On a side note to this build, I found out today that I have been hauling heavier than I thought with my current truck/engine. I was told that the gooseneck stock trailer that I use to haul livestock was only around 3500lbs. I never questioned it because of how easy it pulls. It's a steel, 20' floor 14,000lb gvw stock trailer. So I guess I should have known it would probably be heavier than that.
But anyway, today I hauled two of my cattle about 75 miles north to a butcher who was buying them to butcher and sell the meat. I took them, along with two others, to my dads farm to weigh them on his scales over the weekend. Total weight of all of them was just a hair over 5000lbs. So I figured total trailer weight was around 8500 lbs. Generally this is the minimum amount I haul when I take them to sell as fats about 45 min south of me. Has always pulled great, always impresses me pulling up the hills that I see so many others struggle on. These are the hills I compare my truck to my dad's duramax, where I say my truck pulls just as well as his does climbing the hills. But back to the original point.
I took two of the four north today. They weighed in at 1520lbs and 1370lbs based on my dad's scale. Since the buyer wasn't there when I weighed them and I've never dealt with him before, I agreed to weigh them again at a local hardware store that sold gravel and had a scale there. So I took the truck, trailer and cattle there to weigh it. Since my truck and trailer were too long for his scale, I pulled the gooseneck only onto the scale and then unhooked it to get the trailer only weight. It came it at 8510 lbs. Seemed high to me considering the cattle should only weigh roughly 2900lbs.... So to end this long story, I took the cattle back to the butcher shop, unloaded and re weighed the trailer. Sure enough, his scale came it at a total cattle weight of roughly the same weight as what I came up with (his showed 2820lbs, 70 lb difference). So that puts the trailer weight at almost 5700lbs! So all this time I've been thinking I'm hauling 8000-12,000 lbs, I'm hauling 10,000-14,000 lbs. I was impressed thinking I was pulling the lighter weights. Now knowing I've been pulling over 2000lbs more every load makes me that much more pleased with how well this thing runs. I can't wait to get this new engine built so I won't be afraid to lay into it a little more on those hills and push it a little harder to see what it can really do. I'm really surprised that at 251,000 miles that the only real issues I have had so far is a broken valve spring and a leaky turbo drain tube.
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