Induced sway test on 1/2 ton Ford, Dodge, Chevy & Toyota

[Tin Diesel]

This 'asymmetric braking' on the F-150 sounds interesting. Never heard of it before. Admittedly, this is done by Ford's chief engineer.

YouTube - 2009 F-150: Towing

These are all half-tons, and I like towing my 30'-er with my 3/4 ton, so I don't have a dog in this hunt. (Forgive me, moderators. I don't want to start (another) war over which tow vehicle is best.)

[Silverhobby]

Holiday Rambler had an electronic sway control built into their trailers back in the 70's. It operated the electric brakes of the trailer as it sensed sway. Wonder why it was discontinued?

[azflycaster]

Airstream had a system called Tru Track Electric Sway Control in the 70's as well. There was a sensor installed in the trailer and when sway was detected it would tap the brakes and turn on an indicator light to alert the driver. I have only seen this option in the service manuals. I have no idea if they were good or not.

[Tin Diesel]

I saw something else online that said this is only for trailer that don't have brakes. But the Ford website doesn't make a distinction (although the video on the Ford website shows them towing a new-model Airstream)

Anybody out there have this? Does it deactivate if you have brakes on your trailer? If not, would it or could it make the situation worse - such as asymmetric braking while your Hensley is trying to bring it in line.

[crispyboy]

I can't really answer your questions in how the system works. I guess it tries to straighten the tow vehicle out. Shouldn't effect the sway control hitch.
I am currently looking at a Dodge Ram 1500 crew cab and it has this same type of system that the Ford has for trailer sway. The salesmen I have talked too aren't very knowledgeable about their systems or the rest of the truck for that matter. They have at least offered me the truck at a fair price. 27% off of msrp is very tempting to me.

[markdoane]

I wonder if tis is the long-awaited system we were talking about several years ago? Check this thread, from back when we used to argue about any little thing.
Skip the first 18 posts, the moderators chopped it so much it hardly makes sense.

[overlander63]

Originally Posted by Tin Diesel

Anybody out there have this? Does it deactivate if you have brakes on your trailer? If not, would it or could it make the situation worse - such as asymmetric braking while your Hensley is trying to bring it in line.

The trailer used in the test has electric drum brakes.

[markdoane]

I don't know whose system Ford is using in the test above, but there is an excellent paper written by three Delphi guys that explain how the system works.

Don't look at the paper unless you really enjoy math. The model they use is an update and elaboration of the model used by Bunsdorf. See the bibliography.

If someone wants to tackle the math, they could develop an excellent towing model. The most recent paper does not address sway control methods like the dual cam or the friction method; after all, this paper is about asymetric braking. If you like, you could find the anti-sway damping equations in the original Bunsdorf work.

[lvcat2004]

How about NOT loading the trailer IMproperly like they are doing??

[Silvertwinkie]

You know, I suppose this would be important if some moron decided not to tow without sway control at the hitch level. This video to me really only shows the importance of sway control in general. I have a GM truck, with sway control, towing a Safari weighing in at a bit over 3 tons. I have yet to see this kind of situation with my rig.

Am I saying that the Ford and Dodge offerings are worthless? Nope, just that I would would still have my Reese Dual Cam if I had one of these trucks with these technologies installed. Today, there are many things placed on the brakes that are suppose to be dealing with vehicle stability. I think they are great, but with all this braking to maintain the vehicle, these brakes are going to wear far faster than they ever did before IMHO. Can you put a price tag on safety? No, but you can assess a cost of ownership and with Hensley, Reese and the likes out there, I could most likely spend the equiv of one brake job covering the cost of the dual cam and maybe 3 or 4 brake jobs to cover the cost of the Hensley, which IMHO does the same thing that the stability braking will do. Just my opinion.

[purman]

YOUr right Silvertwinkie..

The Problem I have with all the ford videos is they never explain anything.. If you have a weight distributing hitch and sway control like you should this wouldn't even be an issue..

It's like the dead weight frame test they have. It not realistic. there is no rear end, suspension etc. It's not a real world test. And the frame flex test too. I talk to an engineer friend of mine and he said that if you exceed the speed for the load you have bad things will happen no matter what.

He said the frame was over kill for what the truck is designed to do.. So there really isn't an advantage to it. Other than it doesn't flex. But what does the flexing on the other trucks mean???? It's a marketing thing..... same as this....

It's cool don't get me wrong, But you don't need it if you do things RIGHT and SAFE....