17 replies to this topic

[Cpt Davenport]

All the weight hanging off behind the rear axle??? Who wouldn’t say oh what the heck, let’s stick a motorcycle back there as well!?!!!!!! Yikes! I think Mopar will win this one. Next time 5500.

[Cpt Davenport]

I actually saw this guy parked down at the Santa Cruz harbor campground right before Christmas. That camper is HUGE!!!!! I was very surprised when I saw it sitting on the 3500. When they had the slide outs extended the thing was holding its own next to the big 5th wheels. Crazy.

[craig333]

Trusting the dealers to have his best interest at heart was his mistake though I can understand thinking they knew what they were talking about. 

[Taku]

seems to be a trend of folks insisting on putting full size campers on short bed trucks and then having issues. I also wonder how fast some folks drive on rough roads with campers and eventually have serious structural failures of either the truck or camper. Also reminds me of a post on Expedition Portal a while ago where someone had a brand new Colorado, was pulling a trailer and bent the truck frame while claiming he was only going 10 mph when he hit a bump in the road!

[tbaxter]

Thanks for sharing.

[kmacafee]

"and both the Ram dealer and the camper company where we bought it said it was the perfect truck,"  Of course they did -- they want to sell campers and trucks.  I just got back from Baja and the roads there are no worse than what exists in many parts of the US.  As many have already said, too much weight behind the rear axle.

[Tom n N]

Probably preaching to the choir here but just as important as total load capacity is capacity of each axle. When I set up my current rig I went to the local truck scale and weighed not only the total (fully loaded), but also just as important, weighed each axle separately. Glad I did, as after 20 years of bad roads everything is still in one piece. When I see the current practice of strapping a bunch of junk on the back of an already overloaded rig I just shake my head and hope they don’t venture further than AAA will go.

[Mthomas]

Point of info, 4th and probably 5th gen rams are having an issue with the frame. FWC”s test, demo rig suffered a broken frame at less than 60k miles as I recalll about 1-2 years ago. 
 

there are a ton of what appear to be grossly overloaded TCls running around and not failing. I wonder if FCA and maybe some others are cutting some corners in the design, spec, and mfg area.