ScubaRx

Two and a half hours, home to Quartzsite. That's great, it'll take us a week to get there.

I found this rather exhausting but expansive post by ang934 on an Audi Forum. Perhaps it will provide you with some useful information. Although personally, I think using any CAR as a tow vehicle for an Elite II is a particularly bad idea, there are those here that will tell (and have told) you exactly what you want to hear. Although I could go on ad nauseam with solid information as to why you should not do what you are about to do, I doubt it would make any difference. So, give it your best shot. Good Luck... I’m new to the Audi club, and bought my Audi over other cars for one big reason, to tow a travel trailer. The Audi has a high tow capacity for the size vehicle. The BMW X5, and Jeep Grand Cherokee are up there as well. I do not own a trailer quite yet, but will be getting one soon. So now that I have the Q7, next was the travel trailer, but how big could it be? I thought that this would be easy to figure out, but it wasn’t. I did some research, spoke to experts, read the owner’s manual, and read other AudiWorld posts. I was finding lots of misinformation on AudoWorld and other places, so I decided to write down what I learned here. There are lots of falsehoods out there, and I wanted to have this info in one place. My goal was following EVERY Audi requirement to the letter and NOT second-guessing what they say. In German style, their requirements are VERY precise. My car is a 2019 Q7 Prestige with 3.0 supercharged engine with a factory installed trailer hitch. If you add a third-party trailer hitch, your weight capacity might be less, but it is NEVER more. Note that the the Audi Q7 2.0 liter is rated to tow much less than the 3.0 liter V6 version. So, let’s get started. Let’s start with the car side. Just how much stuff and people can you keep in the car when towing a travel trailer? The Audi manual recommends to “Store objects in the vehicle luggage compartment, if possible. The vehicle should always carry the heaviest possible load and the trailer should have the lightest possible load.” But what is that load? If you open the driver’s door, there is a sticker on your car that gives a capacity for “cargo and passengers.” On my car its 1367 lb., but keep in mind, this is cargo, passengers, AND trailer tongue weight. The maximum tongue weight for my Audi is 770 lb. and Audi recommend I get as close to that weight as possible, and note the type of suspension does NOT matter. So, let’s say I start with the 1367 lb. limit, and subtract 770 lb. tongue weight. This leaves 597 lb. for passengers & cargo. Before adding any cargo, add your passenger weight. You may have 7 seats, but with a trailer, be VERY careful on cargo weight. For this example, I’m going to assume 597 lb. in passenger and cargo weight. Three or four people alone could get there. Or two people and some cargo. Now let’s move on to the trailer. I got my 597 lb. of passengers and cargo that are ready to go camping. Audi says the trailer receiver you pick should be NO MORE than 6.193” from the locking pin to the center of the ball in length. (Who says Germans aren’t precise.) I searched everywhere, and there was only one receiver that met this requirement. Not surprisingly, it’s the one Audi sells for $70, so I bought it. Whatever you buy, make sure the ball and receiver are rated AT LEAST 7,700 lb. The Audi one is. But a problem, the Audi one comes with a 2” ball, and almost all travel trailers today use a 2 5/16th ball, so you need to switch the ball. Walmart and Home Depot have these, but remember you need a 1” shank. First you need to remove the 2” ball on the Audi receiver. Place it in the car hitch receiver but turned 90 degrees from normal. Then get a VERY large 1 ½” wrench to remove it. Warning, Audi puts this on VERY tight. Before you put on the new ball, we need to talk a bit about trailer stabilizers. I recommend one and there is a bracket you can get that fits between the ball and receiver to connect one, BUT it requires a ball with a longer shank. If you use it, get a 2 5/16” ball, 1” shank that is at least 2.4” long. This is tricky to find, but it can be found. While we are here, I should mention the the “load distributing trailer hitch.” Audi say NOT to use one, so DON’T use one. Period. If you don’t like that, argue with Audi, not me. It should be noted that two companies (at least) make aftermarket trailer hitches for the Q7, Draw-Tite and Curt, and NEITHER are rated for a load distributing hitch. DO NOT USE ONE, no matter how smart you think you are for doing so. If your trailer is over 3000 lb. you also need a brake controller. There are three types you can use. One connects to an under-dash connector, one fits between the trailer and car and connects to your phone via Bluetooth, and one mounts to the trailer and communicates with a wireless receiver connected to your 12V socket. Your choice. I bought the trailer mounted one. OK finally on to the trailer. How heavy can it be? 7,770 lb. right? Smiley face. NOPE. Your capacity is 7,700 lb. but this includes the weight of cargo and passengers in the car. For us this is 597 lb. (Do NOT add the tongue weight here.) You have 7,700 lb. – 597 lb. = 7,103 lb. and a tongue weight of 770 lb. OK off you go to buy that 7,103 lb. trailer, but NOT YET. Audi says for ever 3,200 ft. altitude over 3,200 ft. where you tow, you need to reduce towing capacity by 10% (770 lb.) This one is tricky. If you are only on the East Coast, 3,200 ft. elevation is fine. But in the West, that is a joke. So you will have to figure your own case, but I set an arbitrary altitude of 6,400 ft. NOT TO EXCEED, which means my trailer can be 7,700 lb. – 597 lb. – 770 lb. = 6,333 lb. I’m going to round DOWN to 6,000 lb. That’s not a bad trailer. Maybe 22’ or 23’ So, lets try to understand trailer weight. There is a dry weight, the net carrying capacity weight, and the trailer GVWR, which is what the frame and wheels of the trailer can support. Dry weight + net carrying capacity is always equal to or under the GVWR weight. To be safe, I recommend for your GVWR to be under 6,333 lb. but technically its dry weight plus what you have put in it, including water tanks. Water weight 8 lb. per gallon. Again, Audi also recommends that you keep your tongue weight as high as possible without exceeding the 770 lb. limit. Tongue weigh given for trailers usually does NOT include propane weight or the weight of batteries. Anyway, just buy your AirStream Flying Cloud 23FB and away you go…. Yipee!! Smiley face. So to summarize, watch your car weight limits. You can not have more than 3 or 4 people in your car with a trailer, we’ll unless they are supermodels and weigh very little. If that is the case, have all you want as long as your wife doesn't object. Next, add a 2 5/16” trailer ball and trailer stabilizer if you like. Finally, subtract your car carrying weight from your trailer capacity, and derate for high-altitude driving. Be safe and figure these weight loads yourself. The trailer dealer may lie to you to sell you a bigger trailer with bigger profit. And be safe. I hope this is helpful, and if something I stated here is incorrect, please point it out, but please do not tell me how a load distributing trailer hitch changes all this despite the fact Audi clearly says to NOT use one. Your fight with them, not me. Last edited by ang934; 08-06-2019 at 10:36 AM. Reason: Grammer/Spelling Later, in the thread in response to another member who stumbles through several weight calculations and absurdly thinks one could, “...tow the (Airstream) Flying Cloud 27FB with no issues...Tell me if you think my math is wrong...” he added: I think OK, but definitely on the upper limit. Be careful if you are carrying 4 or 5 people in the car as well. That adds to the weight. I wanted add to my original post on some hardware you will need. If you follow Audi's recommendation, it doesn't allow much wiggle room. First on the receiver you need, Audi specifies a maximum length between the ball and receiver pin. Unfortunately this is shorter than any I could find anywhere, so I had to buy the one Audi sells for $70. I believe its made by Curt just for Audi, but if you can find it elsewhere, by all means get it. Unless you want to do LOTS of searching, buy the Audi receiver. Now you also need to change the ball since Audi provides a 2" ball which only works for small trailers. You need a 2 5/16" ball. The on that will work is the CURT 40039 Chrome Trailer Hitch Ball. Finally you REALLY should add sway control, and remember weight distributing trailer hitches ARE NOT allowed. (More on this later.) To add sway control you'll need the Draw-Tite 26003 Sway Control Adapter Bracket. This goes between the receiver and the ball. I used JB Weld epoxy to keep these two together. DON'T get any on the trailer ball threads. The reason for this is to keep the force of the sway control from moving the bracket and loosening the ball. I have heard of people welding the the bracket to the receiver also. And the weight distribution hitch, I know people are in love these, but Audi says NO, DO NOT use one. As it turns Audi does know what they are talking about. The way the trailer hitch fastens to the car in a vertical fashion basically eliminates the need for this type of hitch. It also makes this type of hitch dangerous to use because the weight distribution hitch puts added twisting forces on the ball and the hitch could break off. In end this is a win-win. Weight distribution hitches are heavy, expensive, and a pain, and Audi eliminated their need for you. Again DO NOT use one, but adding sway control, like the CURT 17200 Black Trailer Anti-Sway Bar Control, or similar is probably a very good idea. I have also come across a few electronic sway controls. They basically connect to your trailer brakes, and apply the trailer brakes when there is sway. They look pretty nice, but slightly pricey, but overall look to be an easy solution. Last edited by ang934; 09-06-2019 at 07:57 AM.

As Bill reported, Mike and Krunch Mossy are both alive and well. He asked me to let everyone know.

Now that, I could buy into.

From a Pharmacist's standpoint this should NEVER happen. From a corporate standpoint there should have been an immediately initiated memo stating that anyone that had lost their maintenance medications due to the storm should have them replaced AT NO COST to the patient. When Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 there were thousands of displaced persons seeking refuge in and around Tupelo. Even though I did not work retail Pharmacy except on a relief basis, I still saw many people that were unable to get to their meds before evacuating. We never turned a single person away and never charged them a cent. They had too many balls in the air to have to deal with not have vital meds.

This could be your new mascot...

Does this mean you'll be doing all the cooking at Quartzsite? Also, are you now calling the trailer Oli Leg?

What the Zamp representative is says is that the CO monitor should be hooked directly to power (like a positive buss bar) to isolate it from all other systems.

I stand corrected then. All the brand name WAGO connectors I've ever seen had it printed on the levers. They DO have a strong spring. You don't want your thumbnail under it when it unexpectedly comes down.

True, been doing it for 17 years. But like Topgun said, Oliver now advises against it. Look me up sometime and I'll play Paul Harvey and tell you....

I really like the WAGO style connectors. They are so expensive that I buy a generic version off Amazon. I have never had one to fail. Examining your photo and reading your post, it is my opinion that there was an installation problem. The connectors in the photo are not WAGO brand. I too had problems when I first started using them. It appears that the installer did not know that you have to pull the levers up to 90 degrees for them to stay open. He or she appears to have not known this and just slightly opened them and crammed the stranded wire into the receiver holes. Their crumpled strands indicate to me that they were never properly connected. Tinning the ends of the wires is absolutely best practice with stranded wire, solid wire doesn't really need that done. Soldering above an open circuit board is probably not the best idea though. This is a product I use when soldering is too difficult or I'm too lazy to drag out my soldering equipment.

Airstream also built an Argosy motorhome and Argosy fifth-wheel.

Bryan, I do believe you are correct that these are indeed 5-leaf springs. I could not imagine that Jim would ever have outfitted any of his personal trailers with anything but the absolute heaviest duty components.

Tali and I currently tow with a Silverado 3500 HD. We did tow with a Silverado 2500 HD and before that, a Sierra 1500 SLT 6.2L gasser. Both the Silverado's have be diesel. We found the 2500 HD to have a minimal payload of just over 2000 pounds. As many of you have pointed out, we carry a lot of gear, too much according to some (I have a list.) The poor Sierra was seriously overloaded, probably by about a ton (literally). It's no wonder it got a dismal fuel mileage of around 10.5mpg. Moving up to the 2500 HD was great for fuel mileage coming in around 13.5-14 mpg right out of the gate. Unfortunately, I discovered that I was still 7-8 hundred pounds overloaded so we moved up to the 3500 HD. The engine and transmission in both the Silverado's are the same. I was pleasantly surprised to get exactly the same fuel mileage from the 3500 HD. With the exception of driving the 3500 HD around town, it is always a tow vehicle. We've had it nearly three years and it doesn't even have 30K miles on it. Our trips are always at least 4500 miles so the mileage we've racked up are virtually all highway towing miles. We have only ever made a single one-way trip to Huntsville not towing the Oliver. We went there to pick up another trailer to tow back to Tupelo. I can say that in the 2500 HD we made a few non towing trips in. It got 22 mpg on the open highway. Mileage around town seems to be the same as towing mileage.

Lesson 4: There's also a battery inside the awning. It's for the wind sensor. It does have an audable warning when it's going low. The problem is if you don't know about it in advance I've heard one will actually become a total loser due to the incessant beeping that you can't locate..

In another thread, the topic of a winter trip to Quartzsite came up. Since it was a thread hijack there, I've started this one here. Sometime in January next, we'll leave for Q. As usual, we'll be camped out at Dome Rock about 4 miles west of town. This is BLM and is free. There are zero facilities except what you bring with you so you will be totally boondocking. Solar is obviously necessary, without it you will have to have a generator. There is water and dumping available in town. There will be a fiberglass rally (of such) that usually occurs the first week or so of February. Calling this a rally is quite a stretch as there are no organizers or agenda. There will be a mix of all different brands of FG trailers. We've made many friends through the years while attending. January 18th-26th will feature the Quartzsite Sports, Vacation & RV Show. Death Valley NP is an easy drive and that time of the year is the PERFECT time to go. Joshua Tree NP is also close enough to drop in there. Both NP's have free camping and there is never a crowd that time of year. If this type of atmosphere floats your boat, Vegas is north of there as is Hoover dam. Lake Havasu City sports the London Bridge having been disassembled in London, shipped across the pond and reassembled there. Since there was no river for it to cross, they diverted the Colorado River to restore it as a functioning bridge across water. This will be a lazy time with plenty of opportunities to do nothing, sitting around talking to old friends and making new ones. I've started a list of folks who said they would be there. Join us, won't you? Quartzsite 2025 roster: 1 - Steve and Tali Landrum Hull #050 Tupelo, MS (scubarx) 2 - Art and Diane FLYNN Hull #226 Placitas, NM (maxburner) 3 - Lance Smeltekop Hull #898 Nederland,CO and Traverse City, MI (mountainman198) 4 - Richard De Villiers Hull #1368 Guelph, Ontario (rich.dev) 5 - John and Wendy Register - Hull #996 Full Timers (johnwen) 6 - John and Chris Dokos - Hull #113, Prescott, AZ (jd1923) 7 - Robert and Ying Eckerle - Hull #1218, Perdido Beach, AL (Tideline77)

That black trailer (Hull #011) was during their learning stage and were toying with the idea of painting the trailers different colors. It sits abandoned in Nevada from what I've heard. The Red one (Hull #10) 'Jellybean' is owned by Winston and Brandi Shaffer and is still on the road. They are at least the third owners. Here they both are in early 2008 bound for an RV show in Las Vegas.

I really like it down on the lower flat better than up on Oliver Ridge. The ridge got its name because all the Oliver's formerly parked up there. The last few years there's been some a$$hole redneck in a motor home parked on the lower flat across the way and harasses all the other campers with threats. @Mountainman198 went over and spoke with him and he calmed down somewhat. When you find out what the '198' means you'll understand. (It's not his weight). All in all, it makes no real difference to me. If we're all parked near each other, it will be a great time. For those that haven't been, I have the GPS coordinates for Dome Rock where we will be camping. I'll start a Quartzsite 2025 roster: 1 - Steve and Tali Landrum Hull #050 Tupelo, MS 2 - Art and Diane FLYNN Hull #226 Placitas, NM 3 - I’ll be back. Lance Smeltekop Hull #898 Nederland,CO and Traverse City, MI

Since you (or at least myself) would never try to press the wet bolts into the shackle straps while under the trailer, I can't see this being an issue or a useful tool. If you own a vise and a hammer, you have all the tools you need. If not, this job is probably beyond your capabilities.

I've had front I have had a front hitch on every vehicle I've owned since 1992. Some I made myself, but I've bought the last three. None I've bought are rated greater than 500 pounds of hitch weight. I just don't worry about it. My tongue weight on The Outlaw Oliver is probably in the 650 pound range, I've not measured it lately. But I am only moving the trailer about 100 feet to get it into its garage and, as everybody always says when describing their tow vehicle, it does just fine.

I have no idea what this means.

Are you guys coming to Quartzsite next Jan/Feb?

The wet bolt is only pressed into the shackle strap. I don't have a hydraulic press either but I do have a vise and a big ole hammer. Remove the zerk fitting from the end and drop it into the shackle strap orienting the grease exit hole 90 degrees to the strap. Loosely clamp the bolt into the vise and using your big ole hammer tap it down until the backside of the bolt head makes solid contact with the strap. Replace the zerk, or leave it out for now because you're probably gonna have to hit it again to make the shoulder seat against the strap on the other side. DO NOT use tightening the nut in an effort to pull it into place, you will only strip the nut and could damage the threads on the bolt. FYI: In American English, a vice is an immoral habit or practice (or the second in command after the President) and a vise is a tool with closable jaws for clamping things. But in British English, the tool is spelled like the sin: vice.

Edit: @CRM has located a photo of the underside of Jim's "The Beast." It had four leaf spring packs rather than five so now I wonder if the axles were 5200 pounds when originally built.