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Old 08-27-2019, 04:57 PM   #1
rodw6rod
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Brakes on Tow Vehicle

I tow the 5th wheel with a 2015 Ford F250. Pickup has about 36,000 miles. Probably 30,000 of the 36K miles have been towing the Montana High Country 293RK. What are peoples experiences with when they needed a brake job on their tow vehicle?

By the way, I did try to find a thread on tow vehicle brakes but couldn't seem to find one. I suspect there is one but a search didn't yield any results.
 
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Old 08-27-2019, 05:16 PM   #2
mhs4771
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I was still on the OEM Brakes when I traded my 2011 Chevy 3500 Dually with 115000 miles on it and approx 90% of that mileage towing heavy 17K to 19K.
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Old 08-27-2019, 05:42 PM   #3
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Your brakes should be good for at least 100,000 miles. These brakes aren’t like your old 58 model that needed to be changed every 20,000 miles.
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Old 08-27-2019, 06:01 PM   #4
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I had to replace the factory pads on the front at 40k. The rear pads were barely worn. I put on the Motorcraft severe duty to replace the fronts. They didn't stop the truck very well. After a few months and some scares, I put on EBC drilled and dimpled rotors with yellow stuff pads all around. It's stops the 9300# easily and in a short distance.
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Old 08-27-2019, 06:38 PM   #5
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I have had 4 Duramax trucks (02-05-11-14) and have not touched the brakes on each one until at least 100k. And that's mostly towing miles.
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Old 08-27-2019, 07:36 PM   #6
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I had a 2004 with around 100,000 miles and towing around 54,000. Tire store said brakes were still good (>30-40 % left, I think).
My 2012 has 95,000 on it and 62000 were towing. Again brakes are still good according to tire guys.
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Old 08-27-2019, 07:38 PM   #7
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Not trying to knock anyones truck, and I own a Ford, but Ford Superduty trucks absolutely eat front brake pads as compared to my past GM Duramax trucks.

As other have said, both my Duramax trucks went 100k plus without changing the brakes. My F350 has only 33K and the front pads are very close to needing replaced. The rears look like brand new.

My front brakes always run hot when towing with the Ford as well. Every trip the front wheels are covered in brake dust upon arriving to camp. I often can even smell them. I've had it back to Ford under warranty complaining of the brakes needing to be more balanced between front and rear. Both times they told me its how Ford is engineered with the SD trucks and its within spec.
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Old 08-28-2019, 05:34 AM   #8
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Brakes

My 03 Chevy duramax C2500 brakes were still good at 190k miles when I had them rebuilt.
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Old 08-28-2019, 08:37 AM   #9
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We have a 2008 F-350 We use it primarily to tow the Montana I would say the 95 % of the miles are towing miles. We just had the brakes replaced all around at 105K.
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Old 08-29-2019, 06:28 AM   #10
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find i have brake dust all the time on my 2012 F350
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Old 09-08-2019, 01:47 PM   #11
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Try setting your trailer brake settings to reduce the amount your truck has to brake. I can stop my ram 3500 with just the trailer brakes. Also switching to disc trailer brakes will dramatically reduce your braking distance.
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Old 09-08-2019, 01:57 PM   #12
PeteandJoan
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Using "Tow Haul" mode to downshift will give brakes longer life.
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Old 09-08-2019, 02:44 PM   #13
timdenchanter
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Towing 2007 Montana 3475RLS since January 14, 2008 using a 2005 F-250 6.0 with a Bulletproof kit. Truck has 149,000 miles and still on factory original brakes. Wish I had $70,000 for a new truck but the one I have just keeps on going. Stinkin’ Ford!
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Old 09-08-2019, 02:55 PM   #14
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We were right about 50k on our 2016 F250 when we had to replace the front brakes, and our rotors were already beginning to show signs of stress from over-heating. As someone else stated, this series of Fords really seems to eat front brake pads, but to be fair, most of that mileage was towing heavy loads.
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Old 09-08-2019, 03:09 PM   #15
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Disc brakes on Montana also saves truck brakes. And you are much safer in emergency.
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Old 09-08-2019, 03:29 PM   #16
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I put EBC green stuff pads on my Chevy
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Old 09-08-2019, 05:11 PM   #17
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disks

Quote:
Originally Posted by Creeker View Post
Not trying to knock anyones truck, and I own a Ford, but Ford Superduty trucks absolutely eat front brake pads as compared to my past GM Duramax trucks.

As other have said, both my Duramax trucks went 100k plus without changing the brakes. My F350 has only 33K and the front pads are very close to needing replaced. The rears look like brand new.

My front brakes always run hot when towing with the Ford as well. Every trip the front wheels are covered in brake dust upon arriving to camp. I often can even smell them. I've had it back to Ford under warranty complaining of the brakes needing to be more balanced between front and rear. Both times they told me its how Ford is engineered with the SD trucks and its within spec.
Disk brakes on the camper will really help with this. Like others have said you can stop the whole rig with the camper brakes if you want. Worrying about being able to stop in time or brake fade down a mountain is gone and actually makes the trip a little less stressful, for me anyway.
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Old 09-08-2019, 05:49 PM   #18
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I'll add a little more here. It may or may not help if your planning on doing any upgrades or need to change brakes, etc..

I own a 2008 GMC 3500HD Sierra crew cab long box with 120000 miles with leveling kit. It's primarily used as our construction vehicle and we pull a 10K# utility trailer and a 16K# dump trailer regularly.

We recently bought a new Montana 3120R and we love it. First time out I probably shouldn't have been towing because it needed new tires, had bad shocks and I didn't know the condition of the brakes. It also had quite a bit of vibration and shimmy in the front that wasn't noticed with our other trailers but this 5th is longer, taller and heavier. I took it slow and it made it through the 175 mile round trip with a 3500 foot elevation gain but there was a little white knuckling going on. I tend to use the trailer function to slow down with the transmission rather than using the brakes but that's just me. I don't have the exhaust brake option but I may add that some day if I start towing more. For now my wife is retired, I am not but I can act like I'm retired.

We had a long trip scheduled back to Montana with some serious elevation changes so I decided to take a few days off and do some upgrades before we took that trip. In my opinion most aftermarket products exceed OEM specs especially when your doing towing or heavy hauling. My truck was ready for some TLC.

I did a lot of research and decided to change the OEM shocks to Bilsteins, the OEM brakes and rotors to PowerStop Z36 Extreme towing rotors and ceramic pads. The OEM brake pads still had 60% on the rear and 40% on the front. What I noticed was a lot of hair line cracks across the pads and the rotors were warped. Heat probably. I also changed the OEM wheels from 17" to 20" (Not sure if I gained much from doing this but the truck looks better). I also installed Firestone wireless airbags.

I have to say this second trip there was a world of difference. The overall ride and handling was greatly improved and no more white knuckles. The truck tracked the trailer better and all the front shimmy and shake was gone (probably from warped rotors). I have to say the airbags was a great improvement. I was down on the overloads before and now I'm not. I can change pressure in these for any trailer we're towing and I don't get flashed at night anymore because my headlights are up and I'm back to level.
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Old 09-08-2019, 06:18 PM   #19
mazboy
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just do a brake job when you need it. I just did a brake job on my F350. Hawk pads and regular rotors. did them at 73K miles. cost will be about $700 for each back and front.
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Old 09-08-2019, 06:35 PM   #20
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My mechanic said my brakes were good on the back and new on the front when I had four tires put on. Three months later I had a caliper go out, another month went by and I blew out my rear calipers on my F250 on the way back from Florida. Ended up putting 4 calipers on to make it match up, new rotors all around, and new pads as well. Not a cheap repair. Found out my emergency brake was dismantled and was nothing but rust parts. Ford was stating about $1K for the parts alone. Today the wife chocked the wheel after I yelled out. Think I might need to get that done, but go pull the parts at the junk yard.
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