Category Archives: F250

Three updates

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It has been a while to post but three events had taken place so I will lump them together.

One.

Our daughter Hannah has been going to school (Academy of Art) to get her Bachelor’s degree (she is the first one to do so in the immediate family).  She has finally achieved it!  Her graduation was on May 22 which happens to be one month to the day after Roxie had her back fusion surgery.  You think Roxie, or I, would miss that?  No way!

We decided to take the trailer as Aaron, his girlfriend and Paige (granddaughter) were going to be there for the weekend also so an RV park made more sense than a hotel.

We left a day early and stayed at WalMart in Los Banos:

Los Banos

This time I chose to stay at the Trailer Villa in Redwood City.  A bit far from the city but cheaper and not too bad in the back.  It backs up to the Redwood Slough (so get one if the back in spots, we will next time):

Slough

 

We attended Hannah’s graduation as very proud parents.  The ceremony was in the Cow Palace and we saw her on the Jumbotron!

Hannah

It was a good weekend of family times:

Family

 

One added note.  Roxie did an amazing job only one month post surgery and having a temporary Handicapped parking placard is amazing!

Two.

I had a Snugtop shell on my truck for a year and a half.  For almost all that time I have had problems with the shell fitting close enough to the cab.  It was very frustrating.  I worked with my local dealer and they were wonderful.  The issue was with Snugtop itself.  I created a website about it:  http://snugtop.casarodante.org  They did not decide to work with me to get it fitting.  I even offered to drive to Long Beach so they could do it.  Eventually, after more emails, a negative Yelp review, a negative Facebook post, Snugtop gave up and gave me a full refund.  Thanks for that but no thanks for not even trying!

I took that refund and immediately purchased a Leer top.  Although I had to wait 6 weeks again for a shell, here it is:

Shell

I really like the Windoors that have a screen also.  I am overall happy with it but I will let you in on a secret, the Snugtop is higher quality than the Lear.

Three.

One other trip to mention.  Father’s Day.  Aaron wanted to do a Father’s day thing so it was decided to head to the Dodger’s game on Saturday.  With Roxie still on the mend we opted to spend a couple of nights in Valencia which is not too far from Dodger stadium.  Five of us went to the Dodger game, me, Aaron, Paige (granddaughter), Rachel (Aaron’s girlfriend) and David (Rachel’s Dad).  Roxie and Julie (David’s wife) hung out together are Julie’s house.

It was a fun time except the fact the Dodgers’ lost.  Here are some shots from the stadium:

Chavez Ravine Dodgers

There you go!  Three in one!

Class V

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This is in regard to the carrying capacity of the hitch receiver on the F250.  Here is a wiki on tow hitches.

The previous truck had a Class V hitch receiver.  Since it was rated to tow 12500 lb it needed such a rating.  The current truck has a higher rating and also has a Class V hitch receiver.  This is where the similarities end.  The previous truck had a 2″ square receiver.  The current one has a 2 1/2″ square receiver.  This makes it more challenging to use a hitch.  The Equal-i-zer hitch was a 2″ variety of stinger (the part that goes in the receiver).  Therefore I needed a reducer sleeve.  These are readily available at Wal-Mart, auto supply stores, RV stores.  It was not hard to find one.

Here is the receiver with a reducer to accommodate the 2″ stinger:

Hitch04

Everything fits pretty good but you can see there is a gap on the top of the stinger.  This caused a bit of play in the hitch and you could notice it while hitching/unhitching and while towing.

Another drawback of the stinger/reducer combination is that the reducer slides in and out when you are inserting the hitch.  Here are a few examples:

Hitch02

Hitch03

 

My solution was to get an appropriately sized stinger for the Equal-i-zer.  I purchased at 2 1/2″ stinger from ebay.  It came via FedEx with no box, just a label taped to it!  Here is a shot of the reducer, the 2″ stinger and the new 2 1/2″ stinger:

Hitch07

 

The next step was taking off the hitch head from the old stinger and putting it back on the new stinger.  This required using the BIG tools:

Hitch05

 

After it was all reassembled, here is the finished product:

Hitch08

 

Some thoughts on this.  It is now REALLY difficult to slide it in and out.  That is good that there is little wiggle room but very difficult when trying to man handle it.  Even with my favorite tool it is hard to do!  I also think the ball might be a bit too high but I will tackle that another day.