Quote:
Originally Posted by laj
Think you’ve been doing it long enough you probably wrote the book on it, and got it completely figured out. [emoji41][emoji41]
|
Thanks Larry, but I think it's a little like my brother says; "even a blind hog will find an acorn once in a while".
I will say the '96 Dodge Cummins 2500 equipped with overloads and airbags, carried the "new to us" 3k + lb camper beautifully at mostly 70-75 mph from where we bought it in Newport, WA to where we live in Phoenix, OR. No mismatched, overloaded, lumbering rig there. The tires seemed to do fine with 80 psi, and with about 50 in the bags the rig seemed plenty stable to me. I'll run it across the scales the first time it is loaded for a trip to see how close to the tires rated capacity the actual weight is.
Something I've often thought about, especially with the old TC that was always overloaded, and even with the best tires was close to their max carrying capacity on the rear, is that most roads are crowned which places more weight on the "downhill" tire. Also, our Caribou didn't weigh the same amount on one side as it did on the other, so it would seem that even if the total carrying capacity of both tires wasn't exceeded, one may have been.
Even at that, there were only two times in 23 years and 200k miles that I had a problem with tires on that rig. Both times were through a series of events that placed an unsuitable tire on the overloaded rear axle. One resulted in a blowout at 60 mph with the Tracker in tow because I was forced to use the 15+ year old spare that came with the truck when it was new. Now I pick the best used tire from the 4 being replaced each time I buy new tires and it becomes the spare. The other time the tread just separated from the casing which held air until I stopped. Both were pretty much "non events" as far as control of the vehicle was concerned, but all that rubber flying about was a concern for the drivers behind me. After stopping I got all the big pieces off the road.
I'm pretty much in the Old-Bisquit camp about limiting factors too. I don't remember paying a lot of attention to numbers back in the '70s and '80s. As long as it worked it was good to go. There were usually modifications to help that along. The '96 Dodge has already been suitably modified, IMHO.
I guess it all comes down to what a person is comfortable with.
Steve