AF990 on F350 CC SRW

mkirsch wrote:
If you're seeing "a lot" of them then it must be okay, right? Why not just go ahead and do it?

You really seem bent on talking yourself into moving forward with your plan, so here's my encouragement: Go for it.

Everybody's different and you won't know how you will feel about this until you experience it for yourself. There are some absolute crazies out there that will throw a 4000lb camper into a stock F250, hit the road, and think it handles like a Lamborghini. Then there are some who put a 1600lb popup in a DRW F350 with 19.5's and all the suspension mods, and think it's going to tip over on them doing 25MPH on a dead level road. Then there are all the ones in between.

The reality is it will be more uncomfortable than dangerous unless you do something really stupid.

No, I'm just trying to understand what the deal is.

I started out working on cars, became a mechanic, built my own race cars but eventually left that world (cubic inches don't win races, cubic dollars do). Point being that I learned long ago that a car is a sum of it's parts and what the manufacturer tells you isn't always correct. Legal Beagles often determine what will be said about a product, more than engineers.

For example, an engineer might spec out an axle for 10000lbs with wheels and tires to match and the legal beagles might say "whoa there, not gonna put that on this thing because someone is going to load it right to the max, break and then sue us, mark it down 20% and we'll be good".

Who knows really? What I do know is that sometimes things are just fine and sometimes they are not. I've been told by several people who run SRW's with various mods that their trucks run great with no problems (fast lane changes are flat and fine).

Strictly speaking they are over GVRW but that doesn't actually mean they aren't safe.

After all, the government and businesses all do things to make you spend more money. For example, go to your pantry and check the 'best by' dates on your canned foods. Bet they are all within the next year or so....reality? They will be fine 40 years from now. No way in hell are they going to tell you that though! Most state governments say it's unhealthy to drink raw cows milk, it's even a felony to bring it across state lines. Doesn't matter that man drank it for eons before learning how to pasteurize. Sure some people got sick, but then people get sick from government approved food manufacturers all the time these days.

My point being that stickers are not always absolutes. Am I going to put a 990 on an SRW F350? Yes. Will I find it safe? No idea. I will tell you that if I find it doesn't handle well with that load I'll trade up to a DRW, I've considered it already, but I keep hearing from others with SRW's that they have no issue hauling it on theirs.