New Tow Rating Standards for 2013 it's about time

[Skater]

Originally Posted by purman

I don't believe I said anything nasty or Don't listen to me, or was being rude. But I guess thats subject to the reader. It was written with a hint of humor and am sorry you didn't take that from it.

This was the quote I was referring to:

Originally Posted by purman

Hey your welcome, I know ALL government employee's sit around wasting my money.. Just joking here.

I disagree with going back and re-rateing standards for towing. That is really asking for a law suite. Any who had a crash could say their truck, car, or SUV was over rated.

If the crash resulted from a failure of the vehicle because it was over-spec'd, there SHOULD be a lawsuit. As an example, if someone was towing 11,999 lbs on a vehicle specified to tow 12,000 lbs, and the vehicle frame separated at highway speeds causing a crash, then the vehicle was not performing to the advertised specifications and the manufacturer should be slapped. No lawsuit would be successful anyway - as someone else said in another thread, every accident is the result of a bunch of things going wrong, and it'd be tough to prove the towing capacity of the truck was the single point of failure that caused the accident (unless it was a dead obvious example like the one I gave, and that never happens).

Re-rating them would mean buyers of used trucks would be picking safer rigs. The good news is that I don't think the tow rating inflation hit the 3/4 and 1 ton pickups quite as badly as the half ton pickups. I think my '06 F-250 has a tow rating of 12,000 lbs, and that's probably reasonable for it; even my '91 B190 with a 1 ton chassis had a GCVW of 15,000 lbs, leaving it able to tow ~6,000 after you factored in the weight of the B190 itself (~9,000 lbs), so 12,000 lbs tow capacity on a vehicle that's 15 years newer doesn't seem too out of line.

[perryg114]

These standards don't put any emphasis on how long a vehicle can perform to these standards without suffering failure. Yeah, I can put a 400 HP motor in a half ton truck and beat an F350 towing up a mountain but how many times can the 1/2 ton get the job done before something breaks?

These are long term testing questions which are almost never answered. I see best in initial quality a lot. What does that mean and who cares. If it don't last it does not matter. The Toyota with a lower tow rating might actually last longer towing than the Souped up Chevy under the same conditions.

I do think that holding everyone to the same standards is great. I don't think that standards for towing were followed at all before this. This is how we got 1/2 ton trucks towing as much as 3/4 ton trucks.

Perry

[crisen]

I think this is a really good point that I don't see mentioned often in the various "what can I tow" threads. The new standard is a performance standard and will weed out some grossly under cooled, under equipped vehicles, or at least greatly limit their advertised ratings.

Durablity is whole nuther thing and for that you need to look at not only long term data but also going back to the basic design of the vehicle. I do know based on my time in the auto industry that the heavier duty the vehicle the higher the duty cycle was assumed to be when sizing components. We manufactured parts for everything from small pass cars to over the road trucks, include various size pickups. For example in something like bearings, the average load as a percent of max load would be higher and the B10 life needed to be longer in a heavy duty vehicle. As the you went down in size, say to pickups then pass cars these durability requirements went down.

You can relate this to your own vehicles by looking at something like the lubricant change intervals on axles. Pass cars and light trucks might be 50 to 100K miles, while something a 3500 might be more like 15k miles (As my Dodge is.) Why? Not because the 3500 has a smaller axle but because the assumption is that the 3500 is is going to used harder and will breakdown the lube sooner. Therefore if you do tow with a SUV or 1/2 ton, you really need to pay attention to mantainance intervals and maybe shorten them up over the factory recommendation. However, if you trade vehicles every year or two it may not matter.

Not saying a 1 ton is better, it's your money so buy what works for you and your lifestyle.

Rick

Originally Posted by perryg114

These standards don't put any emphasis on how long a vehicle can perform to these standards without suffering failure. Yeah, I can put a 400 HP motor in a half ton truck and beat an F350 towing up a mountain but how many times can the 1/2 ton get the job done before something breaks?

These are long term testing questions which are almost never answered. I see best in initial quality a lot. What does that mean and who cares. If it don't last it does not matter. The Toyota with a lower tow rating might actually last longer towing than the Souped up Chevy under the same conditions.

I do think that holding everyone to the same standards is great. I don't think that standards for towing were followed at all before this. This is how we got 1/2 ton trucks towing as much as 3/4 ton trucks.

Perry

[mstephens]

If I needed a bolt with a 120,000 PSI yield strength, I'd feel completely confident to select an SAE Grade 8 marked bolt, over an "Ace Hardware Heavy Duty Bolt," if you know what I mean.

In the current state of things, comparing the tow rating of vehicles amounts to saying, "Oh look, this number is higher than that one!"

Hooray for rationality. Hooray for SAE!

[perryg114]

The unmarked hardware store bolt is a Chevy and the grade 8 bolt is a Toyota or a Ford.

Perry