The Age Old Question, How Many Pounds Of Air Shall I Put In My Tires?

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Well sir, I have never been accused of being terribly smart and politicaly astue, so here I go jumping from the frying pan into the fire on a subject that some have said in the forums is a dead horse and beaten to death. But there is more to the tire pressure story than just when will it fail or blow up. Or how much pressure to ad and when.

We all know that a tire that is under inflated will use more power to make it roll than a properly inflated tire. That is because of these factors:

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Our SCARIEST RV Tow

Airstream RV Blog #47 - Towin’ and Backin’ from Sean Michael on Vimeo.

Before we bought our travel trailer, the thought of towing an RV was foreign to me. Heck, I’d never even owned a pickup truck before. So I faced a learning curve, one compounded by the fact I’d never really backed up an RV either. To newcomers, these two tasks can be very intimidating. But they need not be. Today I’ll write about our “most frightening” tow experience. In a future post, I’ll tackle my worst backing experience…

Although today’s video was shot in sunny San Diego, our most frightening towing experience happened a thousand miles away, in remote British Columbia. We were following a tip offered by a park ranger in Alberta. “If you want nice hot springs,” the ranger said, “check out Lussier Springs. It’s in British Columbia, down near Canal Flats.”

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5th Wheel Towing - Unsafe Mounting Practices

I came across this video by Pull-Rite about the hazards of mounting a hitch behind the truck axle, and thought it to be valuable information. Here’s the scoop:

This video takes a look at the more radical ideas that some people think might be a solution for towing 5th wheel trailers with a short bed truck. Mounting a hitch behind the truck axle, or changing the towing pivot point to behind the axle, creates unstable, unsafe, and dangerous towing characteristics. No knowledgeable RVer, RV Dealer, or Hitch Installer would suggest or consider these options. Moving the towing pivot point behind the truck axle induces dangerous trailer sway, and eliminates the advantages inherent to 5th wheel towing - with the trailer now having a negative effect on the safety, stability, and handling due to cross winds, passing trucks, and unexpected maneuvers. Safe handling speeds will be significantly reduced.

Axle Flips for your Trailer - Flip This !

Howdy !!

Ok you boondocking, wrought traveling, dune busting freaks - you’ve decided to buy the 5^th wheel trailer of your dreams, the one that you can pull with your new 4X4 pickup truck. Thoughts of going up into the hills away from the crowds in the campgrounds flow through your mind until your brain hears the sales person saying something about having to flip your axles on the trailer before you can pull it with your truck. “What’s an Axle Flip?” you ask. The sales man explains that your truck is 51 inches high at the top of the bed side rails. The trailer neck is only 52 inches high to the bottom of the neck, which means that the trailer has to be raised by about 4 inches to keep the neck of the trailer from resting on the bed of the truck - an unhappy experience !

Axle flips are becoming more and more common as 4-wheel drive trucks are used to pull fifth wheel trailers. Read more

Adding Gauges with a Gadget

One of the problems with the E450 chassis is that the dashboard is fairly crude by modern automotive standards. After six months of calculating my gas mileage by hand, and becoming a bit suspicious about the temperature gauge that never seemed to move, I stumbled across the ScanGaugeII™ by Linear-Logic. The ScanGauge plugs into the ODBII Port on many vehicles, not just the Ford E450, and provides a wealth of useful information that any RV’er can put to good use.

ODBII, or “On Board Diagnostics, version two” refers to vehicle’s on-board diagnostics capability, and is incorporated into all cars and light trucks sold in the United States and Canada. The ScanGauge plugs into the ODBII port, a small connector usually located near the steering column, underneath the dashboard, and provides real-time access to many of the vehicle’s diagnostic features. This is useful if your vehicle has a less-than-robust set of gauges from the factory, as does my E450, because you can setup the ScanGauge to display just the information you want to see. I have mine configured to display; engine temperature, transmission temperature, intake air temperature and gas mileage. All of this information is displayed instantly, in real-time. Just step on the gas and you will instantly see your gas mileage get halved!

The ScanGauge also functions as a fairly sophisticated trip computer. Once it has been configured for the vehicle’s engine size and fuel tank size, it can display numerous parameters based on the current day’s travel, the previous day’s travel, the current tank of fuel, or the previous tank of fuel. Usually I keep this display on the “miles to empty” setting which, of course, shows how many estimated miles are left on the current tank of fuel. It is a common feature in most new cars today and I am glad to now have it in my E450, too. But the ScanGauge can display a lot of other information about your trip (or tank), like how many miles you covered, what your average speed was, how much fuel you used, etc.

Installing the ScanGauge is a breeze, and does not require any tools - although I used zip-ties to secure the cable behind the dashboard. The gauge itself sits on top of the steering column, and is not obtrusive. The ScanGauge is a useful gadget that plugs some holes in the rather utilitarian dashboard of my E450 chassis.

Happy camping!

Wantta Get Hitched ?

The forgotten link may be right behind you as you tow your trailer down the road. That tow hitch is every bit as important as the tow vehicle and the trailer, however it is often given the least amount the thought. No process seems more involved and protracted than the selection of a towing vehicle and the perfect trailer. We spend literately hundreds of hours researching, reading, looking, discussing and even worrying about the decision of which vehicle and trailer we want. However, we all too often go through this selection process and then when we pick-up the trailer we tell the RV dealer to “put a hitch on’er” for the tow vehicle without really considering what that means.Hitches come in three general types. The tow-bar hitch, the 5th wheel and the stock hitch. The sub-classes of each general type would take a rather large book to describe fully, but there are several basic things that fall into the “Must Know” category.

Towbar hitches come in two major types. The simple ball or weight-carrying hitch where the entire hitch weight load is placed on the ball at the rear of the towing vehicle. These are generally used for lightweight towing vehicles pulling trailers of 3,000 to 3,500 pounds GTW. Larger towing vehicles can pull higher weights but care must be taken not to exceed the vehicle manufacturers recommendations. Weight-distributing hitches come with torsion or spring bars that distribute the load from the ball forward to the frame of the towing vehicle. These hitch systems are capable of pulling up to 15,000 pounds in a class-5 receiver hitch and 1,200 pounds of tongue weight. I’ll do more on conventional hitches in a latter article, but for now let’s concentrate on 5th wheel hitches.

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Murphy’s Law

I thought I would share a true story of a vacation we took last year to the Black Hills of South Dakota. If you feel you are the unluckiest person in the world, this should make you feel better! if you are new to RVing, please don’t let this scare you away!

This was our first camping trip that we took where we went with friends. They have a PUP (Pop-up for you newbies) and we had our Travel Trailer.

The fun began on the highway. One thing I always hated about our setup is the friction sway control. I never felt like it did a good enough job. So, as we were driving we found ourselves swaying more than I would have wanted but still within reason (most of the time). Well, up in Wisconsin on a three way highway, I chose to ride the middle lane. This was a big mistake, and if you don’t think so, ask my wife…she will be brutally honest on this one! Anyway, there I am in that middle lane when two 18 wheelers ride up at the same time on either side of us and that was the worst driving experience I have ever felt. You know how it is (sometimes) when a semi passes you…try to imagine the vortex on both sides. It was like being in a pinball machine and for the life of me; I don’t know how I didn’t hit anything. Our friends were following us and later at a rest area said that from their angle it was pretty amazing to see us get thrown around like that!

The next bit of fun came in Minnesota right when we crossed the Mississippi river. This is on Interstate 90 and when you cross, there is a pretty steep incline. So, there we are, trying to make that hill. People were passing us and my truck was slowing down. I felt like I was in the movie The Long, Long Trailer! If you haven’t seen that movie…it is a must. I will write about movies at a later time. Back to the hill. When we almost got to the top of the hill, my truck sputtered and then the ‘Service Engine Soon’ light came on. We pulled over after we went over the top of that hill. We took a look under the hood everything seemed okay except for the service light. We decided to forge ahead! Read more

Brake Controls -

Howdy -

Had a fellow ask me how to adjust and use trailer brake controls and as we talked it came to me that he didn’t really know the difference between a timer control or a proportional unit or any of the other methods of trailer brake control so I figured I’d drop a few words about the subject. Now it sounds simple but as Sir Issac Newton proved, once you get a mass moving it wants to continue to travel until resistance finally slows it to a stop. The word to remember is “Inertia”. Our trailers are that mass behind us and once put into motion it they want to keep moving. So we live with the “Curse of the brake controller” when we tow. Of course none of us tail-draggers are pulling an overweight trailer so our tow vehicle should stop it just fine - right ? Sure, just like nobody plays computer games !! The federal government’s rules for towing say that the tow vehicle of any trailer is only responsible for the first 2,000-pounds of trailer weight. All trailers over 2,000-pounds require that a controlled braking system be installed.

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What Came First?

The title of this article is well known as it relates to the chicken and the egg. Well, I ask you, what came first? The Travel Trailer or the Tow Vehicle. For me it was the Travel Trailer and then out of necessity the Tow Vehicle. Maybe it’s just me, but I had to learn the hard way that some RV salesmen are not all that honest. When we did our shopping for our travel trailer, we really liked the Four Winds Express Lite 18B. It is not too large, just 24 feet long. It has windows on all sides to let the light in. It was affordable for what we wanted.

So, I asked the salesman, “will my Explorer pull this thing?” We sat down with him as he pulled some books out of his desk. He asked us “what engine?”, to which we replied “the 4.0 V6”. He asked which model, we replied “Sport”. He then looked in his book, then looked over his glasses at us, then back to his book and then the verdict, “Yep, yours will pull it just fine”. We were excited that we had enough power to pull the trailer.

The day of delivery; Okay, so we go to the RV Dealer and the service gang were just fantastic. They spent two hours with us going over all the details of how to operate all the features of our new travel trailer. Then, as part of our session, they taught me how to hook up the trailer to my tow vehicle. With that done, we pulled away with our new toy!

Our first long trip was about 450 miles and oh man, it was a white knuckle drive! We learned, (the hard way) that our tow vehicle just wasn’t enough. So, I had to upgrade! I know some of you are reading this and nodding your heads, because you did the same thing.

My new tow vehicle pulls the trailer just fine and you would think I would have no more problems. Well, all this took place in June of 2006. Here we are in January 2008 and I find myself itching for a trailer upgrade or maybe a Class C or even a Class A. Will the madness ever end? Nah….that’s one of the great aspects of this ‘hobby’!

Happy Camping and see you next Sunday!

This may seem strange - but -

Howdy !

As a writer with regular columns to get out I tend to lose track of time and forget what my current month is instead of the publication month that I’m working on. Right now it’s the 24th of December 2007 and the articles on the computer are for March and April 2008. This is the time when most of us will be shaking off the last of winter and getting ready to hit the road. If you approach it like I do there are several thoughts going around in your head, like, did I drain ALL the water from the lines and did I remember to blow-out the toilet valve and sink lines? Now, I live in far, far, far, far, FAR west Texas, about 90-miles from the Texas/New Mexico border so freezing is not one of the things we worry much about, until it happens! We get perhaps 10-days a year when Ma Nature does the frozen water trick and with three RV’s parked outside it always puts a cold rock about mid-chest when I look out and see the temp down in the teens and try to remember iffen I did all the winter storage chores like I was supposed to.

The answer is to follow a check list for shutting down the RV in the fall and another checklist for getting her running in the spring. Now checklists are like all good intentions, they only work if you use them and make a date to get the work done. A couple of very good checklists are the Family Motor Coach Association winter storage guides and their spring cleaning and travel preparation guide. You will also see many good checklist ideas on the RV.net forums or over at Escapees.com where there are checklists for almost everything, speaking of which –

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