well in advance. Having said that, there is always the chance someone pulls in front of you or the little old lady jaywalks in front of you and your chance of stopping in both instance is also a fantasy.

I prefer to be loaded at less than my truck's designed capacity just foe thbose events.

You can never control what another person does that may impact you in a negative manner. I sure as heck don't want to cream an old lady or smash into another vehicle because I was unable to stop because I exceeded the limits of my brakes and/or be unable to avoid a person or vehicle through an evasive manuver because my camper would put me on it's side.

Not me. I like to err on the side of safety, especially knowing first hand what being oveloaded entails as far as stopping in a safe distance.

I had a lot more braking power available than a 2 axle pickup truck. I had brakes on every axle, big brakes and I typically ran a truck with 11 axles x 2 brakes on each axle. Thats 22 sets of brakes and when heavy, that wasn't enough.

My philosophy is, why push the limits in the first place?

Everything may be hunky-dory in 90% of the situations encountered but that 10% that can happen is the deciding factor for me.

I couldn't agree more except what are the limits?..So many have been and are over the published limits of the truck yet get by just fine or some go by the actual manufacturer axle limits,which differ from the trucks GAWR and some go by tires...If I was a newbie,I would be all sorts of confused by what I read on the internet.

That particular camper the opp posted about in this thread is one heavy camper..If you go by the truck limits,it is way to heavy for my dually and I have 4600 pounds of payload,infact I'm getting close to my truck advertised limit with a 9.6 non-slide Lance camper after adding all the stuff I take.

I think we all have our personal limits from the experiences we have had with truck campers..Some are okay with being over and how the truck handles,others are bothered by sway and that top heavy feeling and others just do it..

In the old days not a person I new went by any manufacturer numbers and most if not all, didn't even know them,they just did it and drove accordingly.I did the same..

Here is an old very heavy homemade camper on an old step side pickup pulling two horses with hay stacked on the roof with six kids(two not shown) and two dogs on one of are hunting trips.The guy worked for my dad and was a very good carpenter.He carried that camper on that old truck pulling two full grown palominos all there tack and extra hay on the roof all over Idaho's backcountry without an issue except flat tires(laughing)..I don't remember the truck specifics.



My personal belief is...Whatever your comfortable with,within reason..Not what others think..Alot of common sense is needed in truck campers and the truck they ride on.If your going way heavy then your the one that has to pay the piper with the disadvantages..

Just my opinion.

Buzzcut1 wrote:
Actually in the case with the stock tires the real world capacity is the tire rating x2 minus weight of the unladen trucks cat scale rear axle number which is going to be less than the axle rating minus the truck weight. Don't overload the tires and wheels.

The tires on my 9900 lb axle are good for 11,840lb and I've never heard about Ford putting undersized tires on their axles.

jaycocreek wrote:

For years I had a Lance myself. I always hauled it on my vintage 1997 F350 4x4 diesel long bed. It was a 915 with no slide and it was heavy. Sticker said (Lance lies like a good politician) 2950 camper weight. It actually weighed 3500 empty (water and propane). Was I heavy, sure was and I knew it in every curve and every stop sign and traffic light. Loaded up with all out stuff, food, clothes, lawn chairs, fishing poles, coleman lantern and everything my wife likes including all her pots and pans, I bet I was pushing 4500-5000 pounds and thats no slide.

I have basically, the same camper(Lance 480/9.6ft)..The sticker on mine is like 2700? and loaded ready to camp completely full of everything with the wheel wells full of extra batteries and tools,it weighs in at roughly 3700 pounds.I run it on a '94 F-350 DRW..Rides like a champ with none of the sway that pickup campers give on most of the SRW units I have had them on.

I am split for an opinion for the opp..Years ago my buddies dad had a 10ft camper on his 1966 Chevy 1500 light duty truck.He used to borrow the truck and we would cruse around. It felt like it was going to tip over on every corner..I just new my friend would role that combo sooner or later being a young dumb kid..He never did..He never broke an axle/wheel bearings/shocks or anything to my surprise and his dad took it on some nasty roads camping..Infact,Myself personally,I have never seen any pickup suffer axle/wheel bearing/springs or shock failure due to carrying a truck camper and I have had and seen some Darwin candidates for it.

So from that experience and some others,I think the opp would be okay with that setup for the most part..Like I said,I am split in my thinking on it.

We all buy truck campers for different reasons..I bought a dually,not for carrying a huge heavy TC, but for stability on the windy mountain roads I travel and to pull a trailer full of whatever I take for a lengthy stay.

My philosophy is, why push the limits in the first place?

Everything may be hunky-dory in 90% of the situations encountered but that 10% that can happen is the deciding factor for me.

I hauled my Lance all over the countryside, oblivious to the fact that I was inherently heavy but in the end (at 75K miles) I had to completely rebrake the truck, I mean everything, rotors, calipers, shoes (I have drums on the back), wheel cylinders hardware pads, everything was shot and I maintain my truck very carefully and very regularly and I do it myself. That includes draining and refilling the differentials every year too.

I'm not hard on brakes, I usually go 100K on brakes but at 75, they were gone plus I had to do the upper and lower ball joints on the front Dana 60, which I attribute to the added weight of the camper more than anything else. Almost forgot, all new universal joints and carrier bearing too.

I don't anticipate that change interval with my new camper because it's not nearly as heavy as the Lance was. In fact my new camper's loaded weight (everything on board) is about what the Lance weighed EMPTY.

I also expect better tire wear as the tires aren't loaded as heavy and tires wear faster carrying a heavy load.

To my wife and I, it's a camper for camping, not a room at the Sheraton and we don't have to impress anyone with our fancy-dan camper but ourselves and in our case, what we have now suits us to a tee.

If I want a king sized bed and all sorts of luxury stuff, I'll go rent a room at the Holiday Inn, heck of a lot cheaper and my wife don't have to make the bed or clean the commode either.

My view of camping, maybe not yours but then I don't sleep with any of you, I sleep with my wife...

Grit dog wrote:

Kayteg1 wrote:
My dually has rear axle rated at 9900lb, so don't know about srw having 10k.

The old Sterling 10.5 axle is rated at 9750lbs. I know Ford made some changes on the ‘17-up trucks but I cannot imagine they equipped them with weaker axles, so yeah 10klb is about right for a srw axle.

There is a difference between the axle manufacturer's capacity rating, and the truck manufacturer's RAWR.

The DRW axle itself is probably rated for 12,000lbs or 14,000lbs, but the truck manufacturer only give the truck a 9900lb RAWR.

For years I had a Lance myself. I always hauled it on my vintage 1997 F350 4x4 diesel long bed. It was a 915 with no slide and it was heavy. Sticker said (Lance lies like a good politician) 2950 camper weight. It actually weighed 3500 empty (water and propane). Was I heavy, sure was and I knew it in every curve and every stop sign and traffic light. Loaded up with all out stuff, food, clothes, lawn chairs, fishing poles, coleman lantern and everything my wife likes including all her pots and pans, I bet I was pushing 4500-5000 pounds and thats no slide.

I have basically, the same camper(Lance 480/9.6ft)..The sticker on mine is like 2700? and loaded ready to camp completely full of everything with the wheel wells full of extra batteries and tools,it weighs in at roughly 3700 pounds.I run it on a '94 F-350 DRW..Rides like a champ with none of the sway that pickup campers give on most of the SRW units I have had them on.

I am split for an opinion for the opp..Years ago my buddies dad had a 10ft camper on his 1966 Chevy 1500 light duty truck.He used to borrow the truck and we would cruse around. It felt like it was going to tip over on every corner..I just new my friend would role that combo sooner or later being a young dumb kid..He never did..He never broke an axle/wheel bearings/shocks or anything to my surprise and his dad took it on some nasty roads camping..Infact,Myself personally,I have never seen any pickup suffer axle/wheel bearing/springs or shock failure due to carrying a truck camper and I have had and seen some Darwin candidates for it.

So from that experience and some others,I think the opp would be okay with that setup for the most part..Like I said,I am split in my thinking on it.

We all buy truck campers for different reasons..I bought a dually,not for carrying a huge heavy TC, but for stability on the windy mountain roads I travel and to pull a trailer full of whatever I take for a lengthy stay.

Actually in the case with the stock tires the real world capacity is the tire rating x2 minus weight of the unladen trucks cat scale rear axle number which is going to be less than the axle rating minus the truck weight. Don't overload the tires and wheels.