Airstream Interstate towing wisdom thread

[InterBlog]

Do you tow a small utility trailer, or an Airstream trailer, or a toad, or a motorcycle carrier, or anything else with your Interstate?

I am not talking about towing with a TV – I am seeking input on towing WITH an Airstream Interstate camper van. This is a specific scenario involving a large vehicle towing a small load.

I know that some of you do tow one thing or another, and I am seeking suggestions, nuggets of wisdom, and lessons learned, because we are towing newbies.

Because we have been in trailer build mode, thus far, we have only towed using my Toyota Sienna minivan (typically to test improvements such as the brake controller that we installed last night). One of the issues we need to resolve in the Sienna context is trailer jerk. Reading other forums, that might be occurring because:

(a) We are towing empty for testing purposes. Not enough weight on the hitch.

(b) The ball might not be fitting snugly enough. Someone on another forum suggested scarfing down a beer, chopping the butt end off the can, and inserting it between the receiver and the ball. I don’t know if that would work, but I can certainly get on board with making the attempt because I see it as a win-win situation. At the very least, a cold beer would improve my mood during 95 degree heat.

Anything y’all would recommend generally? Thanks!!

Best meme I could find on this topic, because every thread needs a pic:

[BeachBrad]

I definitely consider myself still a newbie when it comes to towing but in June we towed a 2022 Basecamp 16X behind our 2021 Interstate GL 4x4 from CA to New England. We're now on day 2 of a journey back to California..towing the BC. Here's a few things I've learned...

1/ SETUP A GOOD BACKUP CAMERA SYSTEM: I have a HaloView MC7108 Wireless Backup Camera connected to the HaloView Smart Battery Pack. This required me to buy 2 of the HaloView Metal Plate MP02 with 3M tape in order to have the magnets of the camera and smart battery pack adhere to the top of the basecamp. I actually bought 2 of the smart battery packs because if you drive VERY long days (10-12 hours) the battery runs out.

2/ BUY AN EQ-IL-IZER ANTI SWAY DEVICE: I believe our Airstream dealer said this was the only one that worked on our Interstate/Basecamp setup. I was looking at the BlueOx system as well but our service shop said we only had 1 choice. I haven't noticed any swaying of the Basecamp even though we've been through windy conditions on bridges or during rainstorms (30-50 mph gusts).

3/ TORQUE THE LUG NUTS AFTER EACH DRIVE: we purchased a torque wrench and after every trip, we make sure the Basecamp wheel lug nuts are torqued to the appropriate lb feet. Don't want the wheels to fall off!

4/ BACKING UP A TRAILER (AS A NEWBIE) IS CHALLENGING: practice, practice, practice. We're getting better but backing up a trailer is definitely another step up in difficulty. After watching a number of YouTube videos on backing up trailers (ex. grab the bottom of the steering wheel and turn it to the right if you want the trailer to go to the right + vice versa; smaller trailers only usually need slight turns of the wheel to steer the trailer...)

5/ PULL THROUGH SITES ARE YOUR FRIEND: As much as possible, I try to now reserve pull through sites (42 foot minimum length) to make it easier (ie not having to back up all the time).

6/ ADD 1-2 HOURS TO GOOGLE / APPLE MAPS DRIVE TIME: You'll most likely drive slower because you're' towing something...so depending on how long your drive is, add an hour or two to the estimated arrival time.

7/ RESERVE SITES THAT HAVE 20/30/50 ELECTRICAL HOOKUPS AND BRING A 50 AMP TO 30 AMP DOGBONE ADAPTER: if you're towing something that requires a 30A electrical hookup you'll likely need to take advantage of sites that have both a 30A and 50A hookup so you can plug both units in (to use things like A/C).

8/ IF YOU WANT TO TRAVEL WITH BIKES CONSIDER THE THULE ELITE VAN XT BIKE RACK: we had the KUAT Pivot 2 + KUAT NVS 2.0 bike rack prior to hooking up the Basecamp but obviously the Basecamp requires you to use the hitch. Multiple people advised against putting additional weight on the back of the Basecamp (ie don't put a bike rack on it because it can increase the probability of bad weight distribution = more swaying). We installed the Thule Elite Van XT 2 bike rack that mounts (via some serious adhesive glue + various racks) to the back of the Interstate passenger rear door. While you can't open that door entirely when the Basecamp is attached, you can open the rear driver side door fully to access whatever you have in the Interstate trunk area.

9/ BUY EXTRA "DUMP HOSE COMPARTMENT SCREW CAPS". I don't know what you call the caps that go on either side of the dump hose storage tube that is on the bottom of the Basecamp, but bumps on the road caused one of ours to come loose and fly off somewhere on the highway. Fortunately we 1/ hadn't used that dump hose and 2/ it didn't ALSO go flying on the highway or some unlucky soul would have had visions of Randy Quaid in Christmas Vacation coming at their windshield! I did have an S-shaped carabiner attached to the other cap (which did prevent that one from landing on the highway) but I had forgotten to put one on the other side.

10/ MERCEDES PARKTRONIC BACKUP ASSIST USUALLY NEEDS TO BE DISABLED WHEN YOU TOW SOMETHING: when I normally back up the Interstate, the Sprinter backup camera comes on and in the top left corner of our screen, there is a P symbol (that I think is the Parktronic sensor system to prevent you from backing up into something). The hitch/tow unit blocks that so I have to disable it in order to back up.

hope some of these things help. If you're not towing a Basecamp some will be irrelevant but best of luck towing something!

[uncle_bob]

Hi

We tow a <= 3,000 pound trailer behind the X. We also have towed it behind the F350 and behind a Bronco Sport ( but not when fully loaded ...). The Bronco has no brake controller so indeed that's not really a full test.

Towing behind the van or the truck is pretty similar. The trailer is so small / light that you really don't notice it. You also don't need a lot of trailer braking to get things to behave. The weight of the trailer just isn't enough to matter.

What you very much *do* notice when towing with the van is that the super duper powerful MB drive train is even more challenged charging up hill than it otherwise would be. Without the trailer we typically can "keep up" in most situations. With the trailer ... maybe not so much.

With some trailers, ball height can be an issue. We tow just slightly nose down on the trailer. That way we can still open the rear doors with the hitch in place. One hint: hitting that greasy ball on the hitch is *very* easy went using the rear doors. A plastic cup over the ball is a *really* good idea. Remembering this is not as easy as one might think

The receiver on our van is a bit weird. Finding a locking pin to hold in the shank turned out to be a real PIA. After trying two, I gave up. Maybe I just didn't look long enough / hard enough.

Bob

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by BeachBrad

I definitely consider myself still a newbie when it comes to towing but in June we towed a 2022 Basecamp 16X behind our 2021 Interstate GL ...

Dear God, don't let my husband hear this, but if I live long enough, I would like to gut a Basecamp and turn it into my dream trailer, moving much of the functionality from our little CargoMate utility trailer into it.

Obviously I need a Basecamp whose insides are already a write-off for gutting to make financial sense, so I'm at least 10 years out on that idea. I give it about a 10% chance of happening.

Do you have a pic of your Interstate towing your Basecamp? I would love to see what it looks like. Thanks.

[InterBlog]

We are getting closer to loading, and so one of the things we were pondering last night is that the wheels are set WAY back on this little trailer. It's like the manufacturer tried to make it idiot-proof or something (by preventing the type of rear-loading that can lead to dangerous fish-tailing). We are going to have to be careful not to make the tongue weight too high:

[BeachBrad]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

Dear God, don't let my husband hear this, but if I live long enough, I would like to gut a Basecamp and turn it into my dream trailer, moving much of the functionality from our little CargoMate utility trailer into it.



Obviously I need a Basecamp whose insides are already a write-off for gutting to make financial sense, so I'm at least 10 years out on that idea. I give it about a 10% chance of happening.



Do you have a pic of your Interstate towing your Basecamp? I would love to see what it looks like. Thanks.

As requested…here’s a pic from Tiger Run RV Resort in Breckenridge (one of our favorites)

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by BeachBrad

As requested…here’s a pic from Tiger Run RV Resort in Breckenridge (one of our favorites) ...

Oh, that is cool!!

Is that a first-gen Basecamp? 2007-2009, I think it was?

I go back and forth on which size / vintage I'd like to gut, and for what reasons. I'd love an office that takes advantage of those 180-ish-degree windows.

[InterBlog]

Scooter chock in place (I bought the good one, made for scooters and not motorcycles). Voila - my toad, after all these years. My husband went to the BORG to get nuts and bolts for the floor cleats to cinch down the rear end. We'll probably get that done before nightfall.

The long linear squishy things like Clam Venture, roll-top aluminum camp table and chairs can insert beside the bike, along with the telescoping cellular antenna mast.

Might I state the obvious and say that a 5' x 8' trailer fills up QUICKLY?!



Stuff expands to fill the space available. It would take me DAYS to shoe-horn everything into our Interstate when we would make ready for one of these long trips. The Clam Venture and a bunch of other stuff would have to be carefully mounted on the roof. Yet more stuff was strapped beneath the chassis. Every cubic inch was filled - it was nuts. But we used every bit of it on long off-grid trips.

Empty tongue weight of this trailer is 140 pounds, more or less. My husband has a way to measure it without smashing the bathroom scale. Something to do with a home-made lever.

If y'all have any suggestions, feel free to chime in.

[InterBlog]

High school physics:

It's not exact tongue weight because it's measuring it at the foot instead of the ball socket, but by this method (with bathroom scale on the right), we raised the tongue weight to about 161 pounds by adding the 250 pound scooter, so it is situated just a tad forward of the center of gravity (CG), which was the intention.

Our Interstate has a 500 pound tongue weight limit. We've never towed with it before, although we do usually carry a hitch assemblage that weighs about 140 pounds dead weight (and over the years, we've had discussions about the dynamic loading that derives from an apparatus such as that under rough road conditions).

[85MH325]

Good morning IB. Nice looking setup! You're over-thinking this just a tad. Towing is not an activity of absolutes, it's an activity of compromises, and exercising good judgement.

I've towed, not only with my Interstate, but all three B-vans I've had as well as a whole fleet of travel trailers and tow vehicles over the past forty years. I towed a Bigfoot 25 rear queen travel trailer with a Born Free 23RQ motorhome for several years. I towed a '84 34' tri-axle two door Airstream traier with a Y2K Excursion for three years. I towed a '61 Bambi with an AWD '98 Astro van. I towed a 7x10 enclosed cargo trailer to Edinburg TX and back to Iowa loaded several years ago with my '95 Coachmen B-Van on the Ford E-250 chassis, and I tow my 4800 lb Jeep Rubicon JKU with my T1N on a semi-regular basis.

The first bit of wisdom is that all trailers will sway. It's up to the designer to manufacture the trailer so that the onset of sway is higher than "normal" highway speeds. There are a number of factors after that, such as loading, that will either induce or prevent sway. The occasional "wiggling" you may experience towing is NOT "sway." A sway event is when the trailer moves in an ever-increasing, and uncontollable sine wave arc behind the tow vehicle, and ultimately swings wide enough to break the traction of the rear axle's tire patches, causing a loss of control and frequently a roll-over. "Wiggles" may cause you to grip the wheel a little tighter or slow down. A sway event, if you don't end up in a wreck, will leave you parked at the side of the road thinking about your soiled skivvies.

The axle on your trailer is set so far back for two reasons; the first being a sway deterrent, and the second that it'll be easier to back. The longer the distance from the hitch ball to the axle, the longer the arc and the slower the trailer turns backing.

Don't worry about the tongue weight too much, other than to make sure you have adequate tongue weight; at least 15% of the total load. Eyeballing that is sufficient in a trailer that size, and that just helps the trailer not be sway-prone. It's not rocket science, nor does it need to be scale-precise.

You don't have enough floor space behind the axle to really lever much of the tongue weight off, and with that small of a trailer, you're not going to come anywhere near the 500 lb limit unless you install and fill a liquid tank at the front of the trailer. More tongue weight is better than less. This is an area where the old adage about "MilSpec" really comes into play: "Measured with a micrometer, marked with chalk, and cut with an axe." The tongue-weight numbers' specificity belies the wide variances in construction, tires, and tow capacities. It is adequate just to have "enough" tongue weight, and more is better.

It is critical that you have a hitch draw bar that allows the trailer to tow level, or perhaps up to an inch nose-down when loaded.

The hitch jerkiness comes from having the trailer brake controller set too high for the load. Once you have the trailer loaded, do the brake setting ritual described in the paperwork supplied with the controller. Likely, with as light as that trailer is, you won't even know it's there, but having the brakes is a good safety insurance.

Towing with the T1N, the only thing you really have to watch for is to downshift on downhills. As you likely already know, the T1N's transmission pretty much freewheels on downhills, and that extra weight pushing will be worse. Most trailer sway incidents occur because of improper loading (less than 15% on the tongue), and high speed, or when the trailer pushes the rear of the vehicle downhill causing the drive axle to break traction.

In the nearly 50 years I've towed, I've only experienced ONE sway event: I had a 1700lb, empty 13' Trillium with a defective hitch spoon jump the ball, after hitting a bump on a flat and level stretch of highway, and slammed around on the safety chains at 65mph behind my 7500 lb Ford Excursion some years ago. The trailer was bouncing on one tire at each end of the arc before I was able to slow it to bring it back under control. Fortunately I was able to bring it to the side of the road safely, but i recognized that within just two or three seconds that I was a second away from it dragging the Excursion around in a big way.

Last, don't exceed 65mph with it. ST rated trailer tires are rated at 65mph top speed. Your new OM647 will thank you for it.

Towing a small trailer is not difficult, but it does take a little extra attention to do it safely.

[uncle_bob]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

High school physics:

It's not exact tongue weight because it's measuring it at the foot instead of the ball socket, but by this method (with bathroom scale on the right), we raised the tongue weight to about 161 pounds by adding the 250 pound scooter, so it is situated just a tad forward of the center of gravity (CG), which was the intention.

Our Interstate has a 500 pound tongue weight limit. We've never towed with it before, although we do usually carry a hitch assemblage that weighs about 140 pounds dead weight (and over the years, we've had discussions about the dynamic loading that derives from an apparatus such as that under rough road conditions).

Hi

Things have changed a bit year to year on these vans so there is no way to generalize. One thing we "discovered" on ours in terms of weight is that the gross combined rating impacts how much you can put in the van. Put another way, you really don't get the "bold print" towing capacity if the van is full.

Bob

[Hawk-ination]

We don’t have the same series van, but our little BULT tows like a charm. You cannot tell it’s back there. Like some have said, it probably makes the van ride better having a little weight on the rear end of the Sprinter. Our trailer is pretty light weight. I have no problems at all towing it. Best of luck with your “cuter than my” trailer!!

[InterBlog]

So, here are a few nuggets of towing wisdom that I’ve accumulated so far:

(1) DON’T put interesting stickers on the back of your trailer. I assumed it would increase visibility (thus safety) but it instead works as a tailgating draw, as bored drivers aspire to get closer to see what all those interesting things refer to. We have several NASA shuttle and International Space Station mission stickers and some nonprofit stickers and hard-hat stickers (industrial) and other unusual things - not just the typical “We don’t dial 911” trashy stuff. And other drivers are way too interested in all that.

(2) Weight is weight. It is undoubtedly better for the Sprinter’s chassis and tires that we now have it distributed across 3 axles instead of two, but the engine suffers either way, and ANY weight is a big ask for a vehicle already max’d out via its base Class B build.

(3) Trailer level is tricky, but I think we got it close enough. See image below.

(4) We are in a very strange - and improved - road mood time right now:

(4a) At first I wondered if maybe I was getting more respect on the road because I was towing what looks like a contractor trailer, and I think that there is some truth to that (for instance, big rigs will light-flash me when it’s safe for me to pull in front of them). Working people get more respect than the tourists that clog up the lanes.

(4b) However, there’s another theory that I think also has merit, not to mention a component of great minds thinking alike, and it goes like this:

In citizens police academy, we learned the rule of thumb that 6% of the population commits 66% of all crimes. Crime in America is heavily weighted toward a small minority of people.

Well, guess what? There is a road analogy. And (simplifying) which 6% of drivers commit the most infractions and bad behavior generally? They are among the poorest, in terms of income. (Because if someone is doing well financially, why waste energy committing atrocities on the roads?!) And guess what else? We have record high fuel prices right now. The upshot is that some of the worst-behaving people can no longer afford to drive as much.

The outcome is a very different mood on the road because fewer of those drivers are out there disrupting the entire scene. I noticed this behavioral improvement, then mentioned it to my husband, who replied that he had read the very same thing on a forum. Something has fundamentally changed about the road, and that’s the idea that an unrelated forum poster had floated to explain it.

Anyway, following that editorial commentary, on the image below, note that the roof of the trailer is not parallel to its chassis frame. It pitches down a few inches and is higher in the rear, presumably to reduce drag.

And the question on this photo might be, “Why didn’t you pull forward to be nose-lined-up with the rest?” Answer: I’ve learned the hard way NOT to do that. Some rig will inevitably pull in behind me to claim the residual space. I end up getting crowded, which I don’t like.

[Hittenstiehl]

Truck drivers also prefer you park to the back of the spot as they can see your tail end. Then they don't set themselves up to pull in only to find a short vehicle there instead.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

One exception to the "no stickers" rule:

I put a bright green sticker on the trailer, right by the hitch latch. As you back up to hitch up, the "stock" camera is less than ideal for seeing this or that. It's simply to wide angle to work as well as the one you get with most trucks these days. The bright color sticker makes things a bit easier to spot as you do things.

I do notice the same "I want to drive along next to you for 10 minutes looking at your rig" nonsense when towing the trailer. The idea that stickers also create problems is likely correct.

Bob

[InterBlog]

There’s another rule for stickers:

No political messages. They have a 100% chance of enraging people on either the far right or the far left. Sometimes both, depending on how thin they like their excuses to get enraged.

I saw a bumper sticker today in Dysart’s truck stop (Bangor Maine) that I desperately wanted, because it caused me to double over laughing. It read, “Do you follow [DEITY] this closely?!” with the name of the the Son spelled out in the square brackets. There is soooo much Americana wrapped up in the six words of that question. Alas, I cannot put a thing like that on a trailer because someone might infer something about my spiritual beliefs and get upset by it. Road rage might follow.

So I got a plain old Dysart’s bumper sticker instead. And if you’ve never been to Dysart’s, you are missing out. I don’t know what we would do without it.

[InterBlog]

Mileage-with-trailer note:

We normally get 18 to 19 mpg when loaded and non-trailered. The Sprinter will get 20 mpg when largely empty of camping supplies, but we are almost never empty.

On this trip, through the Appalachians, it was a bit more than 16 mpg. Yesterday through MA, NH, and ME, it was about 18.5 mpg.

So no huge fuel efficiency difference in gentle terrain, but those mountains are killers.

[85MH325]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

There’s another rule for stickers:

No political messages. They have a 100% chance of enraging people on either the far right or the far left. Sometimes both, depending on how thin they like their excuses to get enraged.

I always enjoy seeing the "<-- Clowns" "Jokers -->" stickers.

[Hawk-ination]

Had you decided to pull an Airstream trailer, I would have suggested you could possibly follow this design.

Sorry for the bad picture but it was a quickie. Not every day you see a huge watermelon getting pulled along!

[85MH325]

Originally Posted by Hawk-ination

Had you decided to pull an Airstream trailer, I would have suggested you could possibly follow this design.

Sorry for the bad picture but it was a quickie. Not every day you see a huge watermelon getting pulled along!

I sure hope that's a vinyl wrap and not paint!