2021QCBH
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2021
- Messages
- 69
- Reaction score
- 53
I’ve towed a ton with the truck so far but most of the trips were all flat land where it mostly plugs along in 7th (locked out 8th for tow haul selected and 3.21 gears).
It’s a 21 hemi QC 4x4 BH. My normal trailer runs around 4000 lbs and has a little wind resistance. This run was loaded with somewhere between 500-1000 lbs of gear in the bed and the 4k trailer.
I went up over the Appalachian mountains in the Roanoke VA region. I took a slightly different route on the eastern run vs western return.
Truck had boatloads of power as expected. Mostly didn’t need more than 3200 rpm’s to pull grades and maintain between 65-70 pending conditions and speed limits.
I use cruise a lot when towing and the cal in this truck is much more aggressive to keep speed than previous rigs. If it loses one mph it’s downshifting (which is fine) until it drops another gear to run up over 4k. It only needed to do that on some of the secondary highway runs that had shorter steeper climbs than allowed on interstates. The trans got up near 200 so I drove it minus cruise and it did just fine. Only lost a couple mph to avoid a 4k+ downshift (like both of my older rams were programmed to do). I let it do it’s own thing here simply just to see how it was calibrated and what it would do since it’s only been in small hills so far.
The return trip had some longer steep grades but it pulled those just fine at 2800-3200 pending the speed limit and conditions. There was one 7% section that ran for about 8 miles without flattening out. I left the cruise on and let it do its thing at 65 mph. It pulled it at around 3k rpm’s never needing to down shift past that. Coolant temp stayed normal and the trans peaked at around 200°. The oil previously has only got up to 235°. Just as I created this run it clicked 250°. I would have slowed down some if the grade kept on going.
One other note, the engine grade braking is very aggressive. I like it to drop a gear or two but it would down shift to 4000-5000+ sometimes and I would click tow haul off to control it myself. I like the auto feature but I feel like it would be better to avoids the emergency high rev down shifts to times when it sees you getting on the brakes more. (It did the aggressive downshifts with no brake input).
All in all, handles the hills great and power to spare. I’m not one to slow down going up hills (unless it’s unsafe) so I like keeping tabs on temps and such and would only back speed down if it was dangerous or pushing temps above comfortable ranges.
The run home was very very head windy. The run down was calm and I was surprised after 600 ish miles the dash said 13.0 average economy. From my hand calc experience it was likely more around 12-12.5.
Great little setup for what I do normally. If I was doing that run many times a year I’d probably step up to a diesel 3/4 ton or was towing heavier than I am now.
Maybe when I get a bit older I’ll knock off 5mph and that wouldn’t be necessary ha.
It’s a 21 hemi QC 4x4 BH. My normal trailer runs around 4000 lbs and has a little wind resistance. This run was loaded with somewhere between 500-1000 lbs of gear in the bed and the 4k trailer.
I went up over the Appalachian mountains in the Roanoke VA region. I took a slightly different route on the eastern run vs western return.
Truck had boatloads of power as expected. Mostly didn’t need more than 3200 rpm’s to pull grades and maintain between 65-70 pending conditions and speed limits.
I use cruise a lot when towing and the cal in this truck is much more aggressive to keep speed than previous rigs. If it loses one mph it’s downshifting (which is fine) until it drops another gear to run up over 4k. It only needed to do that on some of the secondary highway runs that had shorter steeper climbs than allowed on interstates. The trans got up near 200 so I drove it minus cruise and it did just fine. Only lost a couple mph to avoid a 4k+ downshift (like both of my older rams were programmed to do). I let it do it’s own thing here simply just to see how it was calibrated and what it would do since it’s only been in small hills so far.
The return trip had some longer steep grades but it pulled those just fine at 2800-3200 pending the speed limit and conditions. There was one 7% section that ran for about 8 miles without flattening out. I left the cruise on and let it do its thing at 65 mph. It pulled it at around 3k rpm’s never needing to down shift past that. Coolant temp stayed normal and the trans peaked at around 200°. The oil previously has only got up to 235°. Just as I created this run it clicked 250°. I would have slowed down some if the grade kept on going.
One other note, the engine grade braking is very aggressive. I like it to drop a gear or two but it would down shift to 4000-5000+ sometimes and I would click tow haul off to control it myself. I like the auto feature but I feel like it would be better to avoids the emergency high rev down shifts to times when it sees you getting on the brakes more. (It did the aggressive downshifts with no brake input).
All in all, handles the hills great and power to spare. I’m not one to slow down going up hills (unless it’s unsafe) so I like keeping tabs on temps and such and would only back speed down if it was dangerous or pushing temps above comfortable ranges.
The run home was very very head windy. The run down was calm and I was surprised after 600 ish miles the dash said 13.0 average economy. From my hand calc experience it was likely more around 12-12.5.
Great little setup for what I do normally. If I was doing that run many times a year I’d probably step up to a diesel 3/4 ton or was towing heavier than I am now.
Maybe when I get a bit older I’ll knock off 5mph and that wouldn’t be necessary ha.
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