gooseneck for ford ranger

[Will]

Have fun driving 45 MPH down the interstate...and smashing it to the floor on hills and screaming at redline. Towing in at a gross of 10,700 pounds this summer with my truck was not fun power wise, try tossing another 2k on top of that. Essh.

Well, maybe. If you are towing a box of a trailer. I had that experience with my 4.0 Ranger towing an empty 14' enclosed trailer--as soon as I hit 45mph the wind was like hitting a wall.

My bus only has 185hp and it weighs 18,000# (25,500# gross) and sticks 10' up in the air and is 8' wide and runs 70mph down the road--rpm limited. A 4.0 can make 130hp at 3,000rpm so if you are geared to run 55mph at 3000rpm it is enough of an engine. You don't need 130hp on the flats, just on the hills. The problem is when you don't have the right gear to be in. You are being drug down in one gear, then hitting the rev limiter when you shift. These wide-ration transmission require that you do a good job of planning if you are going to set it up for towing. And I said the C5 was good because the loose 2.8 converter would be needed on the hills to kind of split the gears.

I posted a picture early in this thread about what I was planning to do. Right now I have a diesel crewcab and it has a gear splitter and I know how important havingthe right gear to be in is. I have full confidence I can set up my Ranger to tow 8,000#. I wouldn't be going cross country--I have a truck for that.

One thing about trailer brakes--they should be able to lock up. When I had a cheap time-delay controller I always had brake problems. I finally bought a Prodigy inertial controller and what a difference. A couple of years ago I had been down in Kentucky helping a member on here fix a road on his property and I had my little backhoe and skidloader on my trailer. I was coming back up I65 on the last leg and wanting to be home and running 80mph passing everyone and this car, whom I thought had decided wasn't going to make it so I put the hammer down to go past, suddenly changed his mind and came out right in front of me--then suddenly, in front of him, the entire highway decided to slam on their brakes. I stood on the brakes, knowing I was going to crash this guy because I had a 25mph advantage on him and he was getting into his brakes as well, and the trailer just jerked me right back like magic. With my old delay controller, that guy would be history, as would a few other cars. I drove pretty passively the rest of the way, sobered by the experiece. But the moral is, if your trailer brakes aren't good enough, fix them. Grooved drums, worn magnets, bad grounds, too-small wires. I've seen it all in various trailers. Crappy controller too.

I had a Casita, which is just like that Scamp. A 4.0 Ranger with 3.55 gears will pull that up most hills in OD without the cruise control popping off. We used an older Mazda B2600i with an auto for most of our ownership.

 

[Spowerback]

http://hitches4less.com/fifth-wheel-hitch-v-70720-v-70450-165.html http://www.watsonmountain.com/pics/scamp/denver2.jpg

 

[Stranger-Ranger]

Hey Iv been wondering for awhile now about building a gooseneck trailer to pull with my ranger but i was a little skeptical. But now that i hear its been done and that it seems to work well i think i will. I have a 2008 Ford Ranger FX4 4.0 Auto with towing package and i pull an 18' Bumper hitch flatdeck, loaded with my mud bog truck which wieghs a good 5-6500#. The truck pulls it pretty good but sways at times and if i dont load it right it sacks my truck out. So what id like to do is build a custom 18' gooseneck flat deck and add airbags to my truck. that way it will hold the wieght better and hopefully pull even better. Any advice?

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

5000-6500# truck + 1500-2000# trailer = you need a bigger truck. That is 6500 to 8500 lbs and maybe more depending on how you build your trailer.

 

[Will]

A gooseneck is ALWAYS better than a frame hitch. Any frame hitch gives the trailer a lever equal to the distance between the hitch ball and the center of the rear axle. If you tow a gooseneck, you can put 1,000# on the ball and the tongue weight won't matter a bit with respect to the steering.

The trailer you have now is too much for your Ranger. With a gooseneck built for a 6,000# load, no problem. I'm planning a similar thing. I want to get rid of my big crewcab diesel and use my Ranger on a B2 frame to tow my little dozer and things.

I have a new trailer designed that looks more like a scaled-down thing you would see behind an F350 or whatever. This is an old design.

 

[Captain Ledd]

Ha! I actually looked this very thread up the other day.

I'm still stuck on deciding on just how beefy to make things yet still be light enough I can actually put something on the trailer lol. Most of the examples I find are geared for much larger applications.

 

[Will]

This is the trailer I have in mind now. I really just scaled down the trailer in the image below. 6" channel is more than enough, and looks good. I had to raise the neck as well. Those are 20" tires on 10" rims, you can get a 205/65-10 in Load Range E--1,650# per tire. Counting the tongue weight, this is easily a 10,000# GVW trailer. I didn't intend this for a lifted Ranger, I wanted it to look good behind a stock height truck. I plan to have sides on the bed, or I would drop it some. Those are 225/70-16s--about 29"--on the truck in the picture, with a 14-bolt GM axle.

I'm going to guess this trailer would weigh 2,500#, maybe a bit more. It's 80" wide and 18' long, including the dovetail. Mostly I would be under 5,000 trailer with either my 1,700# Toro Groundsmaster or my 2,200# M371 Skidsteer. I only rarely take the little dozer for a ride, but I wanted the strength to carry it, even if the engine and trans don't like it that much.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

This is the trailer I have in mind now. I really just scaled down the trailer in the image below. 6" channel is more than enough, and looks good. I had to raise the neck as well. Those are 20" tires on 10" rims, you can get a 205/65-10 in Load Range E--1,650# per tire. Counting the tongue weight, this is easily a 10,000# GVW trailer. I didn't intend this for a lifted Ranger, I wanted it to look good behind a stock height truck. I plan to have sides on the bed, or I would drop it some. Those are 225/70-16s--about 29"--on the truck in the picture, with a 14-bolt GM axle.

I'm going to guess this trailer would weigh 2,500#, maybe a bit more. It's 80" wide and 18' long, including the dovetail. Mostly I would be under 5,000 trailer with either my 1,700# Toro Groundsmaster or my 2,200# M371 Skidsteer. I only rarely take the little dozer for a ride, but I wanted the strength to carry it, even if the engine and trans don't like it that much.

4000 to 4150 pounds + the blade wouldn't be that bad

http://www.tractordata.com/farm-tractors/000/0/3/33-john-deere-mc.html

 

[Will]

I haven't weighed it, but it's much heavier than my B2, which weighs 4,200#. I sometimes put the Bobcat (2,200-2,600 depending on the bucket I'm using) and the crawler on my 18' trailer, which is heavy. That trailer is 2,200# with a steel deck--and it only has 3,500# axles on it. The used tires I buy for $15 don't last long with that load. I have 2 dead ones in the barn, from the last two times I moved them together. You know it blew because rubber chunks start hitting the truck.

I'm planning to get rid of the crawler. I long ago finished the grading I bought it for and now I use it more for other people than myself. It's damn good at sneaking logs out of the woods and one of my friends surfed on a big oak log with a video camera aimed at the tractor going up this steep driveway we had just cut. Tracks are amazing.

 

[Stranger-Ranger]

I would probably build my trailer fairly light just big enough to pull my bogger. probably 2x 3500lb axles and maybe not a full deck but just a plank on either side we'll see i guess. best way to do it is just start building an go from there. And if my truck needs more power to pull it ill just slap on a turbo, been thinkin about it anyway.

 

[Downey]

glad im not the only one thats been thinking about this.

just make sure you do a build thread on the trailer

 

[leemccready]

I'm interested in how y'all built the hitch. I'm planning on building one for mine except it would accommodate a 3" body lift. Can yall post or sent some close up pictures, please?

Sent from my HTC One X+ using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Captain Ledd]

Those are 20" tires on 10" rims, you can get a 205/65-10 in Load Range E--1,650# per tire.

Probably would be best to jump up into a 12 or even a 13" rim. The tires aren't a whole lot taller and then you can run some bigger brakes (I.E., get 3,500 lb axles). Should be enough room to run the 13" rims on the 10" brakes.

I'm interested in how y'all built the hitch. I'm planning on building one for mine except it would accommodate a 3" body lift. Can yall post or sent some close up pictures, please?

Sent from my HTC One X+ using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Custom cross bars and one of these:

http://www.etrailer.com/Gooseneck/Reese/9460.html

http://www.etrailer.com/Gooseneck/Draw-Tite/9465.html

Since we're talking Rangers here, realistically the max they'll see is 1,000 lbs bed load and 7-8,000 lbs gross trailer weight. Which shouldn't be too hard to fabricate bars to hold that.

Anything more than that and you really should be looking at a bigger truck.

 

[rangeron33s]

how much did all the angle iron run you to build that fifth wheel? if you dont mind me asking

 

[bobbywalter]

never seen this old nugget of a thread.


reminds me of wanderers setup back when i first joined rrorc.