Heavy Metal Doctor

sorry - double post

Did they remove the recovery hooks at the mount points, or where there none there? I want to build my own front cargo carrier for the same situation, towing a travel trailer.

I know I'm late to the party here, but I realized the OP is local to me, so this caught my attention and I was wondering if there's any update? How's things going with finding a travel trailer?

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I 'l thorw in my 2 cents: I have installed Timbrens on heavy trucks / machinery doing special work. I understand there's a time and place for everything, but I don't care for the idea of essentially putting a rubber block in place of the flex area of suspension on a lighter vehicle. The suspension and axle should be designed for the ratings they tell you in the GVW / GCVW payload and all that. If you stay within those specs, then there shoudl be no need to change the suspension. I also don't think it's necessary on a 3500 NV. Take those heavy seats out and add that weight-saved into the payload listed for a passenger version. I have yet to weigh out each piece, but for traveling long trips, I often have 4 decent sized adults. I run 2 rows of seats, load the rest of the space down with luggage / gear up to the windows and some gear on the roof rack, and the tongue weight of the travel trailer is right at 1000 pounds -- the van rides perfect and not wishy-washy like an old Econoline work van. I guess the balloon basket rack sticking out so far off the back would be a cantilevered load that will mess with the handling -- i'd put in on a trailer, myself.

Mine is a moniker given to me by some fellow soldiers in my unit back in the army. It came about on a deployment (Hurricane Andrew cleanup, to be exact ) where I was "treating the sick" construction equipment and trucks of our unit. I ran a contact truck and a "batmobile" ( tractor trailer sized mobile shop). This was before the web was readily available, but it was the first "handle" that popped into my mind when I needed screen-name for the first time and it has stuck for the last 20-some years, partially due to the fact that I am also often referred to as "Doc" by those around me since I'm still "curing" those same ailments.

Hey, just checking back up on old stuff here. Reading back over this reminds me of our recent long towing trip. We had 2 times where we ended up in the middle of nowhere and the needle was getting close to E - the warning light finally came on. Both times I had to take an exit, regardless of no "gas here" signs and find whatever I could. Once, I ended up in a tiny shopping center with a gas station at one end in a dead-end parking lot. Fun stuff at 5PM and all the locals getting gas on the way home from work and here I am, the out-of-stater on vacation, trying to squeeze in with 35 feet of camper behind me because I am too low on gas to chance passing the place. On the up-side, my wife thinks I'm a driving god because some onlookers actually cheered me on for not hitting them or the gas pumps with only inches to spare! LOL! On that long trip I had it down to 200 miles between fuel stops -- any over 200 and it was too much risk when in open country. Running out is a PITA, but even more so with a camper in tow. An extra 10 gallons on board sure would be nice!

We use an electric cooler / warmer for road trips. They are very popular with truckers and easy to find. It will not cook, but keeps food either hot or cold and runs off of 12volt connection. Ours spends the entire summer stationed just behind the center console of our NV for road trips and there's an outlet to plug it into inside the console box.

I'm also surprised the OP had such so-so sounding results. Or travel trailer is about 7500 loaded out. When the whole gang goes, it's up to 6 adults (grown kids) and a dog, all the luggage / gear for a week and about 250lb canoe one the roof - we climb the big hills fine just fine to maintain speed and enough power to jump out in the fast lane to get around anyone under 60 / 65 mph without impeding others. We just got back from a 4200 mile trip from MD, a few other stops in Iowa / Minnesota and on to Black Hills / Badlands of SD area and back. My biggest concern with the NV is the last 2 oil changes have been done on nothing but towing-heavy duty and I see the oil turning pretty dark for a gas engine in such a short time. Oil looke wors than my car with 180K on it. I'm not thrilled with the tiny oil filter they use - I actually found that 13 model year used the same tiny one that goes on the little 1.8L in my Cube - seems they bumped it up for 14.

The wind noise thing can be a problem, depending on the rack and you speed. I find that up to 65 MPH you only hear it a little, gets a little louder as you go faster, but it really screams over 80 which I finally found out mostly legally on highways in South Dakota / Wyoming a few weeks ago. That is pretty standard - most pro welders know you are coming to them because you have no choice. I'm not saying they are ripping people off, but they calculate their time / charges based on other work where they can probably be even more profitable. Making a one-time-job rack for someone is not a big priority. The 4x4 friend thing is your best bet to get help form someone with the ability. Being one of those types, I can tell you my rack with the Core Product tie down tracks was about 300 bucks worth of supplies (I did steel) and took me 1 day to build plus a day to coat it with DIY'er bed-liner. At my working shop rate that would be around a $1500 job if I was being "nice" ...and I didn't do a ladder. I find opending the doors and stepping up on eth sill is just enough, with 2 people - one at rear and one on side of van, to load anything from lumber to our 16 foot canoe.

Most of my towing has been across the mountains of PA. I have never felt the NV is lacking. It feels right to me with a 7500LB camper behind it - no different than any other towing setup really. In "feel", it seems the same as my Tahoe with 3K behind it or the Chevy dually I drive at work with 18K worth of goose neck / equipment behind that.

Ours is a Keystone Passport 31RE -- No bunks for young ones, but technically can sleep 5 or 6 with fold out couch and dinette, but we rarely do that. We think it's great for 2 adults as the slides make the whole kitchen / living area feel more like a regular house and the kitchen has enough counter space that we aren't constantly shuffling stuff around to do dishes and cook - I can leave my coffee pot "station" set up the whole time during a stay and space enough to actually pitch in to help her when she asks.

OUCH! I hear ya on the length issue. So far (almost 2 years) my worst move was too much tail swing brushing some tree branches pulling out of the driveway - no damage, just rubbed and made me pretty nervous about tearing the roof. I'm always very cautious and take my time at gas stations - I don't care how crowded / busy they are, I'm trying to not damage anything. We also do half state parks kinda camping and have only had one site, so far, where getting leveled was an issue due to the slope and length -- tail of camper was about 4 feet off the ground and the tongue was sitting nearly on the dirt. I started carrying a lot more leveling block after that! LOL! We did tents the whole time we raised our kids. Occasionally used a pop-up and then we jumped up to a travel trailer. I guess ours is pretty heavy for "ultra light" due to slides that are 14 feet long on each side - only about 18" out on one side and 24" one the other, but still all that slide-gear / structure adds weight.

Interesting. I always thought anything around 28' / 30' was heavier. I guess most are if that particular one is the lightest, LOL. The whole setup looks good, BTW!

I'm surprised by your numbers. Is that actually weighed or just the advertised spec's? My camper is considered and "ultralight" and only 2 feet longer and yet it lists as 6500 empty weight and tongue weight is supposed to be around 800, IIRC. Reality is, tongue weight is 950 measured with a hydraulic tongue scale with just a reasonable load-out of gear just for 2 of us and full propane tanks -- not packed in heavy for a full week with the whole family. I have yet to make it to a scale to check the axle weights yet -- feels a lot more like 7500 to 8K behind the van.

Some day, I'm gonna fabricate my own.... I want a small cargo rack up front to carry a little generator for when we dry camp (no power on site) with the travel trailer. I was thinking of working off the towing hook mounts - they are strong enough to pull the van out of ditch, I'm sure it's strong enough to carry 150lbs of gear / bike rack or whatever. I'd make it a recessed pocket on each side in the tow hook openings, rather than one center receiver. That way, when the rack is off there isn't much of anything sticking out / noticeable and no need to cut a hole in the bumper. ......but with all stuff going on everywhere else in my life, it might be a while 'till that project make it to the front of the line.