Yeah, looks like the trailer has the brackets for one installed. Normal rule of thumb is if the trailer weight is over 50% of tow vehicle weight a WDH is recommended.Not talking about weight...I'm towing 7000 lbs.
Just haven't seen too many tow a trailer with that much tongue weight withour a WD hitch. But if it works for you....
Might be our 4th camper.Good for you...
Is this your first camper/travel trailer ?
Many safe towing miles and many memories to be made to you...
Awesome. Hoping my new Ranger can do similar or better on a 2000 lb tear drop.Towed a rented Airstream Bambi 22 foot from Allentown Pennsylvania to Ohiopyle for a week of biking the Great Allegheny Passage rail trail. My wife and I bike about 30 miles a day going out and back from an access point on the rail trail. Did 130 miles in 5 days, stayed at the Yough Lake campground for a quiet time to chill. Kept the tires at 32 lbs cold. My 2022 Ranger lariat averaged 15 miles to the gallon using 93 octane, going up and down the steep grades of the part of the Appalachians wear Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia all meet. Lots of ups and lots of downs that were steep. Truck was able to keep it to 65 and in the flats cruised at 70.
And for those curious why the running lights are on, is I have tied one of these into the top dead center running light on the back of the trailer. Due to angle I only can see 20' or so right behind the trailer. however I can back right up to a tree or rock or house in that 20' no problem by myself. the lights are on the camera is transmitting. I can also see tailgaters, etc
First trip with Clearview mirrors. Damn they are nice. Ranger towed my box (that front is flat and barely angled). Short trip a mere 60 miles 13 mpg. 93 octane. Country roads so I hit 65 once going down a hill.
Heh, yeah, I'll be a lot of trailer setups are like that - mine is. Ours is hardwired to a multi-unit up front, but I'll be taking a harder look at yours. Do you know if it will let me stay connected to another wifi router while also connected to the camera, or is it just one or the other? We use Starlink while travelling and I'd hate to give that up.
Whoops - ignore that question - I found in the installation documentation - requires display smart device to be connected only to the camera wifi - I guess I'd have to get a dedicated display device so that I could leave my phone connected to SL.
I'm not wanting to side track the mirror thread with too much towing talk, moving to a more dedicated thread on that topic.
Totally agree. For us, the ability to tow our 6K trailer to a remote camp and then unhook and take more serious off-road trails far outweighs the hassle of setting the Ranger up to consistently and reliably tow that weight. Sure, we could tow with less effort and planning with an SD, but then we'd be more or less stuck at the remote campsite unable to tackle the trails as well, or not at all if they are tight. We had a 7.3 Navistar SD 250 - towed great, but required a pre-flight plan to make a u-turn. Huge improvements coming to trucks - looking forward to seeing what's available once our trusty and hugely fun Ranger reaches the end of its time with us.
Same reason we purchased the Tremor. Versatility.
That is another point, I've not really done any offroad trails or camping, but if you had a F150 your offroad towing limit, if there are peaks and valleys as you travel on the trail, would be 5,000lb since in those conditions most WD hitches state you need to disconnect the bars. And yes, for SDs the trail maneuverability would be greatly impacted.
Heh, yeah, not anticipated anytime soon. We've got 35K towing our trailer into some pretty tough spots. We're leaving for Alaska in a couple of days - that'll be another 12K. When I bought it my budget planner was based on getting 50K out of the truck doing what we do. At this point, given practically zero issues, we hope to get way more than that (maybe wifey gets a nicer car in the meantime
I have done the Alaska drive all the way up to the Arctic twice. PM me if you want any tips or questions.Awesome rig, thanks for sharing. Here's ours - also a '21 XLT FX4, but towing a BS HQ15:
We've got a bit over 33K now, nearly all of it towing the trailer, which comes in at just under 6K fully topped off. We've towed it the length of Baja twice and once up into Canada. We'll be heading to Alaska this summer for a couple of months. We try hard to find off-grid, off-road epic places, which means we regularly tow some gnarly grades, both highway and off-road. Here's a quick summary of what we've learned along the way (also happy to share more if you have questions):
1) The truck is more than capable of towing the trailer - maybe not always as fast as we'd like, but we've never given up because of the grade. We can pull pretty much any highway grade at whatever the highway speed is, up to around 62mph, which is kind of the limit before fuel mileage goes down hard.
2) There are many options to tow effectively, as others have posted. We like towing in Sport mode because that gives us the ability to control things a bit more. We downshift to pull hills somewhere between 2700 and 4500 rpm, depending on how the truck is behaving. Towing off-road on steep sections >10% as measured at the truck we need to get into 4L pretty quickly in order to avoid overheating things, but we've never had that problem with highway grades.
3) The suspension of the 5G Ranger is pretty harsh stock, so we swapped out to 50% Icon and then use Airlift air bags to adjust load height as needed (5lbs with WD bars attached, more like 40lbs when not, which is whenever we go off-road). Now it rides smoothly under nearly all conditions.
4) The brakes on the Ranger are adequate, but we burned through our stock trailer brakes pretty quickly and opted to upgrade to disc brakes. We love disc trailer brakes and won't have another heavy trailer without them. Let me know if you want more info on these.
5) We've tried various tire pressures from stock to 55lbs and find that the sweet spot for towing ours (about 600lbs tongue weight) is anywhere between 38-40lbs cold. That keeps tire temps down, fuel mileage up and the ride fairly mild.
6) Fuel mileage - yeah, 10-11 is what we see on average while towing between 55-62. 70mph drops to 9, 80mph drops to 8, and we saw 14 in Baja where the average highway speed is 40-50mph.
7) CAT Scales are your friend - don't be shy about using them whenever you need. The operators don't care if you experiment with different weight setups as long as nobody else is waiting. Last time I weighed it was $13 for the first weight, $3 for additional - if you get the following combos: truck+trailer with WD bars attached, truck+trailer without WD bars, and just the truck, you can pretty much figure out everything you need.
8) If you haven't already, get your trailer tires balanced (and aligned if you have a suspension that provides) - this will significantly help your tire life.
9) Get a good TPMS for the trailer and use it (we like Consumer Pro). If you get one with temp measures you can also get a feel for the expected differential between road temp and tire temp, which may save you some headache if things start to heat up unexpectedly (brakes and bearings will heat up your tires enough to notice - not quickly, and not all that accurately). On that note, infrared temp gauges are fairly cheap - we check our tire and rotor temps with one whenever we fill up.
10) Lastly - don't be scared of using your truck well within the manufacturer specified limits. IMHO Ford has a real winner in the Ranger and I hope more people come to realize that.
