Category Archives: F250

A few days in San Francisco

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We hadn’t seen our daughter for a while, she lives in San Francisco, so we thought we would take a trip over there to visit.  We wanted to take the trailer so the options were limited.  The RV park in Pacifica might be in the ocean currently as they were suffering a large erosion of the cliff they are perched on.  There is an RV/mobilehome park in South San Francisco that we have never stayed at.  There is also an RV park right next to Candlestick park but it is near a pretty seedy neighborhood.  What to do?  We called upon a site from our history.  Anthony Chabot campground in the East Bay hills north of Castro Valley.

The campground has a few negatives but the positives are pretty nice.  One negative is you have to be back to the campground at 10PM or you are locked out.  Another is the road to the campground is really long and curvy.  However, you ARE close to the populous cities but it does not feel like it.  You are up in the hills in a eucalyptus grove.  There are only 12 full hookup sites and it is very hilly.  That is where one of the other negatives came into play.  But more about that later.

We were happy to get out of the central valley and the heat.  The previous days were over 100 and pushing 110.  The forecast for Castro Valley was high 60’s to low 70’s.  As we started out all was going good but the truck seemed a bit sluggish with the trailer attached.  Usually the truck will get going pretty good from a stop but not so now.  We pulled off of I5 around the Westley area.  When I got back on the onramp was uphill.  The truck had an issue doing so and was belching out a goodly amount of black smoke.  This is not normal.  It also started huffing when you would hear a thump under the hood and then a large puff of exhaust.  Needless to say I did not like this but I had seen it before.

Now that I know what it is I can rest a bit, well sort of.  We still had a few hills to get over before we made it there.  One was the Altamont pass and the other was between Dublin and Castro Valley.  The Altamont went pretty good.  I found that if I did not go higher than 2000RPM I would do OK.  I was able to do so on this pass and we made it over.  However the next pass was different.  I could not get a running start on this one and near the top I had to downshift out of overdrive which started the huffing.  Luckily we didn’t have to go too far huffing along.

Once we got to the campground we found the hills.  I reserved this spot specifically but I could not tell the terrain.  The spot was on a downhill road and at a 90 degree to the road.  Here is a picture that does NOT show the grade:

Chabot 01

Pretty nice spot.  Let’s look at the other side:

Chabot 02

Ah, there’s the slope.  Still doesn’t look too bad.  Next shot:

Chabot 03

This is taken down the hill where I had to back in from.  I started backing in and my rear wheel started spinning on the asphalt and my other was on the dirt.  I was not getting anywhere.  It might have been because of the engine running rough also.  Anyway I put the truck in 4wd and tried again.  I had to get up some speed and crank the angle pretty tight but I got it in.  We hooked up the hookups, Roxie is getting very good at this, disconnected the truck and met our daughter at the BART station (two days earlier BART had agreed to stop the strike for 30 days).  She spent the night with us in the trailer.  It has been a LONG time since she did that last.

The next day I had a mission.  I needed to get my diesel filter replaced.  I started out at a JiffyLube (why not, it worked before) after dropping off Roxie and Hannah at a shopping mall.  The guy flatly said they don’t do it here.  I called a SpeedeeLube and they said, “Sure we do it!”.  When I got there the tech said they did not and the management did not know what they were saying.  However they recommended me to a tire/service location.  I was able to get it replaced there and 2-3 hours later the truck was running good again.

I picked up Roxie and Hannah and we did some errands then headed into the city.  Driving my truck in San Francisco is a real experience.  If you just take it slow and deliberate you are good.   However, people usually give you room if you start moving into their lane.  The rest of the days were filled with driving places, parking, shopping, eating, all the fun boring stuff.

Wednesday eventually came and it was time to go home.  I was a bit concerned about the road out of the camp area.  It was curvy and steep.  I have a video that I took.  I have kept the commentary in it also so enjoy:

On the way home we stopped at Toscano’s RV to get the hinge on our stove covered fixed under warranty.  Then the long drive home.

We wanted to take a short trip before we are off on our long one to Alumafandango in early August.

Equalization and an electrical issue

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I was going to mention this topic in the previous post but I thought it warranted a separate one.  I don’t tow with a Hensley or ProPride hitch.  I have always used, as my father did, a standard load equalizing hitch.  The concept of these hitches is that they essentially pull the hitch assembly back up to try to ‘equalize’ the weight over both axles on the tow vehicle.  Without this all of the trailer tongue weight would go right on the hitch.  This may not be so bad for a small trailer but ours is not small.

When we first got our trailer the Equal-i-zer hitch was not setup properly.  It seemed like there was too much weight on the back of the truck which made the front end very light and loose feeling.  When the dealership readjusted it the next day it was much better but it still seemed a bit light in the front but MUCH better.  I have run with that ever since.

The old method of checking the hitch settings was to measure the 4 corners of your tow vehicle, normally the distance from the top of the wheel well to the ground (on a level surface).  Hookup your trailer and measure again.  You will see a drop in the distance to the ground but you should see a CONSISTENT drop.  The front should not drop more or less than the back does.  On our old 25′ this is what I did and it worked pretty good.

With the new trailer I thought I would try to weigh and test the equalization on an actual scale.  One time we were in Oregon I noticed that they leave their weigh station scales on all the time.  There may not be anyone on the side of the road at the weigh station but the scales still work.  This is where I found out our truck was almost 8500 lb in weight!  I was resigned to take the rig to a scale and drive one axle on at a time and calculate all the weights.  This would require at least 6 weighs.  In researching I found a better way.  CAT scales, we have one at the Love’s truck stop in Tulare.

CAT scales have their entire scale divided up in three parts.  The first is where you put your front axle of the tow vehicle.  Second part for the back axle and the third part is where your trailer axle(s) go.  This is marvelous.  I would only have to do about 3 passes on the scale to get my weights.  I wanted one with the trailer attached with the normal equalization, I wanted one with JUST the truck (no trailer) and another with the trailer simply on the ball with no equalization, just for kicks.  I was prepared to do a few more reweighs if I needed to do adjustments.

I pulled on the scale and lined up my axles.  I pushed the intercom button to ask for the ‘weighmaster’ to do their thing.  The funny thing was this button and speaker was about 7′ high to accommodate the big rigs.  Once the told me it was clear I pulled out and parked with the big rigs and dropped the trailer.  I was now ready to just weigh the truck, same procedure.

I went inside to get the results but it turned out they only gave me the total weight.  That is not what I wanted.  I discussed what I did want with them and they understood so I started over again.  This time just the truck, second was the trailer just on the ball and third was with full equalization.  I got the numbers, on the appropriate axles, and calculated the ratios.

My thought was I would take the ratio of the front to rear axle and ensure the equalization was as close as possible.  The truck weighed in at 7920lb.  The front axle weight was 4380 and the rear was 3540 to give a ratio of 55/45.  Now I had a baseline to compare the equalized weight.  Equalized the effective truck weight became 8540lb.  The axle weights were 4400 (F) and 4140 (R) to make the ratio 52/48!  That made me very happy since it was very close to what I wanted.  I decided to make NO adjustments as I don’t know how I could make it better.

I know from our trip to Marina a while back that our tongue weight is 750lb as a fellow Airstreamer had a weighing device.  In looking at the equalization the amount of weight transferred to the truck was 620 lbs, 130 less than the tongue.  That means the bars were taking 130 lbs of that tongue weight and transferring it back on the trailer axles.

To show you how much the equalization helps, look at the numbers without any.  Front 4060, rear 4640, 47/53 ratio.  A HUGE difference in my mind!  It made the overall truck weigh 8700 lbs or an additional 780 lbs.  There is the tongue weight and then some.  See the below table for the numbers.  I must have driven around that truck stop about 5 times.

Weight Table

Subject change now:

I mentioned an electrical issue in the subject line so I will explain that here.

In my blog entry on our Marina trip I signed off saying the rest of the trip was uneventful.  That is not entirely accurate.  There was one minor issue.  As we were heading home and going through Hollister and rounded a corner an odd thing happened with the truck.  The power cut out to the dash and stereo.  All the gauges went off and the music stopped.  A few seconds later the gauges did a full reset and the stereo came on.  However the truck continued to run.

If you know me then you know that I filed this away in my brain and Google’d it when I got home.  I didn’t find any real smoking gun.  It happened on and off in the next few weeks but I could not find a pattern.  Knowing this was going on it concerned me a bit for our trip to Princess campground.  The truck did will with only one episode without the trailer.

However, on the way home the fun started, nothing happened physically but it messed with me mentally.  As we were going to dump at RV Express the truck started doing its thing with a slight twist.  This time the battery light was flickering.  This means, to me, that means the battery is being discharged.  This concerned me and I was not sure I could get it home.  We did.

The next few days going to and from work the battery light was flickering again when the gauges would reset.  I went to talk to the guys at Gas and Diesel Performance.  I told him the symptoms and he thought that the diode in the alternator was bad.  I have replaced the alternator a few times and have a lifetime warranty on the one that was in there.  I started watching my voltage and it would go up over 14.5 volts!  Not good.  I took off the old alternator, went to AutoZone and got a new (rebuilt) one.  I installed it back in and watched things for a few weeks.  Problem solved.

Roxie has wanted me to get a new truck and I would love to but it might be more cost effective just keeping this going, if I can handle it mentally.