Towing with the big D

[moparman]

What does everyone think of towing with a Durango?  I want to get a camper but I'm worried about the high rpms that will cause for the engine.

[hemiram]

The hemi won't push out that many rpms if yer set up correctly for towing.  Unless yer towing huge grades in the mountains or you're close or over your weight limit for towing the hemi will do fine.  Just try to keep the weight of the camper around 2k under the weight limit and you'll be able to pass cars with ease.

[95concord]

The D can tow anything the aspen can and that thing can tow a ton so i'd think you'd be fine.

[moparman]

I go through the black hills which isn't that bad.  My set up says that my D can tow 6600 lbs and the camper I'm thinking of towing would weight in at 3500 lbs dry and probably around 5500 lbs full of cargo.  I think that would be fine.

[diesel game]

You should be fine just make sure you get a trailer brake controller installed so your durango brakes aren't stopping all 10k lbs worth of vehicle your hauling around.

[no spoiler]

You might want to look into a load leveling hitch as well.  In general most trailers put about 20% of their total weight on the tongue, that's over 1k lbs for the back end of the durango to hold up.

[raman noodles]

20% is a bit high.  The numbers I read are 10-15%, should be easy towing for the durango.

[gman]

5500lbs doesn't require load leveling unless like half of that is on the tongue.  If that's the case then you have a problem with your trailer.

[06Hemiman]

Those load levelers are expensive too, but man they work.

[diesel game]

Those load levelers are expensive too, but man they work.

I've seen pics of a truck where they took off the back wheels with the load leveling hitch on it.  It didn't lower one bit after the hitch was set up right.

[squat]

That's crazy that it could hold up all the tongue weight of the trailer and the back end weight of the truck.

[06Hemiman]

I wonder if we had an engineering nerd here if he could explain that to me.  It doesn't seem physically possible to redistribute all that weight.

[moparman]

Well I went out looking at campers again.  The salesman told me that the campers they sell store the water/waste tanks at or behind the wheels on the camper so the tongue weight would be pretty light when those are full.  He said that my durangos suspension wouldn't have a problem with the weight of the trailer on the hitch but he did say that I should get a ball hitch that I knew was rated for 30-40% higher weight than I expect to pull as well as the drop down thingy.