Battle of the heavy weights

Hannibal wrote:

The Mad Norsky wrote:

Hannibal wrote:
I don't care about who's fastest up the grade either. Obviously! However, what the test did show is that all three ran balls out towing 20k lbs up the grade with no failures or hiccups. That is the criteria I'm interested in. All three proved very capable.

BUT, (a big one :B ) here's my point. I personally would hope that I never end up with any of those trucks used in the commercial.

They've been abused, albeit possibly short term, but abused nevertheless.

Its always been mentioned on here, when giving advice for folks doing some towing over, say I-70 west of Denver, to NOT try and be fastest up the hill because one does NOT want their EGT's to go too high, or over 1200 degrees I believe.

Can one imagine what the EGT's were on those three vehicles???? Turbo boosting to the max and running flat out as hard as they could go?????

They had to be getting very, I mean VERY very warm.

EGT = exhaust gas temperature.

Any truck that can't pull a grade WOT without overheating anything needs to go back to the drawing board. Every truck I've owned over the past 25 years has seen extended WOT without any ill affects. Way back in '84, my Isuzu P'up diesel saw high rpm WOT from Virginia to Sarasota towing a box U-Haul trailer. Not even a hint of trouble. Your fear of using a truck's full potential isn't an engine weakness. Those trucks are fine. If not, they're flawed.

Agree with you with what you say, I too, "back in the day", towed pop-up's and even travel trailers with cars/trucks that shouldn't have been towing them in the mountains of WV, TN and VA and never had an issue...

In your one example, you are correct, but answer me this, if you're towing up the side of a mountain at 60 mph, let's say that's the speed limit and the truck starts slowing down, normal, I would think if towing heavy....and you drop to a lower gear to maintain speed, and you still are dropping a little in speed and the cooling fan has now kicked in, are YOU, going to drop it in even a lower gear, which the truck will let you do, taching at a higher rpm , just to "get back up to 60 mph if you're only running 40-45? At that point, though, this could be "normal" due to the amount of weight you're towing, and the grade and the distance of this grade....do you "push" the truck to it's limits to get to the top of that mountain at the speed limit, or do what you know your truck can do??? After all, pushing it, whether one thinks it ought to maintain the same speed up a 7% grade for a 7 to 10 mile run, while towing, common sense would tell one that would be normal to lose some speed going up that grade for that distance and not think to push it because the truck should be able to do it..

I'm towing a little over 16,000# and tow several grades that run for 7 to 10 miles at 6 and 7% grades, (on some secondary roads, steeper and "curvier")...I slow down some, I let the truck downshift to maintain speed, but I know I'm going to slow down, I expect it...it did it with the Chevy and the Dodge/Ram....I mean this is normal...I don't make the truck "scream" or push it to it's limit to still be running 60 mph by the top I get to the top of the mountain...again, some common sense has to be used sometime...the truck is a machine, designed and built by humans who programmed the robots and computers..it's a human being behind the wheel....though we may think the truck should be able to do some things, the "final" decision is still in the hands of the driver...simply by ignoring messages and gages that you'll be looking at displayed on your truck when towing.