InCommando wrote:
You really haven't got a clue about towing, have you? If you think you have to have an old-tech 454 ( which was killed off how many years ago?) to pull something as light as 7K you are grossly misinformed, either accidentally or on purpose.
A 4.6 F150 STARTS at 5,600 and goes to 11,300 with the 5.4. Ummm...you think that is a soccor mom gas motor? That much weight would break your CRD down like a kids little red wagon under a semi tire. a 4.7 Ram 1500 can go 6,300 while the 5.7 gets to 10,450. All in vehicles with much better towing characteritics due to wheel base, track width, and vehicle weight. Add an extended or crew cab and you have considerably more interior room as well.
Oh, as you apparently are not a car guy: all 4 engines listed are GAS. You must have tiny barns in your neck of the woods...
It is far easier to make up stuff than it is to tell the truth...
Nice attempt at a straw-man argument there, troll. I didn't "need" to use the 454 to pull that 7,000 weight, I used the 454 because it was in my RV which I was also driving the same route, and the CRD was being used for a different route then. You really should read and comprehend before you post that someone doesn't know anything about towing.
Also on the 454 - Old tech? Old tech is not always bad. The 454 is a PROVEN design, which is STILL USED in the RV industry. It has not been "killed off" as you tried to troll, proving that you yourself are not a "car guy" at all. There are far in excess of 40% of the RVs out on the road today being pulled around by a 454 engine in the front. It isn't the best design for mileage, certainly. But that only makes my point. In an RV however, people generally don't care about the mileage that much b/c it isn't being used to commute in. If an RV gets over 50k miles in its lifetime, it really is an unusual case. My RV has been (just with my family) from Florida to Seattle to Vermont to Florida to Las Vegas to Savannah... As well as several other trips. Almost all of those miles were towing.
Wheelbase has NOTHING to do with making a tow safe or not, ditto for the weight of the towing vehicle. Have you ever seen a mobile home being transported? The towing vehicle on those has the SAME WHEELBASE as the CRD. I know this for certain, b/c I had the opportunity to park next to one and compare. Those tractors don't use a 5th-wheel plate to pick up the mobile home, it is a BALL HITCH about the same distance behind the rear wheels as the CRD's ball is.
Are those unsafe on the highway? I'll answer your first argument right here: No, they have a pilot car with them b/c the mobile home exceeds the legal width and length and the law requires it. A pilot car can do NOTHING to assist in driving or towing a house that size.
The weight of a mobile home trailer (for its 60' length) is somewhere north of 30k lbs. You gonna tell me that a longer wheelbase is needed because of that weight? Kindly shut up when you don't know what you are talking about.
KNOWING HOW TO TOW prevents the knee-jerk responses like "need a longer wheelbase" or "need a crew cab to tow big weights" like that. The reality is, a trailer can safely exceed the weight of the towing vehicle by 2 or more times and STILL be safely pulled by someone experienced. What good do more interior seats do? Nothing. I don't need those, and I certainly don't want to pay $50k for a truck that will get 10mpg when pulling, and only 15mpg when not! All those engines you listed have those ratings mostly because of the FRAME of the vehicle, and that the marketing department decided to test (based on their target market) what the truck might be able to pull. Do they test for mileage under load? NO. Marketing doesn't care if the truck loses 50% of its mpg under load. You failed to mention the F350 diesel V8 in your attempt at trolling... It is rated to tow as much as 30k, and I have heard of people pulling over 40k with them. Can any gas engine do that? Nope.
Wheelbase is an excuse for improper loading of a trailer. Do you know WHY the "accepted logic" of a minimum 10% tongue weight is used in the USA? Because people here are DUMB and don't know how to properly load their trailers, and the manufacturers are afraid of lawsuits. The PROPER loading according to the laws of physics is BALANCED ON THE TRAILER AXLES. That means neither ball-heavy nor ball-light. This keeps the lines of force parallel to the ground, and puts the force directly through the ball, so that in a panic stop situation the trailer won't try to jackknife vertically (ball heavy) and lift the tractor's wheels off the ground. A longer wheelbase tractor would make that kind of failure less likely, however simply loading the trailer PROPERLY and securing the contents will eliminate it entirely. The European technique is for proper loading to a balanced trailer, and they pull all the time with small vehicles... So they might just know a thing or two about how to do this safely and properly. In all cases, having trailer brakes is also important for control, and a longer wheelbase won't help you diddly there.
Gas engines need insane gearing like 4.60 rear ends in order to pull heavy loads. Those gears don't go away when the load does, so the engine WILL NOT GET BETTER MILEAGE EVER because the engine has to spin too fast with that gearing to generate the HP (because it doesn't have the torque) to do heavy work. Gas engines also have to maintain a stoich air ratio all the time. Diesels have the natural ability to reduce their fuel to match the engine load at any given point. Yea, improper gearing can still make the engine spin much too fast, just ask International what they think of Ford's gas-engine-gearing on their diesel engines that made them burn up. But when properly geared, a slow-turning diesel can both pull massive loads (and get decent economy doing it) AND get much better economy than any gasser when not pulling.
I'm done with this argument however. All of the diesel jealousy being shown by the gassers who chose poorly is annoying. The gasser crowd should just follow their own advice that they shove at everyone else - Buy and pay for at least 3 separate vehicles so they can have one vehicle for each type of task. Get a SMART car for commuting, a Suburban for Suzy Soccermom to buy groceries, and a F350 XLT GAS version (B/c you know better than we do) for towing. We will be happy ourselves having ONE multi-purpose vehicle that can do all of that perfectly and with BETTER mileage than any other SUV out there... And still having the extra $75000 in our pockets.
Just try a diesel for a while, you will see we are right. Until then, I'm not feeding any more trolls, so just do everyone a favor and STFU.
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