Buying a new Pinnacle

[winston2009]

I am considering buying a new Pinnacle fitth wheel. Do I need to place air bags under the truck or would buying an air ride fifth wheel hitch work the same way by taking the weight off truck and reducing the sag. It will be going in a 2013 F250 crew cab by the way, and thanks for all the help. I couldn't find a thread that already discussed this situation.

[TNCraig]

Neither the air bags or The air ride hitch do nothing to reduce the weight. You have a 5th wheel tow rating for your truck in the owners manual and you have not said which Pinnacle you are looking at. We tow ours with an F350 dually and ours weighs around 15,500.

The truck air bags will reduce the sag but not increase the trucks ability to carry more load.

Also welcome to the forum

[winston2009]

Sorry it the 38FSFL it only weighs 13,500. I know the truck ill tow the fifth wheel I was just wondering I would take care of the sag the best, the bags under the truck or integrated into the hitch that will be in the bed.

[TNCraig]

Is that the as delivered weight on the yellow sticker. Jayco list the. Empty weight as 12,300 and the max loaded weight as 15,950. Ford list the F250 4x2 as 16,300 And the 4x4 as 15,900 for 5th wheel towing capacity with the 6.7L TD. You are towing very close to the limit

See the following guide for Ford towing info

http://www.ford.com/resources/ford/g...superdtypu.pdf

[winston2009]

Yes that is the yellow sticker weight. I read that ford link about the 15,950, I don't think I own enough stuff to hit the 15,9 mark. Its mainly for football season and trips to the beach. Ill eventually step up to the F350. Just didn't want to buy another fifth wheel 3 year down the road.

[sailor]

My dealer told me I didn't need air bags with the F350. He said have would have definitely recommended them with the F250 to reduce the sag. Our trailer is slightly lighter than yours but the pin weight is a little higher.

[winston2009]

Thanks, I think I will go ahead and look into them and get some just in case. Plus it will help in hauling all the atvs when we head to the creek!

[Rob_Fla]

When we bought our Pinnacle we had a Chevy 2500HD, I put airbags on it to stop the sag and it pulled it ok. We made one trip from FL to TX and it did ok, just got pushed around too much in the wind.
We travel quite a bit and just completed a coast to coast trip, nice having a DRW when going across the Midwest with all the winds.

[gtsum2]

Too big for a 3/4 ton IMO. Air bags are not going to do anything to increase your payload capacity. You might have 3000lbs of pin weight with that rig....firmly into 1 ton territory imo

[RedHorse1]

Our 5th weighed 11,400# from the factory and 12,780# with our "stuff" so we've added 1,380# of gear. The pin is 3,080# which leaves 490# of Extra Cargo capacity on the rear axle. You can see in my sig that I pull with the F350. I've not added air bags and the rear does have a small bit of squat but it pulls very smooth so at this point I'm not planning on adding them.

Since you already have the TV I'd suggest a quick $10 visit to the CAT scale to see what your axles weigh. This will let you know how much more weight (Pin weight + hitch weight) you can add without overloading.

[ArmyColonel]

Towing ours with an F350. I know a Louisville Truck plant vehicle engineer where the F series is built. He specified the F350 for my 38FLFS.

Agree...air bag will only fix sag...not tow capacity and pin weight.

[winston2009]

Its a big decision but we have researched till we are blue in the face. The solution we have come up with is to add a leaf spring here at a custom shop. It will take it to the one ton category and actually add 1800lbs to he capacity. We are also going to add a set of timbrens that replace the factory bump stops and they have great reviews. We got the idea from the ford dealership because a worker there did it to haul his 43ft toy hauler. Now when it comes to getting blown around I'm sure that it will not be as nice as the DRW but that truck will come in a few years. Need to pay this bad boy off first! Lol

[RedHorse1]

Are the tires and rims up to the weight?

[Clayton4971]

Winston I pulled a 33 ft Designer for several years with a F250 that I purchased new with a helper leaf spring with no issues . Last year I purchased a Pinnacle REQS 36 so I also upgraded to a f350 long box dually. I put on Firestone air bags that IMO are great . I should have done it with my old 250 really helps I also installed a wireless compressor to control the bags . Air bags not only correct the sag IMO they help the stability.