I have pretty much the same truck. Mine has 3:73 gears. I'm towing a 4750# GVWR 21 ft hybrid trailer. It tows like a dream. Almost no downshifting. I'm taking the rig to Tennessee in Sept. I'm not expecting stellar performance in those hills, but I do expect it to do reasonably fine. I would not hesitate to tow an additional 1000#, but probably not much more than that. Keep in mind that it's just me and my wife, and my payload is over 1600# so I have a lot of room to play with. You'll need to check your payload sticker.
Ignore Trailerlife ratings. They are just general for basic planning purposes and don't give you everything you need. You need to look at 3 things, the payload sticker in your driver door, your owner's manual, and your RPO sticker in your glove box. Your gear ratio is an RPO code on the sticker. 3 were available for your truck:
GU6 = 3.42 RATIO
GT4 = 3.73 RATIO
GT5 = 4.10 RATIO
Rbertalotto wrote:
I had that truck before I got my current Dodge. A 2004 Chevy, crew cab short body. Beautiful truck but not a good tow vehicle
The motor, transmission and rear axle was terrible for towing. And it had the optional heavy duty towing package. My 3500 pound double motorcycle trailer was a chore. Up hills it would downshift to 2nd gear and blow its brains out trying to maintain 45 mph. Gas mileage with this trailer was 9 mpg!
No, you didn't have that truck. In '07 a lot of changes were made the the GM truck line, not the least of which is a HP and torque increase. Still, I wonder what motor and gear ratio? I'm betting it was the V6. Even in '04 the 5.3 should have been fine for pulling a 3500# motorcycle trailer. My old '03 Trailblazer with 4.3 inline 6 towed my old 3500# travel trailer thorough mountains just fine. Unless maybe you had a clogged CAT? :h
