Upgrading a 1500 4x4 for travel trailer towing

[bcbickers]

Greetings All,

For those of you towing a travel trailer, I would like some advice. We are in the market for a couple's model and are leaning towards a Grand Design Imagine 23LDE. Specs are as follows:

Dry Weight = 5,597 lbs
Max Weight (trailer GVWR) = 6,995 lbs
Tongue weight (12% of max trailer weight) = 840 lbs
Length = 28'-5"

While I would love to get a 2500, those are rarer than a hen's tooth and cost a fortune when you do find one. And per the wife, it has to be a Suburban. This 2012 is our third Suburban (one GMT-800, two GMT-900s), and she has no interest in driving/owning anything else. So, I need to outfit my 2012 4wd Z71 to tow as best as possible. According to the door sticker, it has a payload of 1,423 lbs. The trailer, the two of us, and a little bit of gear puts me right at that payload. My thoughts are to install 14-bolt axle, 4.10 gears, rear airbags, and upgrade the radiator and trans cooler. Should be less than $5k, which is a far sight from the $15-20k (or more!) a good 2500 would cost. So is it worth spending the money to upgrade my 1500, or should I just bite the bullet and find a 2500?

 

[Marky Dissod]

... need to outfit my 2012 4wd Z71 to tow as best as possible. According to the door sticker, it has a payload of 1,423 lbs.
The trailer, the two of us, and a little bit of gear puts me right at that payload.
My thoughts are to install 14-bolt axle, 4.10 gears, rear airbags, and upgrade the radiator and trans cooler.
Should be less than $5k, which is a far sight from the $15-20k (or more!) a good 2500 would cost.
So is it worth spending the money to upgrade my 1500, or should I just bite the bullet and find a 2500?

14-bolt axle might not be NECESSARY, but it's money well-spent anyway, so do that.
4.10 axles MIGHT be overkill? Depending on how often you DON'T tow / haul, you may be sacrificing unladen highway MpG.
4.10 will improve your city MpG, your towing MpG, and extend the life of your 6L80, once you reprogram / tune the ecm & tcm for purpose.
If unladen highway MpG is a MAJOR concern, 3.73 ought to be acceptable, if not preferred over 4.10.

Did I mention?: Tune the ecm & tcm for purpose, regardless of axle gears. It'll further improve your 6L80's durability / longevity.
Part of the tune improvement comes from improving the powertrain's cooling system performance, so you won't need to upgrade the radiator.
Disabling Engine Half@$$ (under 230F coolant temp) improves the engine and transmissions' durability / longevity as well.
Never hurts to slap an auxiliary fan on the ATF cooler you already have.

You may also want to consider braking upgrades in addition to suspension upgrades (are those 17" or 18" wheels?).

 

[bcbickers]

14-bolt axle might not be NECESSARY, but it's money well-spent anyway, so do that.
4.10 axles MIGHT be overkill? Depending on how often you DON'T tow / haul, you may be sacrificing unladen highway MpG.
4.10 will improve your city MpG, your towing MpG, and extend the life of your 6L80, once you reprogram / tune the ecm & tcm for purpose.
If unladen highway MpG is a MAJOR concern, 3.73 ought to be acceptable, if not preferred over 4.10.

Did I mention?: Tune the ecm & tcm for purpose, regardless of axle gears. It'll further improve your 6L80's durability / longevity.
Part of the tune improvement comes from improving the powertrain's cooling system performance, so you won't need to upgrade the radiator.
Disabling Engine Half@$$ (under 230F coolant temp) improves the engine and transmissions' durability / longevity as well.
Never hurts to slap an auxiliary fan on the ATF cooler you already have.

You may also want to consider braking upgrades in addition to suspension upgrades (are those 17" or 18" wheels?).

Thanks for the quick reply and advice!

We plan to visit my father in northwest Arkansas and it's quite hilly there, so I figure an axle upgrade is worth doing for performance and peace of mind. And who knows where else our adventures will take us, so plan for worst case, right? RE: the gears, our 'burb spends 90% of its time running around town, so that's good news about the increase in city mpg with 4.10s. Sounds like a fair trade off.

For the drivetrain, I had the engine rebuilt over the summer due a collapsed #6 lifter. As part of the rebuild, the AFM was deleted and a CamMotion truck cam installed for a little better low-end. The whole thing is tuned by @BlackBearPerf for 89 octane. I didn't know you could tune the coolant temp though, so I will ask them about it.

And thanks for the brake recommendation. I am running Powerstop rotors and pads and stock 18" wheels with LT275/65R18s Load Range E tires, so I didn't give stopping much thought. I'll look into what upgrades are available.

 

[strutaeng]

Sounds like a good plan. You have the 10 bolt axle, right? 14 bolt would be a good upgrade. 4.10 gears for that load. The owner's manual lists a towing capacity of 8,000 lbs with highest ratio available of 3.42 and the K5L HD cooling package (and only 5,500 lbs with the same ratio but no HD cooling package... that's kinda strange?)

I wish there was a way to swap out the rear suspension to a leaf springs on the 1500 SUVs, which is better suited for load, but I don't think it's possible. And would make the vehicle harsher riding empty. Airbags would work.

 

[strutaeng]

8500 lbs for a short wheelbase 2wd SUV?!

That's kinda optimistic, no?

 

[Foggy]

With those upgrades you should be fine for 7000 max weight
Make sure to get a high end weight dist hitch set up.. I have the 4 point
one with sway control built into the head.. It's expensive and takes patience to
set up, but way way better that my old set WD set up with the chains and sway mechanism.
Blackbear will be able to readjust the tune for the gear upgrade when you do that.
They already optimize the cooling fan settings/etc... But make sure you tell them
exactly what you are doing.
IF you didn't want to change the entire axle, you can upgrade the G80 diff
& diff and bearings to better that won't bite the dust.. I have all that stuff but
I also have a 14 bolt here ...neither of which I've done yet !!!
I would look for geotrash posts on trans cooling.. You'll find some great info
there and what many of us have done for a fan forced trans cooler install

Good Luck !!!!

 

[Foggy]

Equalizer is the name band that I used.. I used the 10K version
But you certainly could / should use the 8K version
It's the bomb in my experience
It's spelled funky "equal-i-zer" I think
They are a US based company and actually answer their phones.
I was impressed as I had questions/concerns when setting my system up..
The absolute only drawback is the price, you get what you pay for

 

[bcbickers]

With those upgrades you should be fine for 7000 max weight
Make sure to get a high end weight dist hitch set up.. I have the 4 point
one with sway control built into the head.. It's expensive and takes patience to
set up, but way way better that my old set WD set up with the chains and sway mechanism.
Blackbear will be able to readjust the tune for the gear upgrade when you do that.
They already optimize the cooling fan settings/etc... But make sure you tell them
exactly what you are doing.
IF you didn't want to change the entire axle, you can upgrade the G80 diff
& diff and bearings to better that won't bite the dust.. I have all that stuff but
I also have a 14 bolt here ...neither of which I've done yet !!!
I would look for geotrash posts on trans cooling.. You'll find some great info
there and what many of us have done for a fan forced trans cooler install

Good Luck !!!!

Equalizer is the name band that I used.. I used the 10K version
But you certainly could / should use the 8K version
It's the bomb in my experience
It's spelled funky "equal-i-zer" I think
They are a US based company and actually answer their phones.
I was impressed as I had questions/concerns when setting my system up..
The absolute only drawback is the price, you get what you pay for

We have rented a few smaller trailers in the past, so I bought a Camco Eaz-Lift TR3 1,000 WDH (1,200 lb max tongue weight). It worked pretty good the couple of times I used it, but it wasn't the panacea everyone says. That's probably because I just bolted it on, tightened the sway control a bit, and sent it. Once I upgrade the Suburban and buy a trailer, it sounds like I need to spend some time at my local Cat Scale and a few miles on the freeway getting everything set up.

Thanks again for all of the advice. It is very much appreciated!

 

[bcbickers]

Sounds like a good plan. You have the 10 bolt axle, right? 14 bolt would be a good upgrade. 4.10 gears for that load. The owner's manual lists a towing capacity of 8,000 lbs with highest ratio available of 3.42 and the K5L HD cooling package (and only 5,500 lbs with the same ratio but no HD cooling package... that's kinda strange?)

I wish there was a way to swap out the rear suspension to a leaf springs on the 1500 SUVs, which is better suited for load, but I don't think it's possible. And would make the vehicle harsher riding empty. Airbags would work.

Best I can tell, I have the 8.6" / 10 bolt with 3.42s (RPOs GU6 and G80). She pretty well rigged for light to medium duty towing (KC4, KNP, K5L cooling and JL1 trailer brake controller). The largest trailer we rented was 25' total length and about 6,000 lbs. The tow was fine, but the transmission got up to 210* (ambient temp was mid-to-high 80s) and dropped to third on a few of the hills (maybe an 8-10* incline). I figure with better cooling and some torque multiplication, she can handle a 28' 7,000 lb load.