We picked up our '76 Sovereign from Carlock, IL on July 30th, 2011 and towed it to Sangchris Lake State Park just East of Springfield, IL for our first night of camping.
Before we could camp we inspected our new rig and hooked up the all in important weight distribution hitch.
Hitch Setup
I chose the Reese SC Weight Distribution Hitch - 800lb to tow this 31' land yacht. My tow vehicle is a 2001 Chevy Tahoe Z-71 with a 5.3L V8. It has a short wheelbase and with such a long trailer I was concerned about potential sway.
I went with the the Reese SC over the Dual Cam setup because I did not have to drill holes in the tongue frame. The setup should have been easy.. but it was very difficult! First off, the propane tank mount was right in the way of where I needed to mount the tongue brackets. I ended up having to remove the tanks and the rack. Next you have to thread nylon lock nuts over the 2 bolts on each bracket.. and they do not thread easily!! It requires a long crescent wrench to hold the nut and a 1/2" allen wrench to twist the bolt. A 1/2" Allen Wrench.. Who has one of those laying around?! A quick trip to Sears solved our problem - I never saw in the instructions where this tool was needed.
First Tow - Off to the State Park!
After testing out the brakes and checking our lights we were off! We drove 1.5 hours south to Springfield, IL and then about 30 minutes East to Sangchris State Park. We arrived around 5:30pm and had the daunting task of backing in our new trailer for the 1st time with plenty of people watching. I got lucky on our first try and soon soon we had 30 amp power and were grilling outside our Airstream!
The tow home took another 6.5 hours which we took at a leisurely 57mph averaging 12.5 mpg in 'tow-haul mode' which kept the RPM's quite high, but hopefully relieved some pressure on the transmission.
Time to demo... more to come!
Matt
P.S. our blog can also be found on Air Forums.
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