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trailer brakes


--weezl--

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that's a good point... i went into custom truck parts on barlow on friday, and talked to the guy, explained my situation and asked for input, he looked at me with a dumb look on his face and pretty well said so we are setting you up with a trailer brake setup today? and proceeded to draw up an invoice when i looked at him with the same dumb face thinking "wow"
 


Will

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Will, i got the first half of that, you kinda lost me in the second half...
Well, I can't know your skills but I'm going to assume you haven't done a lot of towing. Maybe you are a truck driver for all I know.

Jump up and down on the rear bumper of your Ranger. That's what you are going to hook a 4,500# trailer to. A Ranger is meant to drive smoothly and the springs are variable rate meaning until you get a load on it they are quite soft. An equalizer hitch is going to try to close the bottom of the truck and trailer together like a jack knife. So if you go with 450# of tongue weight, you only want to unload the hitch point by 100# when you crank the equalizer bars down. That's going to be hard to calculate since I am assuming you are going to pick something up and won't have a lot of means to adjust things. It could be worse to have the equalizer than to not have it. You really need to be able to mock this up at home and try it out first.

The other thing I was talking about was that the rear end of a Ranger is pretty light--maybe 1,400#. You will maybe bring it close to 2,000# with the trailer. The trailer, being much heavier, has a decent chance of pushing the rear end of the truck around in certain circumstances. A turn on sandy or wet pavement, for instance.

A bigger truck is always better, of course. But I think you can safely manage.

As to the auto VS manual, I prefer the auto. I think it's physically stronger and is defiantely better from a stop. Ford doesn't give the Ranger manual a very good first gear. You should never apply power to a slipping clutch but with a 3.40 first gear and 10,000 load you don't have much choice. Just get it up as quickly as you can and once you are rolling take the rpms all the way up to redline before each shift and then let the clutch up fully before accelerating in the next gear.

The auto has the torque converter which doubles the torque under maximum load. From a stop at full throttle it's like having a 5-1 first gear. Once you are cruising the converter clutch locks up and there really isn't a mileage difference. On hills the converter will unlock and split gears--and make a lot of heat doing it. You would, either with a manual or auto, downshift and let the engine spin on grades. The auto is also actively cooled and the manual is not.
 

Will

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I had a 16' Casita for years. I pulled it mostly with a 4-cylinder Mazda pickup. These are not at all in the same weight class of the trailer in this thread.
 

--weezl--

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ahhh, i follow you now will... my experience towing a trailer, is next to nothing, however, i will be with my dad, who has quite a bit (no way a professional trucker, even though we did both work for semi truck companies as mechanics though) he knows a fair amount about the load equalizer bars, and how to set them up...

i hear what you are saying in the jack knife thing too... as for both myself and my dad's driving experience, i like to think we have quite a bit of experience with a manual, out of the last 7 vehicles i've had, only 3 of them were auto... i'm going to talk with him about the situation and see what he thinks, but i think me bringing the car back on my truck is going to be the best bet... depending on what trailer i can manage to get...
 

Will

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A typical car or light truck is pretty easy to drive decently as it has a high power/weight ratio and a soft clutch. There's plenty of forgivness for letting the clutch up with differences in the engine/trans shaft speeds. I hear people driving all of the time who shift way too early and use the clutch to drag the car up to speed. This is horrible if you are towing. Same on downshifting--using the clutch to drag the engine up to speed. Much better to just hold the clutch in and use the brakes because brakes are easier to get at to replace.

A clutch can last forever, even towing, if you try to match your engine speed and trans speed. It's not a semi of course, so you don't have to be close to perfect, but letting the engine pull to it's redline before shifting means the engine will pretty much drop down to where you can just let the clutch up and have the engine right where it needs to be. The other benefit is that you are keeping the engine almost exactly between its horsepower and torque peaks. I'm attaching a chart for the pushrod 4.0 which demonstrates this.

One note, when I say shift at maximum rpm I mean rolling into and out of the throttle, not holding it to the floor or letting it snap up. If you push the pedal down past where the engine has enough torque to accelerate you cause unneccesary heat and drivetrain load and waste fuel. When you roll out of the throttle to shift it's to make sure the load is off of the drivetrain before you push the clutch down. The clutch will slip while unclamping just as it does while clamping--and it sends a shock through the drivetrain when it unloads. Smoothness counts, especially when the drivetrain is overloaded. It's defiantely different, as I said in the beginning, than driving an overpowered vehicle where you can do about whatever you want and get away with it.

 

Tractorman

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Install the brake controller.

Get an Equilizer hitch.

Tow car.

Profit!
 

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