Gen 2 rear is TOO lightly sprung! needs airbags

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Bullishone

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Im with you. I would never buy a pickup that isnt capable of doing basic towing. It is rated for 8000lbs, so it will be fine. Should be an easy upgrade to get some 2.5 bump stops or get some basic air bags. I plan to do the same if 300lbs of tongue weight makes this thing sag. I tow a snowmobile trailer in winter and several dirt bikes in summer. You dont need an F250 to do what you want to do.

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nice boat, I use to have a G23. Loved it. How well does your raptor tow the G21?
Real well :)

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Carbon8

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Real well :)

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Does your G21 have a weight distributing connection?

Sorry I do not know much about it other than I usually just hook up and go. Have a G25 (seems like just a normal trailer hitch) and love the boats, we slip it mostly but once I year I do trailer it about 100 miles. Which I never put much thought into and my Ram Rebel (10,000lb rating + air suspension kept the truck level with load) towed it just fine... I'm concerned the raptor might not manage this.

Sorry to thread jack.
 

Bullishone

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Yeah it does, and I have an adjustable hitch. Basically the boat just rests on the hitch, which is how you want your trailer to balance.

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Reptar

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I'm confused why you bought a Raptor.

Well it is also a truck, so maybe he bought a Raptor because he wanted an offroad capable vehicle that could also do truck stuff, like haul and tow, which they can do too ya know.

Sounds like you should have bought an F250, not a Raptor.

If you're only towing occasionally, and within the tow ratings of the Raptor, there's really not a need to buy an F250. The F250 will tow better of course, but if the tongue weight is setup properly and the payload within ratings, there's no problems towing with a Raptor.

I was goin by trailer specs re tongue weight.
The holding tanks are behind axles of trailer and when loaded with the bikes, it really is pretty nuetral, but Ill get a true weight on the front now.
Ive got a 20 ft seedoo/factory trailer and it sags the truck just as much?

I bought this truck cause I like the small footprint and towcapacity shown on specs..AND about same gas milage the Taco was giving 15-18mpg

So you were just going off the tongue weight that the trailer says it has? That's nowhere near accurate if you load the front half of the trailer with all the heavy stuff and nothing in the back end. Definitely need to scale it. I'd put money on it that it's way more tongue weight than you think. I can stick 500+ lbs of engine and transmission and everything else in the bed of my truck and it doesn't squat anywhere near that bad.

Im with you. I would never buy a pickup that isnt capable of doing basic towing. It is rated for 8000lbs, so it will be fine. Should be an easy upgrade to get some 2.5 bump stops or get some basic air bags. I plan to do the same if 300lbs of tongue weight makes this thing sag. I tow a snowmobile trailer in winter and several dirt bikes in summer. You dont need an F250 to do what you want to do.

---------- Post added at 10:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:28 PM ----------



nice boat, I use to have a G23. Loved it. How well does your raptor tow the G21?

300 lbs of tongue weight is not going to make the *** end sag that much. Have 2 full grown adults stand on the rear bumper, that'll be a quick easy idea of what ~400 lbs of tongue weight would look like for suspension sag. The truck is NOT going to drag *** like that
 

Jack_Toepfer

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Harassing a guy for doing truck stuff with his truck... maybe you guys can put your ***** back in your pants?

For the guy who doesn't have any tongue weight?!?! You should have 10-15% tongue weight. So, HUNDREDS of pounds of tongue weight. The trailer should not be "balanced" that is deadly.

A 3500lb trailer should have about 500lbs of tongue weight. I would recommend a weight distributing hitch before I recommended air bags.
Bags will level the truck, but a wdh will level the load. Bags can hide too much tongue weight and make the front end "float" a little. The wdh makes the load feel like it is more balanced to the truck and less like it is hanging a foot off of the bumper. Bags and wdh is very tough to do right, and nobody should ever need both.
I would, however, recommend bags if you were towing a gooseneck or a 5th wheel to help with the pin weight, which should be 15-20%... because you cannot use a wdh with a bed mounted hitch. So the bags are simply leveling the truck.

I hope this helped a little, I know it helped more than the guys telling you to stick to the sand box and not use your truck for its intended purpose.


Dane - you have a weight distribution hitch in that picture. I wouldn't call it a fair comparison between a Gen1 with a wdh and a Gen2 without. His truck will never sit like that without help. Your truck probably has 800lbs of tongue weight, but it is being distributed to the front end as well. That is why your truck sits level, steers and brakes like it should, and tows like a freight train.


FWIW - I can't wait for TFL to tow 8k up the gauntlet with this thing and show what it's capable of. Going to surprise some people I'm sure.
 
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ZaneMasterX

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This is a simple problem...You have way too much tongue weight and by the sounds of it you have never actually measured your tongue weight with your trailer fully loaded. Go do that first then when you find out your ***** all out of wack you can come back and let us know you messed up.
 

t_j

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@Renomaan do yourself a favour and weight your trailer tongue and report back a real number:

faq118_ee.jpg

faq118_dd.jpg

You can use a bathroom scale and a box to measure tongue weight of smaller trailers. Place the coupler of the loaded trailer on the scale at normal towing height (Figure A). For heavier tongue weights, use the second method (Figure B). Be sure to perform these measurements on a level surface and with a leveled trailer.

To use the method in Figure B, follow these guidelines:

Always place the trailer tongue 1 foot from the pipe on the support brick
Multiply the reading on the scale by the total distance between the 2 support pipes
Use a brick that is the same thickness as the scale so that the 2 x 4 is level when you weigh your trailer

For example, if the distance between the trailer tongue and the pipe on the scale is 2 feet and the distance between the trailer tongue and the pipe on the support brick is 1 foot, then you would multiply the reading on the scale by 3 to get the tongue weight. If the distance between the trailer tongue and the pipe on the scale is 3 feet and the distance between the trailer tongue and the pipe on the support brick is 1 foot, then you would multiply the reading on the scale by 4 to get the tongue weight.

Original page: https://www.etrailer.com/faq-how-to-determine-trailer-tongue-weight.aspx
 
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Renomaan

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Custom Airbag install on GEN2

I bought a tongue weight scale and my trailer is at 850 pounds, I also had about 400 pounds of wood in the bed, 4 people in the truck and about 200 pounds of supplies in the trailer at time of worst pic showing compression. Even still! I hauled this same rig in addition to two large kayaks on the thule rack on a smaller Tacoma for over 2000 miles without issue.

That said, I installed some bags, had to make my own mounts as noone has a set for the Raptor yet.

From what Ive read the 014 bags were cylindrical in design and always kept upward pressure which caused bad ride and guys took them off. They also limited the suspension drop on jumping (which I don't do). I used Bellows style bags.

I came up with a pretty decent design using RideRite bags, which have internal Jounce bumpers so you can run them at 0 pressure. I used centering cups so when the suspension is unloaded the bottom of the bag isnt attached (actually has about 8 inches from bott of bag to furthest axle drop point), when the truck is loaded, the bottom of the bags sit and center in the cups. I placed the compressor components behind the front fender above the mudskirt, fit great! So far works great! I need to do a few more measurements and dry runs with various loads before I do a write up but here are a few pics> Note pic of truck level , the bags have 10 psi in them. The new bags jounce position reduce travel only by 3" from where old jounce bottomed out.-as said-future write up coming.

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bag3.JPG

bag2.JPG

bag1.JPG

comp.JPG

sideview.JPG

level.JPG
 

ovrlnd

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So, you were 750lbs+ over the payload limit and you created this thread to complain about sag.

And to think I wondered why the Gen 1 crowd is so tired about people asking about towing.
 
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