I posted about my Timbren install, so here are the results.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
On the flip side, they have some really nice benefits:
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):
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.
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.
I finally received the new windshield mount for my Garmin Dash Cam 35 (the adhesive is permanent, so I had to order a new mount for the new truck) and probed out various power sources to find the best place to install.
The 12v lead to the mirror is tied to the ACC/ON ignition positions, making it ideal for this application. I spliced a tee into it, along with a 5A inline fuse, and a 12V to 5V USB converter from Amazon that is tucked into the mirror housing. This allowed for a tidy, almost factory look.
I received and installed both the aux tank/toolbox combo and the hitch adapter yesterday.
The aux tank is a gravity based unit that is intended to feed from the bottom of the tank directly into the fuel filler neck. I used that configuration on my old truck, but decided to modify it a bit on the new one. I ordered various fittings, a filter, a small 12V pump and solenoid. The solenoid I received was the wrong one, but after some testing it turns out the pump will not flow anything unless it is on, so it acts as one. Perfect.
I had to cut into the factory filler neck and install a tee. Unlike GM, Ram uses a metal filler neck with little working room so this was more of a task than anticipated. I ended up getting away with only one cut since the neck already fits into a boot at one end, and I made that cut using a raw hacksaw blade because I couldn’t fit the entire saw in there. I drilled a 3/4″ hole through the side of the bed to run the line from the tank through. This approach worked out fairly well because I was able to avoid getting debris into the fuel tank by cutting with the filler neck completely disconnected from the tank.
I plumbed the gravity feed at the bottom of the tank through the included ball valve, up into a hole I drilled in the back of the toolbox, and into the pump. Then I ran the pump output back out of the shroud and into a fuel filter/ water separator which I mounted on the side of the box. The output of the filter then runs into the tee in the filler neck. I added an external vent for the tank, which you can see sticking out the side.
This truck came with six upfitter switches. I decided to use Aux 1 to power the pump through an inline 5A fuse.
When I push the Aux 1 button, power is provided to the pump and the fuel is pulled from the aux tank, pushed through a filter, and then into the main tank. Since this is only a 2A pump I didn’t use a relay. It took about 10 minutes to go from half a tank to 3/4 tank watching the factory fuel gauge last night. Since there is no automatic cutoff and I removed the restrictive check valve (ball) from the tee included with the installation kit, there is a risk of overflowing if I don’t keep an eye on it while filling – but as far as I know, that is the only downside to this approach. I really like the flexibility of it and the fact that I’m able to properly filter the fuel and separate water from it before moving it to the main tank.
The hitch dropped in with little adjustment and should be ready to tow with.
For many years, I’ve known we were heavily overloaded when trailering our fifth wheel. I chased good money after bad, and spent near five figures strengthening up the suspension, wheels, and tires on my Chevrolet 2500HD to handle the load. And it did great, but in the end was still overweight if you looked at the legal numbers.
While that wasn’t a problem occasionally hobbling to various corners of the state we live in, it has kept us from visiting a handful of places. For example, the idea of going down the twisty entrance to Palo Duro Canyon in possibly inclement conditions had me worried about the stability of the rig, and kept us from spending Christmas there last year. It may not have been a real concern, but it’s a perceived concern, and enough to sideline us.
Another concern is just the legality of it – we were around 2,000lbs over GVWR on any given trip, possibly a touch more. If we were to ever be involved in an accident where insurance companies order weights, it could result in denial of coverage. Or possibly, depending on the state, legal issues. Ultimately this concern kept us close to home.
Realizing these concerns, and that we’re going to be going through many states and covering a lot of distance, we decided to at least test drive a few DRW trucks. I had some pretty major reservations about this because of all the money and time I had invested into my Chevrolet – that truck was everything I wanted in a truck, for the most part – and what I considered the best compromise of all things – off road capability, towing capability, and comfort.
Moving to a DRW means starting over with a clean slate, and potentially losing a lot of ability to leave the beaten path. It means having to learn how to maneuver an extra couple feet of truck with a sizable increase in width. It means a lot of things I really didn’t want to entertain for many years, leading up to the test drive. But the moment I jumped in and drove a black Ram Laramie Longhorn off a dealer lot for a test drive, I realized it was the right thing to do.
After driving that vehicle, we test drove a few others. We didn’t go looking for the Longhorn edition, but rather a trim level under it. Unfortunately after driving the Longhorn, the trim we went to look at felt cheap and undesirable by comparison. Then we went and drove a fully loaded, top of the line Chevrolet equivalent and left severely unimpressed. The new Ram they released for 2019 is just head and shoulders above its competition.
The black tester I mentioned didn’t have all the features we wanted, so we began working with the dealer to find another that checked off all the boxes. When they found one but we couldn’t agree on price, we started shopping around with some other dealers. In the end we drove a little over an hour away to pick up a Pearl White Laramie Longhorn 3500 DRW with the new 1000lb-ft Cummins HO and AISIN transmission options. It had all the other packages we wanted – Towing Technology Group, Safety group, 12″ Infotainment with upgraded sound, fifth wheel prep, all terrain tires – and a few things we weren’t shopping for, like a sunroof.
When we drove to the dealer, I was under the impression that the truck was white. I really didn’t want a white truck – I associate them with fleet trucks and, while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing – for what they are asking ($$$$$) I didn’t really want a truck that looked like part of a fleet. We sought out and bought a white truck with body-colored bumpers and door handles for Kelly because we thought it was the most feminine looking color combination on those trucks and avoided the fleet look thanks to the bumpers, and I thought that maybe the body colored bumpers would do the same here. Much to my surprise, the truck isn’t actually white, but a light cream color, which looks really nice.
For the best fuel mileage when towing a heavy trailer all over the country, we’ve decided to leave the front and rear bumpers of the truck, and the suspension and tires alone for the time being. I expect that in the future I’ll go back to body-color-matched Ranch Hand bumpers and the 255/80/17 tires, which are the largest that will fit without requiring a lift. That will not happen until the factory tires wear out – one of the reasons I chose this truck is because it came with the optional, hard to find, all-terrain tires instead of the common highway tires they order on all of these.
A must have is another auxiliary fuel tank/ toolbox combo. I had a RDS 51 gallon tank in chrome on my old truck, and ordered the 60 gallon version in black for this one. I decided to change the way I hook it into the truck, and will be using one of the upfitter switches in the dash to power an electric pump. No more getting out of the truck to manually mess with a ball valve. That should be shipping this week.
I’ve had roll-up tonneau covers on my last few trucks, but that interfered with the toolbox lid on my old truck. Instead of dealing with that interference again, I shopped around and ended up ordering the Fold-A-Cover G4 Elite. It’s a hard cover consisting of four panels that can be opened from either end of the truck bed, and folds up flat enough over the toolbox to tow a fifth wheel with. It’ll be really nice to have a locking bed for storing valuable equipment.
I really hate dealer advertising on vehicles, so I removed the rear mud flaps from the truck that had dealer logos on them. I was going to remove the logos but couldn’t get them off with acetone, paint thinner, heat gun, or a razor, and marred up the finish a bit too much when attempting 220-grid sandpaper. They felt cheap anyway, so I decided to order the RAM logo ones from the Mopar accessory store. They should be a nice upgrade.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how this truck handles the RV but have to wait for an adapter plate to come in so I can put my hitch in it. After doing a lot of research, I decided to keep the Sidewinder pinbox active for the turning radius improvements even though it is no longer necessary to make 90° turns.
This new truck is really exciting to us and we’re happy we did it. Even if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, it gives us peace of mind – I no longer have to worry about weights or the legal gray area I was messing with. And having a DRW/long bed opens up all sorts of possibilities for us in the future that weren’t on the table with the SRW we traded.
