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Upgraded Towing Capacity from the Converter ?
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I’ll repeat what Prevost has stressed often. We can tow quite nicely because a straight line pull is not their concern.
But they get really concerned when the tongue weight limit is exceeded because the structure that carries the weight was never designed to do that. Prevost has stated that the stress cracking that occurs when folks exceed the 1500 pound limit is something they will not repair. They do not want to bear any responsibility for the repair or further damage. From my perspective the greatest danger is that most of the resulting damage is not going to be visibile and that should scare everyone into observing the limits.
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Prob be a good subject. Ron Walker -Davey have very nice rigs that I know of. Doing it Rite. Like poster said loading-weight transfer-hitch/tounge angle all things that need to be considered. Don’t let a trailer flip your bus or push you thru a stop light/school bus. Extreme? only has to happen once.
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DKO, thanks for chiming in, I read your cradle swap thread on another forum, thanks for clarifying the weights!
Thanks all for the input, it is appreciated, I want to run this really safe and smooth. My lable is 20k/1500 at 6.5 inches. Looking at a few different trailers right now, but 18K will be the very max and that will be for partial trips, only about half my mileage will be loaded and not all of that to capacity.
I will be purchasing a tongue weight hitch this week…and after looking at more XL2’s I see my hitch is standard Prevost kit…and by the looks of it all saw little use.
With the bus in the air last night got a great oppurtiunity to have a good look at the stucture and how it is all put together and whats what….really informative.
One thing I am looking at is an air safe hitch, seems to be good reviews on other forums.
airsafehitches.com
Interestlingly they sell a 2″ one that is rated at 20K…only drawback seems to be it puts a bit further back at 8.5″
not sure how much it will save both bus and trailer from abuse, but some I am sure…I run a cody cushion airbag setup on my gooseneck right now and it helps alot.
Once I get it all sorted I will report back, but average trailer load probably going to be about 15k, all will depend on if I get the aluminum trailer I want or a heavier steel one…..to be continued!
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The concerns as expressed by Prevost was the vertical loads on the hitch are what damages and stresses the frame. That is why the distance from the bumper is a critical part of the limitations. If the loads were static there would likely be little concern, but the loads increase substantially when crossing a swail type depression in an otherwise flat highway.
Almost all of us have gone over a depression in the highway that tends to bottom our the driver’s air seat and the suspension and then just as quickly springs us back up into the air. The hitch at the other end of the coach experiences the same type of forces with there being no loads except normal tongue weight, then substantial positive loads on the hitch followed by large negative loads. The bus is acting like a big rocking horse and when those strong positive loads are applied the frame can be over stressed.
When we have had those types of bumps I am always waiting to head the air bags pop because as the front goes over the depression and then comes right back out of it everything seems to compress to the limits. That same thing is happening at the hitch, only it is likely amplified because the rear overhang is well beyond the pivot point which is somewhere in the vicinity of the tag and drive axles.
But even within the limits I would suggest everyone really give serious consideration to towing a trailer. They are a pain to deal with in a lot of campgrounds. Some don’t even want them in the campground proper, but parked remotely. As Prevost owners we also are pack rats. If we have a space we fill it. While our intentions may be pure, it usually doesn’t take long before we have stuff jammed in every nook and cranny. I’m in a 12 step program now to try to recover from needing to bring too much stuff. If I had a trailer it wouldn’t be long before it was overloaded.
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Jon, lots of good info as always….I am by far not the average Prevost owner….you will never find me in an RV park…more like rest area, Flying J and Walmart and then back down the road!! I am gonna be keeping a real close eye on things, but I think within the limits and a solid maintenance plan this thing should be pretty stout.
Gonna get it on a scale tomorrow I think with a full water and fuel load.
Jon, good luck with that 12 step program….I jettisoned a bunch of stuff a few years ago when I went full time on the road, very liberating…what I didnt sell on craigslist I donated or trashed, less stuff I had, easier things became….my trailer needs are for work, Prevost space and comfort are for me, but not gonna fill it up with a bunch of crap!
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I just had an epiphany……..All this time I have been breaking Tom’s chops because he trades coaches so often. In fact he is way beyond all of us. The longer we own a coach, the more we jam in the coach. But if we trade coaches every year it is like a self imposed house cleaning.
Brilliant way to thin out the excess. The last two times we emptied coaches out we had so much stuff it couldn’t all fit back in the newest coach. Yet I am sure that by now we have reached that point again so if we were to trade coaches it would be a self imposed house cleaning.
And all this time Tom has never told us the real reason he trades coaches, but now we know.
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But now with no bus air, he has more room for even more crap !
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And let’s not forget those tall bays.
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Happily, I know nothing about trailers but let me throw this out there. Is a trailer converter dolly a possibility? Granted, you’ll need a midsize capacity, but you may be able to have one custom made: Wabash Trailer Converter Dolly
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Interesting stuff here; although, much of it is no longer available.
Towing 101, not necessarily for you g-man, but for the rest of us! 🙂
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Hate to be a wet blanket but I bought a product similar to the airsafehitch (not sure of brand) about 10 years ago for use on my 1990 Marathon pulling a 12,000# gross toybox. The product basically disintegrated on one trip from Arizona in Oklahoma. The 10,000# hitch was also cracked at that time and I had it welded. I think I went through a couple hitches on that bus until I bought a new one and had it reinforced prior to installation. I inspected the engine cradle for damage regularly and never found any. I never noticed any problems with stress fatigue in the upper rear structure but I never looked.
The 10,000# hitch on my current coach appeared to be a little better design but the holes where the pin goes through were egg shaped when I acquired the coach at 47,000 miles. I purchased a new hitch at that time and had the holes reinforced before installation. It’s now been quite a while and seems to be holding up well although I lubricate the holes and the ball regularly. My current trailer is the type in the article pictured built by Competitive with the front weight bearing axle. Trailer is about 11,000# empty (a new aluminum one would probably be somewhat less) and I gross up to about 20,000#. I don’t believe the trailer pulls as smoothly as a conventional trailer (but I have no experience pulling a conventional trailer of this weight) but everything seems to be holding up well. The major drawback with this trailer is that everytime I stop, I have to explain how it works to the gathering crowd.
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It’s impressive that Prevost’s been able to achieve what they have in terms of towing and tongue load. My previous bus, a 2002 Blue Bird Wanderlodge LXi, was only capable of pulling 10000 lbs with a max tongue weight of 1000 lbs. My H3 is rated for 20,000 lbs with a max tongue weight of 1500. We all know that Blue Bird’s use a central c-channel backbone and we often think of this as being the strongest approach to pulling, but my H3 handily beats the capability of my Wanderlodge. Even tractor’s with semi-trailers aren’t asked to do what our buses do in terms of towing. While they win hands down in the pulling contest, with 60000 lbs of capacity, they have no cantelevered load; i.e., no bending moment – there is no tongue! 🙂 If I needed to pull this kind of weight I’d take joelselman’s approach.
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Not showing a picture of a burned coach, but showing how little structure actually handles the vertical loading.
The two diagonal braces appear to be carrying most of the vertical loading of the engine cradle that all our hitches are attached to.
Think about that the next time your nose heavy trailer or motorcycle carrier is on the rear of the bus and you hit the kind of depression in the road that bottoms out your seat or front end. The same thing is happening at the rear. The cradle is essentially cantilevered off the tag / drive axle structure with the two diagonals assisting.
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I pull a 26 foot trailer measured from front of tongue to back bumper it’s weight is 8300 and 750 to 900 tongue weight 40 to 50 thousand miles every year my hitch is 20,000 total plus 1500 tongue rating I would not want to pull anything bigger than that and that weight is loaded , just my thoughts
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A few years ago I followed a friend that was towing about a 26′ Wellcraft speed boat on a tandam axel trailer to Ticfaw, La. on Hwy 49 down through Mississippi.
The hwy is like an interstate but a state highway.
Well about half way there the tongue on the trailer allmost broke in have from the bus bouncing up and down on the suspension. I mean it looked like it was going up and down about a foot. I called on the cell phone for him to pull in some where and check the trailer, sure nough it was about to completely break. All thel welds had cracked and the tongue was bent about 5 or 10 degrees. Lucky we stopped.
He was pulling it with a 98 45′ Vision conversion. I don’t know if it needed shocks or what but it was really moving up and down pretty good. I guess the force of the down ward motion was just too much.
I know from the drivers seat I don’t feel anything like this in my bus.
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