Well, brought home a 2011 26RLSS and let's start it off with a pic:
That's it sitting our driveway about an hour after it came home. Power everything except the foot steps.
Floor plan:
The tow vehicle will my reliable ol' 98 GMC K2500 Sierra 6.5 Turbo Diesel ECLB with a 4L80E transmission and 4:11 gears.
Oddly enough, I only have a couple pics from when I bought it:
The ol' girl didn't even notice the trailer back there on the ride home, and that was without trailer brakes as my Tekonsha Voyager controller picked a few moments after leaving the dealers lot to die.
But then again, my truck isn't exactly "stock" anymore either......wink wink. It's a rust free British Columbia truck that I snagged for an outstanding price. Let's just say the wife beat the guy up so much we paid 2500 under fair market value!
It's got a complete compliment of guages to monitor every parameter in the truck, but the most important ones will be the EGT and boost guages. I'll be driving by those more than the speedo so we don't experience a holed piston or cracked head will climbing grades like those at Rogers Pass.
I'm also going to hook up my OBDII tuning software and come up with a good towing tune for the PCM.
Next for the "towing package" is a new Husky Centerline equalizer hitch with sway control:
Worked great even without the stab bars!
I took some measurements when we bought the trailer, set up the hitch at home and when we dropped the trailer on the truck it only dropped 2 inches (well, my truck also has the slide in camper factory package-ie: stiffer rear springs).
That was without the equalizer/sway bars (trailer didn't have the brackets installed), so a quick install and adjustment and she'll be sitting with the one inch drop the instructions call for.
Then ordered up a Tekonsha P3 brake controller to replace the Voyager:
Grrrrr...4 picture limit won't let me post it so here's a link -
http://www.tekonsha.com/product/deta...90195&cat=1435
We finished up with a bunch of towing accessory bits we needed. Some of the items were:
-Couple boxes of stacking ground levelers
-Rubber rock guard skirt for the truck (attaches to hitch and runs the width of the truck)
-Tire changing "ramp"
-Chocks
-Tire covers
-Etc, etc....
Believe it or not, this is our very first travel trailer!
I've owned a tent trailer before (it was an older early 80's model) and I've done the "try to warm the earth with my body heat" tent trips.
-Tent trailer was a PITA to set up and tear down (although better than a tent).
-Trying to heat the earth with my body heat never worked out well. I figured out after few years the earth is just too darned big......
So we figured if we were going in, we'd go in deep, get it all and do it right the first "travel trailer" time around......well, we also have two huge dogs so this will make travelling much more trouble free than dealing with hotels and such these days...
Cheers