I am not the weight police because I would have throw myself in jail. I'm now just setting up my new truck to pull a trailer with a camper on board, as we enjoy horse camping and towing a boat.
Our first truck was a 1970 IH that I modified the sliding bumper to handle the torque load of an equalizer hitch. It worked well for years. That was with a 10' camper. Sorry, no pictures of the hitch.
Then in 1991 we bought our first GM Diesel pickup and also a 11.5' Western Wilderness camper. I built my first hitch extension for that truck, and sold the truck and camper as a package along with the custom extension.
Years later I missed that set up so much I got another truck, this time a 6.5 diesel 3/4 ton. Again I made up an extension for it pictured below. I used a factory hitch tube I separated the ends from and fabricated the connection points to the original receiver. It's a real easy thing to build if you can do metal work. And the attachments were four bolts into nut plates and a hitch pin. Slide it into the factory hitch, pop in 4 big bolts and your good to go.
Now I'm sharing these pictures just tell you you don't have to spend thousands to get your truck pulling what you want. I too have to be careful not to cross the line on what can be justified in our families expenses. I just upgraded trucks again and bought a new camper as well, so I'm planning my next frame extension for the rig pictured below. I already got rid of the factory receiver and now have a class 5 Curt under my truck, that doesn't rely on the bumper for strength and has much higher capacity, and spreads the load over a much larger area of the truck frame. Ill build the extension off of that with quick disconnect nut plates.
I was criticized by some on this forum that my design wasn't engineered correctly, but I can tell you that old set up (truck & camper) weighed 10,000lb and my horse trailer loaded weighed 8000lb and together they rolled down the road very stable and not a hint of overloading. I'll post pictures of my new build when I get it done. All the best, Hans
Our first truck was a 1970 IH that I modified the sliding bumper to handle the torque load of an equalizer hitch. It worked well for years. That was with a 10' camper. Sorry, no pictures of the hitch.
Then in 1991 we bought our first GM Diesel pickup and also a 11.5' Western Wilderness camper. I built my first hitch extension for that truck, and sold the truck and camper as a package along with the custom extension.
Years later I missed that set up so much I got another truck, this time a 6.5 diesel 3/4 ton. Again I made up an extension for it pictured below. I used a factory hitch tube I separated the ends from and fabricated the connection points to the original receiver. It's a real easy thing to build if you can do metal work. And the attachments were four bolts into nut plates and a hitch pin. Slide it into the factory hitch, pop in 4 big bolts and your good to go.
Now I'm sharing these pictures just tell you you don't have to spend thousands to get your truck pulling what you want. I too have to be careful not to cross the line on what can be justified in our families expenses. I just upgraded trucks again and bought a new camper as well, so I'm planning my next frame extension for the rig pictured below. I already got rid of the factory receiver and now have a class 5 Curt under my truck, that doesn't rely on the bumper for strength and has much higher capacity, and spreads the load over a much larger area of the truck frame. Ill build the extension off of that with quick disconnect nut plates.
I was criticized by some on this forum that my design wasn't engineered correctly, but I can tell you that old set up (truck & camper) weighed 10,000lb and my horse trailer loaded weighed 8000lb and together they rolled down the road very stable and not a hint of overloading. I'll post pictures of my new build when I get it done. All the best, Hans
