Southern,

Thanks for the input. We’ll probably stick to shorter than 20’ and under 3500 lbs if possible.

We have 3 kids, so 7 seats in the vehicle are needed, especially on long trips. And sleeping space for them all in the camper. So we’re either in the D2, or we need to pick up a suburban or something (I’d rather not.)

 

I did some more towing today and took a picture. I watched closely how the truck handled.

To start, my truck is an 03, so 4.6 engine. That is completely negated by everything else I've done to the truck, though. She's on 3.5" of lift, has no rear sway bar, the rear springs are the factory spring rate even though it's lifted, the shocks are 150k miles old... they're dead, and she's on 33" tires with stock gears. It's a bad setup for towing starting out.

The camper is 27 feet long with a slide; she weighs ~6500 lbs. I did use a load distribution hitch and my Disco is set up with trailer brakes.

The tow was 45 minutes. There were small curvy roads, pulling out on inclines, a couple miles on the interstate where there was road work going on so it was rough road, and some on the highway which was constantly up and down; a 20% grade for about a mile at one point.

I didn't take it super slow. I didn't go fast, but I wasn't driving like anyone's grandmother either. On the interstate I sat at about 68. I hit 71 and that was a little fast, but she was extremely happy at 68. Never started to act up. That is true speed by GPS since the speedo is off by quite a bit. The curvy back roads did great; she was stable even in the corners and never tried to push the truck.

Up the 20% grade was the only time she dropped to 2nd gear and lost speed. I started the hill at 55 and ended up at the top at 45 turning about 3300 RPM. The majority of the trip was done in 4th gear with the torque converter unlocked, though it did even lock in 4th some on flat ground.

Obviously it was slow accelerating; duh, it's on 33s. She still had enough to get up to speed without topping 3k RPM though, even merging onto the interstate.

The key to this setup is the trailer brakes, the load distribution hitch, and having the trailer level. The Disco can't handle a million pounds of tongue weight. Especially with stock springs in the back. That said, I am really impressed with how it towed. This is the first time I've towed with the Disco since putting on the 33s. I've only pulled two short trips with this much weight since I've lifted; previously was pre-lift on 31s and she did great with that setup. With this setup I was perfectly happy with the stability, but the 33s with stock gears left a little to be desired. If she were on stock size tires she would've done beautifully; I would haul it cross country with either stock tires or gears and with a heavier spring or air springs in the rear. I'm planning on going to a heavier spring fairly soon anyway and gears are next on the docket after that.

If you're looking at 20' and 3500lbs then you're going to have ZERO trouble. I think you can easily bump that to 4000lbs and still be very comfortable. Maybe even try pulling 4500 and see how you like it. I think you could handle 4500 with comfort, but I'd test it before I said for sure. It will depend on the camper setup, too.

Here's the picture of mine. You can see like I said above the rear is a little squatted with 6500lbs, but not terribly bad. It honestly caused zero issues even hard braking. That is, of course, because the trailer brakes were set right. There were also zero steering issues caused by it, even steering kinda hard (evasive) at speed.

Final word; is it as good as a 1500 Silverado extended cab? No. Of course not. That said, would I tow with it any day of the week? Yeah, right up to the max tow rating even on the interstate. Without second thought.

 

Alex,

Thanks for your input! Which brake controller are you using?

I plan to keep it around 31’s. I have no idea what spring rate the rears are, but I imagine they’re the MD springs. It was originally an SLS truck. In a perfect world the airbags would still be there and fully functioning. Haha.

 

MD springs are good, 31s are good. Bummer on no SLS though!

The brake controller I'm using is this one. It seems to work really well. Very simple hook up which is nice and I like the wheel to adjust pressure because I can adjust it on the fly. Works well for our trucks since the brake switch is just on/off; not variable to work with a variable controller.

 

Rubbish at towing these old D2's

 

I do not have pictures of it, but last year my eldery father had a seizure while driving. He did not crash, but it left him disoriented.. After six hours of trying to find him, the police picked him up three hours north of me. He drive a volvo XC90. I went to uhaul and rented one of their huge car haulers after lying about what car i was picking up, and towed it home. I am thankful that the week before I had the transmission serviced, as she was not a happy disco to be towing a 2,200 pound trailer plus another 4500 in volvo. While not the full weight of what she can tow, it was definitely a strain..

It made this tow much easier in comparison: My newest boat, a Montgomery 17 sailboat that weighs all of 1400 pounds plus trailer. Brought her back from montauk just as Covid 19 hit big time back in March. Sucked not being able to take the southern State parkway as she was over height.

 

I towed the largest U-haul trailer fully loaded from Florida to Iowa and back in a '00 with 260k miles on it. The rear sagged like in The Deputy's pictures but I didn't have a problem with the trailer wagging the Disco. I had no problems at all. When I do something like that again I plan on adding Firestone coil-rite air helper springs to level the Disco. Other than that I would not hesitate to pull a heavy load on a long trip.