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.

I checked with two local fab shops and both quoted me about the same price as Aluminess.  I figure there has to be somebody around here and we have a pretty decent offroading community but I just cant find the right shop yet.

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.

Those numbers are loaded for camping and taken over a Cat Scale 3 times to check total weight, tongue weight and weight restoration to the front axle. The camper weights are when I had the Tundra hooked up but that doesn't affect the weights.

 

My TT empty only weighs 5700# according to its yellow shipping sticker inside the door. It was the lightest "big" bunkhouse we could find. I was over my payload on the Tundra with the kids, dogs and gear so we had to do some serious shopping.

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.

I had similar trouble with the connector on the back of my van, too. It ended up being the body harness connector going in the back side of the 7-pin. Nissan makes it a snap together plug which I'm sure they just tie the unused connector up in the body if you don't get a towing package w/7-pin.  In my case, one of the pins slid back inside that connector when they plugged into the 7-pin causing an intermittent connection to the trailer. It took 10 times longer to identify the problem than it took to seat it correctly and plug it back in.

Another thought -- I had some weird stuff happening with mine when we first got our camper. No tripped breakers or anything shorted, but I got intermittent lights and brake operation driving the camper home from the dealer. It ended up being the pins where not seated correctly in the Nissan harness side of the actual trailer receptacle at the hitch (back side of plug).  simply pulling it out, seeing the  pin out of position and re-seating it / reconnecting the harness solved it.

I heard to open the right rear and the left front window just slightly to break the suction from a passing semi truck trailer. Learned that

trick from the RV dealer yesterday.

There is a suction when encountering a large vehicle on the highway that causes the trailer to sway a little.

 

 

I have heard that one from some RV'n buddies, but never tried it. I thinks it sounds kinda hookey to think a couple square feet of open window area with counteract many, many, square feet to wind "push" from a passing tractor trailer....besides, the NV and trailer barely feel it anyway.

Finally picked up my Heartland North Trail 33BKSS last Thursday. Towed it 180 miles to get back home and the NV did great!

 

Unfortunately the TT will have to sit for a while :( We missed the window of opportunity to take it out on its maiden voyage. Gonna be busy the next few weekends...but maybe mid May.

Don't feel bad, there's time!  We've been the same way - too much happening to get out camping yet. Our first weekend out is coming up at the end of this month. Then, off for half-way-cross-country trip in June. Will be our first time doing 2K plus miles in a single trip.

Yup, Like ASD Dad said, wire pig-tail is taped off by the e-brake pedal. It's long enough, once you plug in the adapter harness to place the controller just about anywhere you wan't within easy reach of the driver. 

Yeah...we drug around a larger sized pop-up right at 3K LBS  for one last trip with our NV before we bought a travel trailer....hardly knew it was back there. 

I pull a Passport 32RE with almost identical spec's  to that 3320BH, just a foot shorter.

I can tell you the length will not be an issue as along as you are comfortable towing. I have no trouble getting our camper into camping sites even at tighter state parks.

I'm not sure I would spend the cash on a pro-pride.  I'm a  little leery of adding that much extra equipment / steel to the hitch weight. That camper will be close to the max rated 1000 pounds tongue weight once you have propane cans filled and gear on-board. I know ours is 960 / 970 lbs loaded to camp also with just the spring bars on the camper and the draw bar is another 30lbs (I use a Reese dual cam / straight line). I also think they are, front all accounts I have seen - never used one - kinda a PITA to deal with if you get out of position / not able to back straight in to hook up or get off-camber a bit.

I've only got about 3 or 4 K  miles of dragging our camper around - much of it across the mountains of PA  -  truck traffic, wind and some curvy roads and I have never felt significant sway. Occasionally get a little "push", but it settles right out, not that progressively worse tail wagging the dog thing.

I would also advise to get a decent brake controller. Don't use some cheap time-based unit. I made the mistake of letting our RV dealer install one as part of the setup package deal and I hated it. after the second short trip I tossed it out and put in a Prodigy P2. Now, I never readjust the controller and barely feel the trailer brakes at all. 

I think I may have solved this TPMS issue -- I played around with the settings in the dash readout and managed (without trying to) mixxup the whole TPMS so it does not even try to give me any readings.....no warnings / no nothing -- it doesn't bother me as I just use the old tire maintenance methods of a hand held gauge and check manually / keep an eye on it myself. 

Just back from 800 mile round trip draggin' about 8k Lbs of camper behind us. I now completely happy / satisfied that I went with an NV. It did great across MD / central PA  / NY  Finger Lakes area and back. I use cruise control a lot, but do click it off for the worst hills - either slow down early for downhill or a little extra speed for a "running start" up really steep ones. The trans temp never gets above  about 1/3 of the scale and leave that gauge up on the read-out to monitor it consistently.

The next big plus is the overall driving comfort on a long trip is just as good as any of the big SUV's I've had and better than any other van I've driven.

The NV does get looks - it drew a small crowd at the campground!

Also found that the towing mirrors provided are just about perfect - the van is wide enough that you can see around the camper just fine and the fish-eye section of the mirrors allows you to see down / out along the sides at the tires of the van and trailer - nice when you are swinging tight turns around fuel islands and parking lot entrances. I ordered a set of add-on towing mirrors and ended up never using them.

As for brake controllers - the tow package comes with a pig-tail which connects to most controllers out on the market. Our RV dealer thew in a controller when we purchased the trailer last fall. I knew that they would use an "economy" controller, to be nice (reality is it was the cheapest POS time-based unit on the market) which I only used last fall.  I stepped up to a Pridigy P2 2 months ago. The pig-tail plug being the same made the switch take 5 minutes to remove the old controller / bracket and screw the new one in place. I don't need all the extras of anything more than a P2 (mutpile trailer memory and so on), and it has been "set it and forget it" since the camper is the only thing with brakes I have towed so far. Now, no matter what speed / conditions, I don't feel any need to readjust the controller and the whole rigs stops with the same pedal feel as the van does by itself - no standing on the pedal at hard stop  or feeling like I have to dial up / down the controller due to too much / too little braking on the trailer.

I service my NV 3500 just like any other vehicle I have ever owned. I don't bother with dealer oil changes as I know most places use the cheapest supplies they can source since it's a giveaway. I'd rather know the stuff going in my engine is at least decent quality aftermarket stuff.

Yeah, it is Hurculiner and a good thick layer on the mounting feet seemed like enough cushion there. Took me a good bit more time than I expected to get that stuff painted on.   I had some rubber handy to use for the feet, but decided the coating seemed thick enough when it came time to set it on the roof.

As for putting a floor on the rack: I can stand on the cross bars with very little flex (and I'm well over 200lbs), so one or 2 more would be enough to use with an expanded metal if you wanted to build it that way for it's whole length. As this one is, it seems enough now that a reasonable sheet of plywood or some solid sheet metal would be enough for luggage purposes where the pounds per square foot of space is not too high. The cross bars are closer together at the rear 3 feet or so of the rack as I figured I'd be inclined to make a pile of luggage in that area only, if I ever use it that way.