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C3500HD tow rig

Primary vehicle for towing trailers
Overview Gallery Discussion
The nice thing is my dash camera works, caught the license plate and everything. Little sedan cut the turn too tight.
Gonna take a closer look at the passenger side mirror assembly, those things hang WAY OUT THERE and might have caught the sedan roof.
 
Mirror wasn't touched, just the paint transfer on the bumper and gave the local cops my info (doubtful to hear anything back).

With the hitch now secure went ahead and trimmed the back corners of the bed. Necessary since my trailer has a short neck on it, and eventually I'll shorten the bed anyways so it doesn't hang past the truck frame. Bed's not staying like this but need to move the trailer in the next 3 days which still needs some hub work and stuff loaded on it.

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If you weren’t so far away there’s a 1995 C3500HD in a local yard with a good looking flatbed on it. But the distance would likely kill the deal. It’s also got an NV4500 I’d be going back for but it’s 2wd obviously
 
78K30 said:
If you weren’t so far away there’s a 1995 C3500HD in a local yard with a good looking flatbed on it. But the distance would likely kill the deal. It’s also got an NV4500 I’d be going back for but it’s 2wd obviously
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There's some flatbeds around here in good condition but I'd have to cut into them anyways for the gin poles and 5th wheel hitch (not currently mounted). This particular bed isn't the long term plan.
 
Had a repair pop up, engine oil cooler lines were beginning to mark their territory so figured replace them with the cooler before they split and take the engine with em. Used Leroy's replacement style hoses/cooler. Hadn't noticed before but the truck has a power steering cooler as well, far driver side the tall/skinny one.

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red EOD said:
Had a repair pop up, engine oil cooler lines were beginning to mark their territory so figured replace them with the cooler before they split and take the engine with em. Used Leroy's replacement style hoses/cooler. Hadn't noticed before but the truck has a power steering cooler as well, far driver side the tall/skinny one.

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Yep, first time I had my grille off I noticed all the coolers. Pretty crazy!

Leroy's lines are nice for sure!
 
last few years of square body you could get a cooler option . it was a few loops of tubing under the core support and screw / clamped to it .
 
Gin pole setup is underway. Using 6" 13lb/ft C channel as the crossmember for the poles. Initially was going to mount the poles 3" in from the outside edges but later decided to move them all the way to the edge.

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Poles were being uncooperative about sliding in/out due to rust/paint issues so out came the steel wire brush on a grinder to buzz the inner/upper poles.

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Took awhile but the poles extend/retract fully by hand now and just fit on the bed. Also moved the generator and compressor over to the service trailer. With the poles taken care of onto the winch mount and lower snatch block anchor.

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Went on a trip where I needed the trailer, combined weight at 24,000 lbs which is 4,000-6,000 lbs heavier than I was estimating before going over a scale. Haven't found a official number from GM but these 3500HD's were commonly registered at 32k gcwr so this was a decent but not absurd load for it. Handles it very, very well for a stock truck. Funny thing about the GMx series of turbos on the 6.5 diesel, they don't help much with performance but really do make a decent exhaust brake hahaha. Truck maintained 55mph well and could go to 60mph but it's 5.13 axle gears makes 55 best.

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Took a little time cleaning up the old wiring at the rear of the bed as well.

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The gm turbos are so restrictive it's not even funny. For your use either a hx40( relatively cheap to install but not 100% bolt-on) or a super 60 from quadstar tuning (completely bolt-on, heard great things but haven't used one myself, yet. Not cheap either) would really help it run a ton better.
 
KirsL said:
The gm turbos are so restrictive it's not even funny. For your use either a hx40( relatively cheap to install but not 100% bolt-on) or a super 60 from quadstar tuning (completely bolt-on, heard great things but haven't used one myself, yet. Not cheap either) would really help it run a ton better.
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Yea a better turbo is in the eventual plan. The hx35 works better with the manual trans due to the large rpm changes, then the super 54 and super 60 are better than those. Fact that the GMx turbos make a decent exhaust brake is comical to me because they were never designed for that haha. Really are just that restrictive.

Have towed similar weights with 1 tons before and it's a nice improvement with the medium duty, more than anything the larger/stronger brakes. The cruising speed of 55mph sucks but that's my biggest complaint. Going to the 245's will make 60mph more reasonable. Planning to regear the axle after a turbo swap in the future.
 
I hate it when people use those straight rib useless highway steer tires as drive tires or even as steer tires on a 4x4. My F550 service truck here at work had those on for steers. Totally useless in 4x4. I swapped them out for Hercules H-803 traction type tire. Still need tire chains for any real traction though.
 
sweetk30 said:
tire grover would make drives out of them steer tires easy . :D
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Not sure I wanna even attempt cutting through load range F or G tires hahahaha. Since they were from 2005 might not be so bad haha.


Truckman4life said:
I hate it when people use those straight rib useless highway steer tires as drive tires or even as steer tires on a 4x4. My F550 service truck here at work had those on for steers. Totally useless in 4x4. I swapped them out for Hercules H-803 traction type tire. Still need tire chains for any real traction though.
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Yea this truck had steer tires all the way around, and mixed sizes on the rear axle when I bought it (225/70 on passenger, 245/70 on driver). For always on paved road it works, gets even a hint of dirt road coming up and it was game over haha. The access to my property in Texas is down a dirt trail for now so the tow rig needed the tires before the trip.
 
red EOD said:
Not sure I wanna even attempt cutting through load range F or G tires hahahaha. Since they were from 2005 might not be so bad haha.
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cut swampers 20 years old no problems . i would go to town on them with a fresh blade and warm up time .

but i can tell you my old c5500 rollback i drove i had that exact tread on new in the late fall and did a whole winter on them and was super happy with traction .
 
Messed up when I mounted the gin pole base, sits too high so the winch can't raise/lower the poles on it's own. But run a strap from the top of the poles to an anchor of some type (the gooseneck trailer) to raise/controlled lower the poles works well enough for this rusty bed.

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