Family of 6 tow vehicle ?? What works?

[Oreonut]

Hi all,

I have been happily camping after all the great advice I got on her back in 2006. Sadly our 2006 Chevrolet 2500HD is needing to be replaced and we are having a hard time coming up with a replacement that works for our much larger family. We have been taking a mini van and towing with the truck on all our vacations for some time now and would like to put us all in one vehicle.

I am looking for options for 6 people to ride comfortably and tow a 2007 Sunnybrook Sunset Creek - dry weight 6615 - length 33' and we always drive with no water on board.

I searched for a used 2500 Suburban but no luck in finding anything with lower mileage that was in the budget.

We are considering a 2016 Chevy Express 2500 and converting the second row of seats to bucket seats. Will this still pull the trailer adequately? While the tow rating is 10,000 I know that is usually super misleading.

I am open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks!

[mcsurveyor]

Another Express 3500 12 passenger van user here. Skip the 2500 version, doesn't ride better, just less payload. Lots of payload, lots of room, handles our trailer very well. Better drivetrain than the Nissan NV 3500, but in everything else, interior/seats/fit and finish, the Nissan is nicer. It's still a commercial vehicle though, so a lot of nice touches you might be used to won't be available.

[blt2ski]

"SOME" of what is wrong may very well be lack of maintenance. Even a new or used rig will need the same at some point in time. Like tires....some call it a repair, reality, a maintenance item. O2 sensors go out every 5-10 yrs. Have one out on my 2000. On this one, a simple reasonably quick cheep fix. $1k-2k and you may be good for another 75K miles!

Marty

[carringb]

One more option, if the wifey will consider it.... A small shuttle bus, like a VanTerra or Starquest bus, built on the E450 chassis, would give you a GVWR of 11,500 or 12,500 and a GCWR of 22,000 pounds.

[Oreonut]

blt2ski wrote:
What is broken ont he truck? or needing repairs?

Reality, a newer CC pickup with the 6.0/6sp auto or if you can get the 6sp in the express, wither of those would pull your trailer where you want to go with family in tow.

Marty

We are figuring it needs quite a bit of work but it really doesn't have tons of miles on it for a 10 year old truck. Only 75,000 so we are figuring with a few repairs, we can squeeze a whole lot more out of it.

It has a few problems that we are thinking will cost around $5,000 - $7,000 to fix. Leak in the transmission, rusted parts of undercarriage, running boards rusted off, air conditioning is broken, makes a nice loud noise on start up that we have no idea what it is, code says oxygen sensors are bad.

It is going into the shop for a "check up" tonight so the results of that may greatly change our thinking. But heck ... we could drop a whole engine in there for less than a new one!

[blt2ski]

What is broken ont he truck? or needing repairs?

Reality, a newer CC pickup with the 6.0/6sp auto or if you can get the 6sp in the express, wither of those would pull your trailer where you want to go with family in tow.

Marty

[Oreonut]

Thanks everybody!

I think we have decided to take the truck in for one more repair and just hope we don't get left on the side of the road anywhere this summer.

Now that we know our options, it will most likely be replaced by another truck at some point when we see a good deal.

[APT]

There are 19 3/4 ton 2008-2013 GM SUVs on Autotrader across the nation with under 60k miles.

[a_dog]

Oreonut wrote:
Hi all,

I have been happily camping after all the great advice I got on her back in 2006. Sadly our 2006 Chevrolet 2500HD is needing to be replaced and we are having a hard time coming up with a replacement that works for our much larger family. We have been taking a mini van and towing with the truck on all our vacations for some time now and would like to put us all in one vehicle.

I am looking for options for 6 people to ride comfortably and tow a 2007 Sunnybrook Sunset Creek - dry weight 6615 - length 33' and we always drive with no water on board.

I searched for a used 2500 Suburban but no luck in finding anything with lower mileage that was in the budget.

We are considering a 2016 Chevy Express 2500 and converting the second row of seats to bucket seats. Will this still pull the trailer adequately? While the tow rating is 10,000 I know that is usually super misleading.

I am open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks!

What mileage are you looking for? My wife and I have a 2004 Suburban (see my signature) pulling a <10K toy hauler, and I've finally convinced her (since we no longer have any kids at home) to let me sell the Sub & look for a diesel truck that has way more tow capacity than I need, but the key benefit for me = the truck bed to put a diesel transfer tank for extended range.

The Sub tows like a champ, but going up 9% grades into Death Valley a couple weeks ago with a trailer that's debatably loaded to its GVWR makes for slower (25-35MPH) towing. The engine never even breaks a sweat, and the transmission warms up, but not much over flat towing.

I've got about 97K on the Sub, going to do the 100K service, then apply a BlackBear tune to get another bump in HP & torque to see how that affects towing up hills while fully loaded.

I know the 8.1L engines in the 2500 Subs are getting harder to find, but I check Craigslist every so often to see what's out there. Ours has the 2 bucket seats in the 2nd row, so it makes it a little easier to get into the 3rd row, as well as the 2nd row seats tumbling forward for access to the rear.

If you decide to focus on a Sub & can't find what you're looking for locally, let me know. I'm searching for a truck, kinda leaning toward a 7.3L F350 (2003 or earlier) if I can find the right one for the right price. Once I've got a solid truck to replace the Sub, it will be up for sale.

PS - Hope no one takes this as a "for sale" ad - mine's not up for sale just yet.

Good luck in your search for the right vehicle for your family. I'll be leaning on the wisdom of the people on this forum to help me find the next tow vehicle for my needs.

[Grit_dog]

Oreonut wrote:

atwowheelguy wrote:

Oreonut wrote:
A salesman just told my husband we could get a Tahoe. Really?

The trailers has a dry weight of 6615, dry hitch of 875. The entire payload of the Tahoe is only 1745 with a max hitch weight of 990 and a towing rate of 8600. I guess technically we could do it but I think not.

Apparently you have owned and towed this camper for some time. What is the actual "loaded for camping" tongue weight and axle weight of the camper?

We don't really know as we have never weighed it. We have a truck that can tow 12,000 lbs so we knew we were never even close to pushing its max. I would be concerned to go with something like a Tahoe where we would be at the top of the max as far as payload, hitch weight and trailer weight. I would just prefer to have some more wiggle room.

I do tend to be more cautious after being in an accident while towing a trailer when I was young. We were in a Suburban pulling a trailer that really wasn't super long and a truck passed us at a very high rate of speed and we got to swaying. The Burb ended up flipping over hence the Hensley hitch and the larger truck.

I'll throw this out there for everyone's benefit y
Who is inexperienced with towing.
There are 2 good ways and one "hope it works" way to stop trailer sway once it gets going (which is 99% of the time, a bad weight dist on the trailer or SEVERLY overloaded).
The good ways involve putting tension on the hitch.
Best way, manually crank the trailer brakes while maintaining speed or accelerating a bit.
If trailer brakes are not an option, floor it! You need to "pull" the trailer back in line. This will do the trick but you need to be prepared to white knuckle it as its not intuitive to go faster when you already think you're gonna crash! You also need to have the run out room and top end speed to do this or you'll just pile it up in a more elaborate fashion.
IE this is not a great maneuver if you're going down a long downhill stretch which is usually where folks pick up too much speed and get into a trailer whipping as the trailer is pushing the truck down the road.
It also helps if you have both lanes and maybe the shoulders to get er back in line. Again white knuckle but you can "lead" the trailer in the direction it's swaying and reign it back in but you need to take some road way width up to do it. Maintain speed/tension on the trailer. And you can't follow the trailer direction or it will exaggerate the condition.

Ok so that was 2 good an 1 not so good way. The other not so good way is get on the brakes and if you're not going too fast you can sometimes bring the trailer back in easily and others you'll bring the trailer around where you can check the trailer tires from the front seat!
In short, with good trailer brakes there is never a reason to get an out of control sway.

[Grit_dog]

There about 3 threads going currently in a couple different areas here asking the same exact question. Should be plenty of ideas to mull over.

[Oreonut]

atwowheelguy wrote:

Oreonut wrote:
A salesman just told my husband we could get a Tahoe. Really?

The trailers has a dry weight of 6615, dry hitch of 875. The entire payload of the Tahoe is only 1745 with a max hitch weight of 990 and a towing rate of 8600. I guess technically we could do it but I think not.

Apparently you have owned and towed this camper for some time. What is the actual "loaded for camping" tongue weight and axle weight of the camper?

We don't really know as we have never weighed it. We have a truck that can tow 12,000 lbs so we knew we were never even close to pushing its max. I would be concerned to go with something like a Tahoe where we would be at the top of the max as far as payload, hitch weight and trailer weight. I would just prefer to have some more wiggle room.

I do tend to be more cautious after being in an accident while towing a trailer when I was young. We were in a Suburban pulling a trailer that really wasn't super long and a truck passed us at a very high rate of speed and we got to swaying. The Burb ended up flipping over hence the Hensley hitch and the larger truck.

[atwowheelguy]

Oreonut wrote:
A salesman just told my husband we could get a Tahoe. Really?

The trailers has a dry weight of 6615, dry hitch of 875. The entire payload of the Tahoe is only 1745 with a max hitch weight of 990 and a towing rate of 8600. I guess technically we could do it but I think not.

Apparently you have owned and towed this camper for some time. What is the actual "loaded for camping" tongue weight and axle weight of the camper?

[the_happiestcam]

6 would fit easily in this

[Oreonut]

73guna wrote:
What is your budget?

We currently have three cars - a little Chevy Sonic my husband drives 50 miles to work every day, a Kia Sedona (the family car) and a Chevy truck.

If we keep both the Kia and the Sonic then we are looking to stay $35,000 or under to replace the truck.

If we find something I can drive on a daily basis and sell(trade) both the Kia and the truck then it would be closer to $45,000. I am just not sure I want to drive a beast van around all the time but that would save us money in the long run.