After driving around a bit with the Timbrens and Goosebox, and testing various configurations, I determined that the Timbrens are responsible for the undesirable qualities in the ride. They’re boxed back up and going to UPS on Monday. I’m losing a total of $7 for the return label, which sounds reasonable.
While we have some minor squat without them, the Timbrens essentially transfer all forces from the road into the frame in the truck and that results in a very harsh ride. I really wanted to like them, but in practice they are not the progressive spring they advertise, but just an ordinary rubber block you wedge between your axle and frame.
Being that this truck is a 2019, with some major changes for the year, there aren’t many options that are verified to fit at the moment. I’ll probably end up with one of the most popular solutions on the market – Air Lift Ultimate 5000 air bags, which I ran on both my F-150 and my Chevrolet prior to installing the Kelderman. They have yet to verify fitment for this year model, and I don’t believe it will fit without modification due to the changes to the rear axle – so I’m going to hold off on that purchase.
I follow the Keystone Alpine Owner’s Group on Facebook, and a couple weeks ago someone posted that they painted their AC covers white. As all the Keystone Alpine AC covers are black, that started a trend where quite a few people did it and reported better cooling, less compressor cycling, and discussing the prospect of a longer life for the AC units. I figure for $12 in paint, this is worth a try.
This paint applied easily, and one can per AC unit just about did it. I would have preferred a third can for a little thicker coat, but will just do that in the future if it is needed.Side view with AC units visible.
The rear of the truck is sitting level, or slightly higher than the front.The Timbrens are firmly engaged when the trailer is loaded onto the truck.
I changed a too much up at once here, with the Timbrens and Goosebox at the same time. There are some changes in the loaded ride, but I’m not sure which is responsible. I suspect that the air pressure in the hitch is the real culprit, but these may be the cause. With so many happy users though, I doubt it.
I received the goosebox a few days ago, and had them drop the pallet directly into the bed of the truck. From there, I tilted up the box and had Kelly pull the pallet out from under it, then turned it on its side, cut out the bottom of the box, and flipped it over so that it landed and secured itself on the ball. That made it easy enough to maneuver. I locked it down with a ratcheting tie down and attached the safety chains.
Today I took it to the RV, propped the back of the pin box up on leveling blocks, and backed under the wings. While I expected to make quick work of this using the hydraulic levelers on the front of the RV, it took close to an hour of shuffling to get everything lined up right and configured how I wanted it.
Back viewFront view
I found that I could get a full 90° lock, but that is the absolute limit, interestingly due to the reach of the safety chains.
It gives quite a bit more space around the back and side of the truck, which was surprising. Enough, actually, that I may eventually be able to get a wrap-around rear bumper for ease of access into the bed.
The amount of space around the truck when at 90°.
Towing with the Goosebox for the first time was uneventful. We made it home without any issues, and the ride was relatively smooth. There was a little but of unexpected discomfort on a bumpy 60mph stretch, but I suspect it may be the Timbrens, the air pressure, or possibly just something to get used to. On the flip side, it felt very nice at slower speeds, and going around corners at speed, without feeling like the trailer is trying to push past you. And it is silent – a nice change from the groaning that the friction-based sidewinder emits.
I think this is going to work out well for us, once we get a few small details worked out. I plan to tackle those this weekend.
I noticed that, when I loaded up the trailer the other day, the rear of the new truck squats a little more than I would like. That’s fairly typical – these trucks are fine tuned to be a compromise between ride quality and hauling capability, and they do tend to squat a bit if you put a heavy load on them.
Ram offers an option for rear air ride with auto-leveling, which is similar to the Kelderman 2-stage system as it still retains a leaf. That gives you the same ride level regardless of the load in the truck, and is their attempt to address the need for compromise. Both fortunately and unfortunately, this truck did not come with it. I actually did not want it – as it severely limits aftermarket applications on the truck, and you can’t even buy non-Mopar shocks for it. Unfortunately, without it, our trailer is enough to put a little more squat than I would like on the truck.
Rear is about 1/2″ lower than the front, and that is without being fully loaded.
There is a massive aftermarket dedicated solely to addressing this scenario – since the trucks have to tailor to a wide range of buyers, with a wide range of usage/application, the aftermarket does too. I’ve run air bags and StableLoads in the past, with good results, and went so far as a Kelderman 4-Link full air ride on the old truck. Having run traditional air bags, I did not want to go that route again and StableLoads doesn’t provide lowers for the 2019 model year due to an atypical lower overload design.
I ended up ordering the Timbren SES, which is a very simple solution that replaces the factory bump stops with progressive rubber springs providing up to 8600lbs of support. The install was very quick and straightforward, and did not require lifting the truck. I had them out of the box and installed in less than half an hour.
The kit comes with a couple of optional spacers. For the best unloaded ride quality, you want 1/2″ to 1-1/2″ between the axle and the rubber springs. In my case, that meant omitting the spacers and using the shorter pair of the included 9/16″ head bolts.
Since these replace the factory bump stops, the first step is to remove them using a 5/8″ socket. They are held in place by two bolts. Then, thread the rearmost bolt back in, leaving enough gap for the 1/4″ thick plate of the Timbren bracket to fit through.
I had some issues getting the springs tightened to the brackets, so I dropped them into a vice to get a sufficient lock on them.
Then, simply bolt slide the Timbren assemblies into place and bolt them in. You will need to use a 5/8″ closed-end wrench on the rear bolt you pre-threaded into the mounting bracket on the frame, and just a socket on the other side.
With this installation, the unloaded ride should be unaffected because the axle does not come in contact with the rubber spring. However, when the trailer is on the truck the gap will close and it will begin to provide resistance. The idea is to reduce the squat of the truck and provide better handling by providing additional contact points and spreading out the load.
As posted here, we recently upgraded from a 10,000# GVWR (door jamb) truck to a 14,000# DRW to pull our 15,500# GVWR 5er. I didn’t realize at the time, but yesterday when I received the tags it occurred to me that I’m now at 29,500 combined GVWR, which requires me to obtain a Class A Exempt license.
Except that the registration paperwork on my truck shows that the dealer registered it for 10,200#, which puts me at 25,700#, or just under the threshold. However, that does put me back into the legally overweight territory if they use that number. In a perfect world, I’d point to this for licensing, and point to the door jamb when weighed – but you can’t always have your cake and eat it, too. I think it may actually be up to interpretation and am getting varying answers depending on who I talk to.
I’ll probably err on the cautious side and get the Class A Exempt license. That involves taking a 20-question written test, followed by a practical skills test in the rig with someone from the DMV in the passenger seat. I’m pretty confident in my skills, but am going to practice a bit in a parking lot with some cones to make sure I can nail all the backing maneuvers they can throw at me the first time, without having any points docked.
Between six tires on the truck, four tires on the RV, spares, the air bag in the pin box, bicycle and tricycle tires, and water inflatables, we use compressed air quite often. And due to the pressure required by the RV tires, we need a pretty good sized compressor with a 100% duty cycle at over 100PSI. Our old truck had an on-board Viair 444C compressor to work with the Kelderman air ride suspension, and I tapped into the air tank to supply auxiliary air as needed.
The air system in my old truck – a bit more complex than this install needs to be.
This truck doesn’t have air suspension, but Viair makes the 450P-RV, which is more or less the same compressor rigged up as a portable, with an automatic shutoff.
Viair also makes actual on-board air systems for trucks, but they all have air tanks, and I don’t want to dedicate the room for a tank on this truck that will not provide any benefit for my usage. They rely on a pressure switch on the tank with a relay to shut off the air compressor, so they’re not configured for use without a tank. As such, I decided to permanently mount a 450P-RV in my toolbox, hard wired to Aux 6 in the cab, and swap out the air outlet to a quick connect on the outside of the toolbox. Now I have fully functional on board air, without a tank, in a neat little package that is perfect for airing up tires.
I was able to mount the compressor with minimal modification, to the inside of the toolbox. This is also where I had the 444C mounted on my old truck.
Lets hope I never have to pull that compressor. Due to the clearance with the compressor brackets, and the clearance between the toolbox and bed, and the clearance to the bottom bolts when installed in the box, It was close to impossible to get in and might be actually impossible to get out without pulling the whole toolbox up. I used bolts with nyloc nuts to fasten it, so unless it fails, it won’t be going anywhere.
I ran the output to a quick connect on the outside of the toolbox, so I can access it with the lid closed and locked.
I like the hose two piece hose that comes with the 450P-RV kit, so I decided to keep it instead of the hose I’ve been using. In this case, I had to swap the end out on one of the hose from female to male, because I wanted a female coupler on the outside of the toolbox.
I love these upfitter switches. This one I tied into Aux 2, which I rigged up to power a 40A relay that transfers power directly to the battery. Ram did a much better job than GM of giving you options to tap power from the battery, as well.
We currently use a Reese Sidewinder pin box with a Curt A16 hitch. The Reese Sidewinder is designed to address the turning limitations you have with short bed trucks, and isn’t really designed for use in a long bed. It is compatible with a long bed truck and does slightly reduce the turning radius, but adds a lot of complexity and maintenance to the experience.
With a traditional pin box, you have a rigid connection from the trailer frame all the way to the connection point on the truck, and turning occurs at the connection point. With a short bed truck, this can result in the trailer hitting the cab in sharp turns because the trailer is too close to the truck. The Sidewinder uses a wedge to lock out this rotation – something that jams into the hitch head and has to resist the momentum to turn – and uses Teflon plates on a turret to rotate under the nose of the fifth wheel, where usually you would have a rigid connection. This moves the pivot point 22″ back, while keeping the connection point and weight over the rear axle. It’s a slick solution to a serious problem, when needed. In addition to a very heavy pin box, due to the turret and the reinforcement to handle the forces at play, you still need to have a heavy traditional hitch in the bed of the truck.
The Sidewinder works by turning independently of the trailer.
As mentioned, you can use one with a long bed, but since the hitch is already so much further from the cab the benefits are minimal. You end up with a slightly closer tracking trailer, which can be a great thing, but the majority of people tow day in and day out with traditional fifth wheel hitches.
I liked the idea of the tighter turning radius and moved ours over. It was also the cheapest up front thing to do – I had most of the components on hand. The more I thought about it, though, the less determined I was that I made the correct decision. The Sidewinder is a slick solution, but has some notable downsides:
Noisy – the design relies on friction, and it lets you know it
Feel – even with the AirBorne (air ride) option, you feel some of that friction, especially at low speeds
Handling – because the pivot point is 22″ behind the axle of the truck, during a quick turn you can feel the trailer inertia pushing sideways behind the hitch. Given that this is fairly distant from the axle, it does have a noticeable amount of leverage on the truck and can feel like the rear axle of the truck is going to break free and move sideways. I don’t think this has ever been dangerous for us, but I’ve adjusted my driving accordingly – occasionally at the expense of holding up traffic. It has been uncomfortable on a couple occasions.
Maintenance – before every trip you are supposed to check the torque on the turret bolts. I’ve rarely seen them loosen up, but carry a torque wrench in the truck and am constantly checking them. Additionally, you have to lubricate the teflon plates all the time if you want to keep the noise and friction down. And the biggest thing is that you have to drop the 175lb pinbox from the trailer, disassemble and lubricate it “seasonally”. I also had to add air to the air bag almost every time I moved it.
Weight – at 175lbs for the pin box, it weighs about 100lbs more than the Lippert 1621 most trailers come with, and you have to use a conventional hitch (100+lbs) fixed in the bed of your truck. This takes away payload – not really an issue with the DRW, but a major issue on an SRW, and one of the contributing reasons we went chasing good money after bad to make that truck work.
You still have to keep a large, heavy hitch in your truck bed.
These are all things I was willing to put up with on a short bed, now that I don’t need to, I decided that I won’t. The Reese Sidewinder, in-bed hitch, and adapter was not cheap. Most of the cost was in the pin box itself, but to go out and buy an identical setup would run around $2500. That should hold some value on the used market, say at least half of new. That gives us some money to play with and can be used to eventually offset the costs of a new setup.
We’ve used several hitches over the years, buying and selling and haggling with others, and have experienced quite a few designs. By far, our favorite hitch to date was the TrailerSaver BD3. The BD3 is an air-ride hitch, where the air bags are on the hitch itself rather than the pin box. It rides extremely smooth, the hitch head is highly articulative, has a great automatic latch system and huge, tight tolerance jaws. It was also insanely expensive and there is no way I’m investing in a new one. I looked around on Craigslist and nearly bought one, but decided again, to look at my options.
240lbs as pictured above.
Gooseneck adapters are typically frowned upon for fifth wheels because they exert a lot more force on the trailer than a fifth wheel hitch would. Reese provides a solution called the Goosebox, which is the only supported solution by our frame manufacturer, Lippert. They’ll even honor the warranty with it, though our trailer is now well out of factory warranty. It works a bit differently than in that it is a complete pin box and not an adapter, and distributes those forces over a larger connection area as well as utilizes shock absorbers and air to mitigate them. It still probably exerts more force on the trailer than a fixed pin box and hitch, but I doubt any more than the Sidewinder we are using now.
The Goosebox is not without some downsides:
Difficult to connect
Additional forces on the trailer frame, as described above
Safety chains are required by most state laws
On the flip side, they have some really nice benefits:
Clean truck bed when not attached to the truck
Smooth and quiet ride
Low maintenance (never requiring removal from trailer)
The major con for most people would be hooking up – you have to be directly under the ball. Since we have the cargo cam in our truck, we have a direct visual of the ball and should be able to hit it every time. I’ve also gotten pretty precise at backing over the years and don’t expect it to be an issue.
The Goosebox comes in a couple sizes. Our trailer has a gross weight of 15,500#, so we can get away with the 16,000# model in theory. All of our current gear is rated for 16,000# and 3,200# tongue weight. While I don’t have weights on hand, I suspect we’re under on the first number but at or over on the second.
Being that we’ve not had issues with the 16K/3.2K gear I started out looking at the same for the Goosebox. Ultimately, I decided to order the 20K version with 4,000# pin capacity to make sure we’re not overloading the pin. With a 300lb generator, 110lbs of propane, 100lbs of batteries, and 160lbs of washer/dryer right around the pin on our RV with a dry hitch weight of 2,485# we’re easily pushing north of 3,200# once we add in other gear.
With the Goosebox, the bulk of the hitching gear remains with the trailer. It looks like this (not my truck):
Virtually nothing is left in the bed once the trailer is unhooked. What is left can be removed in a matter of seconds.
All that remains in the truck once the trailer is removed is a 2-5/8″ hitch ball, which due to the factory tow prep on our Ram, can be removed in about 10 seconds and stored virtually anywhere. With no trailer in the truck, there is no hitch, and no fuss. The truck bed is freed up for storage and transport like it should be. The ride should be really nice from everything I’ve read as there is no slop in a ball connection and the assembly uses shock absorbers and air for dampening. Turning shouldn’t be an issue, since we’ll be using our long bed truck as designed.
I’m not sure when we’ll get this in, but I’m excited to try it out. It ran less than $1500 for the whole outfit, including the ball and safety chain setup, and I anticipate making most if not all of that money back by selling the Sidewinder pin box, Curt A16 hitch, and B&W Patriot hitch that will soon be gathering dust in the garage.
When we purchased our Ram, it came with dealer mud flaps on it.
Dealer mud flaps
When we purchase a vehicle, our relationship with that dealer is essentially over. I’ve never gone back to the dealer I’ve purchased a vehicle from for service, usually opting for whatever dealer is closest to me at that time. Nor have I revisited for a second purchase – maybe that will change in the future if there are ever any stand out experiences. Since I’ve never had an overwhelmingly positive experience with a car dealer, I can’t imagine wanting to drive around providing free advertising for them.
In this particular case the experience wasn’t bad, but it took longer than it should have and the offer in person wasn’t the same that had been discussed on the phone, causing quite a bit of frustration and delay while we argued them back down to where we wanted. Typical dealership hassles, in my experience.
One of the first things I did was pull those mud flaps off the truck and order the OE ones from an online dealer. The part number for mud flaps wasn’t published yet for 2019 trucks, so I ordered the ones slated for 2010-2018, under the impression they should be the same. Part number 82215777AB, in case anyone is here looking for it.
It turns out that none of the mounting holes line up between year models, so I used the ones I removed from the dealer as a template to sort of get these to fit. They’re a larger size and much thicker and heavier than the ones that came with the truck, so using those as a template was not ideal. After a little experimentation, I ended up with the above fitment on both sides.
We both think they are a large improvement over the dealer-installed ones and fit pretty well. I considered running without them, but was worried about the paint behind the rear wheels and they’re required on DRW vehicles by many state laws.
We decided to keep using the Reese Sidewinder with the new truck even though we no longer need it with a long bed. I put the trailer on the truck and snapped this photo of it at 90°. The trailer tracks closely and turning is supposed to be sharper with the sidewinder than if it were pivoting at the hitch, and I do believe this to be the case. I was a little worried about clearance with the dually fenders in this configuration but it doesn’t appear to be anything to worry about. At some point I may lock out the pin box and measure the distances for actual comparison.
