Towing with a lift kit on

[fgtex]

Since I have seen all the great lifted trucks on this site, my trucks' future is becoming clear. A lift kit with bigger tires. I am looking at a six inch lift and some 35's. Now, I don't tow much, actually, hardly ever. In the future I will, at most, tow a bass boat or couple of ATV's on a trailer. There are too many toys out there! On to the question.

When a lift kit and bigger tires are put on a '02 F350 PSD 4x4, do I lose most, if not all, towing ability? Can I still pull a trailer with the factory hitch with a receiver/ball mount that has like a 6" or 8" drop on it?


fgtex

 

[Frankenstien]

Ive seen plenty of lifted trucks pulling the Lite stuff like bass boats and 4-wheelers, I think as long as you have a CAPABLE receaver you should be fine.

 

[stroked 350]

done it many times with no problems

 

[fgtex]

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[_CH_]

yup - i can tow things a lot heavier than a bass boat w/ no issues

 

[97CREWCABPSD]

im running 6" on an OBS with 37s and I have a 12" drop to pull my 28' TT that weighs 8200 lbs

 

[Tail_Gunner]

I would recommend some ladder bars or something to prevent spring wrap if towing heavier loads with a lifted truck.

I towed a 7,500lbs utility style trailer for about 5 1/2 years and 250,000 miles. While my truck was stock, it still had the factory 4" lift blocks between the rear springs and axle. One day I heard a bad sound from the rear of the truck and saw something tumbling down the road behind me. I thought to myself, "This ain't good!" and turned around to see what the UFO-T (Unidentified Falling Object from Truck) was. It turned out to be a piece of a leaf spring. I immediately inspected my leaf springs and found the right rear only had 1 of 5 leafs that were still intact. I had heard noises before, but could never figure WTF the source was.

I'm 95% convinced the reason the springs failed was due to a combination of the constant increased towing loads and the spring wrap-up force exerted by the leverage caused by the 4" riser blocks. A ladder bar would have prevented the "spring wrap" that caused the spring to fail.

I had the rear springs replaced with some aftermarket ones with an extra 1,000lbs capacity, 7 leafs vs the factory 5. They have a higher arch and I took the 4" riser blocks off because with them the rear was way too high for the stock height of the front.

For a while before I took the riser blocks off, I had to have been gettin' at least 50 mpg. Everywhere I went, I was going downhill.