Excursion vs. (???) for family expeditions?

[upcruiser]

Wow congrats! Great choice. When and if our 2004 ever gets used up we will probably hunt one of these down. My only beef is that the interior space and specifically height got shrunk a little on the 900's. also, bring that you live in similar winter conditions as I do in the UP I would recommend doing a stone guard covering on the bottoms of the doors. The 900's don't have rockers per day so stone chips occur on the bottom of the door edges and cause rusting. Just a heads up. There are some good products out there for DIY like I did on mine. You can't even see it there.

 

[koselig]

Wow congrats! Great choice. When and if our 2004 ever gets used up we will probably hunt one of these down. My only beef is that the interior space and specifically height got shrunk a little on the 900's. also, bring that you live in similar winter conditions as I do in the UP I would recommend doing a stone guard covering on the bottoms of the doors. The 900's don't have rockers per day so stone chips occur on the bottom of the door edges and cause rusting. Just a heads up. There are some good products out there for DIY like I did on mine. You can't even see it there.

Cool - thanks. Little late now, of course, but do you think I did OK on price considering the rarity of these and the low miles?

I will look into the stone guard covering.

Do you use a WD hitch when towing your travel trailer?

 

[upcruiser]

Cool - thanks. Little late now, of course, but do you think I did OK on price considering the rarity of these and the low miles?

I will look into the stone guard covering.

Do you use a WD hitch when towing your travel trailer?

I think that price is pretty reasonable given the age, mileage and rarity of that vintage 2500. We have a weight distributing hitch that we use when towing it with our Colorado Duramax and I use the hitch itself on the Burb but not with the torsion springs or anything hooked up. With the trailer on it sits perfectly level even with the camper and the truck loaded. I want to say my trailer tongue weight is around 450# dry weight. I also went with load range D versus E tires to give a bit more compliant ride unloaded and whe airing down in the dirt. I feel comfortable with them as I am towing around half the rated towing capacity. From what I understand the GMT900's have a different system as to how the hitch is attached to the frame for crash standards. This is also the reason the tow rating was slightly less than the 800's. The drivetrains of the 800 and 900 are pretty much the same though so like mine, your front end is super easy to adjust the torsion bars to fine tune the front ride height. Also Cognito makes a non torsion bar lift so you don't have to settle for a lift with the torsion bars hanging way down. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out for you.

 

[koselig]

We have a weight distributing hitch that we use when towing it with our Colorado Duramax and I use the hitch itself on the Burb but not with the torsion springs or anything hooked up. With the trailer on it sits perfectly level even with the camper and the truck loaded. I want to say my trailer tongue weight is around 450# dry weight.

Our Lance 2185 can probably get up into the 600-800lb range loaded up. With the F350 I just used an Andersen RapidHitch. But yeah, due to the "integrated" hitch receiver I believe we should use a WDH.

The camper has some small sideways balls on either side of the hitch tongue (like miniature hitch balls), which I always assumed were intended for some sort of WDH, so I am trying to figure out what that was.

Interesting that you felt like you didn't need the sway bars. Some people on camper forums thought I was nuts for towing using a normal hitch with the F350 through the mountains but it went totally fine.

 

[upcruiser]

The balls would be for a sway control system, where as the long bars that attach underneath the hitch are the actual weight distribution hardware. I haven't needed to go with sway control for any reason but I know you have to unhook it when you are back the trailer up so it sounds like a bit of a hassle. I get zero sway with our Suburban anyway. It tows lie a champ and is very stable. Our Colorado has a 10" longer wheel base but due to being a lighter vehicle moves around more in crosswinds or passing semis, not swaying at all mind you but just getting moved over a bit here or there.

I attached a photo, you might be able to see how the weight distribution bars work in it, kind of far away in the pic but maybe that helps.

 

[koselig]

The balls would be for a sway control system, where as the long bars that attach underneath the hitch are the actual weight distribution hardware. I haven't needed to go with sway control for any reason but I know you have to unhook it when you are back the trailer up so it sounds like a bit of a hassle. I get zero sway with our Suburban anyway. It tows lie a champ and is very stable. Our Colorado has a 10" longer wheel base but due to being a lighter vehicle moves around more in crosswinds or passing semis, not swaying at all mind you but just getting moved over a bit here or there.

I attached a photo, you might be able to see how the weight distribution bars work in it, kind of far away in the pic but maybe that helps.

thanks, that is super helpful! I like Andersen stuff so I was looking at their WDH here. Seems to be pretty straightforward and simple to deal with. It does technically have "sway control" too but not using torsion bars.

 

[Martinjmpr]

WRT what you paid for it, think of it this way: There's really nothing else out there that falls into the same category. Closest thing to that would be a 3/4 ton crew cab short bed truck and I would guess that it would run pretty close to the same price with miles that low, so yeah, I think you did OK.