Ridgerunner29 wrote:
blt2ski wrote:
Any one recall the days that GM put 350 gas motors in reg cab twucks.....ie reg cabs were the only thing out there excepting a very few and far between crew cab. ie about 1980 or so......a BB 454 4 bbl put out a whopping 195hp, and maybe at best 330 lb ft of torque! oh baby! powerful motor it was! The std motor was a 292 I 6 with 105hp in the 25-65 series trucks.....a 250 I6 in the 1500's.......a 350 2bbl put out maybe 150 hp and 250 lb ft of torque, and the 305 was around 130 and 200 lb ft of torque.......
The Lowest HP motors in GM;s fleet now put out what, 200 hp, and probably over 200 lb ft of torque! the best is the dmax at 400/800 or so! Heck, an intro sb8 has more hp etc than a BB 454 of yor! Pulling power is NOT an issue to day folks! Payload was back then, as it is today.....
SO whomever mentioned earlier "if you have the payload for the people, cargo and hitch wt, you will pull a trailer fine"
Oh yeah, the GCWR for a 350 back then with 4.10;s was 13500. A half ton weighed about 4500 lbs, with an 8500 max trailer tow. A 2500 was around 5K lbs, tow rating 8000 lbs, a dually around 6000 lbs, and a whopping 7500 lbs tow rating. Happened just as the OP states, a half ton can tow more than a 1 ton! Been going on for many many many years with the way manfuactures rate LDT trucks.
Marty
Thank you for the history. I am simple enough to have thought these tow capacity inconsistencies is a recent problem with the pickup truck industry.
Back in 81 when I bought my first truck, the gcwr for a 292 I6 was 8500 lbs, yet it was ONLY put in rigs with gvwr's of 8600+ lbs. So if you have a 2500 as I bought, you had a -100 lbs tow rating per the gcwr. Yet that rig would pull/move 12K lbs up a 20+% grade. Meanwhile an 89 1 ton I had, with a 16K gcwr COULD NOT pull/move 12K lbs up a 20+% grade. But did go 20 some odd mph faster on a freeway grade than the 292 could. So you got to with in half a mile of destination, faster with the BB, but could not get up the driveway to the jobsite because of the grade. The 292 meanwhile, got to with in the last half mile slower time wise, but COULD go up the 20% grade to the jobsite! so, at the end of the day, which truck do you want?
The new sae specs only give you a 12% grade tested. A moderately steep county road at least around here. City streets in Seattle are in the mid 20% range. If one is not a strict RV user, and a contractor with there truck, a 30% grade at least around here is the min grade one wants to pull. The min speed is 35 mph. In my state, that is 5 mph BELOW the min speed on an interstate.
Reality is, even the SAE can not come up with specs that fit the needs of some of us in the real world of contruction use. RV, yeah, overall it works......But even then, the ratings are for a 60 or 80 sq ft trailer, most RV trailers are 90-120 depending upon std TT to front bedroom slide 5w's.
As such, I go thru some of the hoops that one goes thru when specing an MDT/HDT rig. those trucks have gcwr ratings base on on the chassis, then you spec the drive train to the final useage. A logging truck will be speced different than a box trailer otr rig, Even tho both will be at 80K lbs or so. A car hauler will be speced even different yet. I've seen a moving van that came from New orleans at 60 mph on all the interstates, yet on one of the foot hills here in Seattle, it literally stalled out on a 20% grade, had the power, but NOT the gears to go up the hill the last 1/4 mile to the house. Kinda funny actually.
I have NEVER seen trailer tow ratings for LDT's that make sense in ALL the years buying and using LDTs as tow rigs for my landscape biz, or pulling the RV that my family of 6 needed. In fact, most of the rigs that I was over gcwr vs under were actually the better tow rigs, ie the emanuals that were derated over the auto's. As the manuals had a lower over all gear ratio, so they went up the hills, the autos stalled out.
Marty
