RV'er from South Dakota

[Thrillerwriter]

We just bought a 2023 Outer Banks in Race Red and love it. We bought it as a vehicle to be towed behind our Winnebago Forza. Look forward to some great discussions and information on the forum. I've done a lot of RV mods and fixes so feel free to reach out if you need help. Over the next few days I will be installing a Roadmaster baseplate and an Air Force One braking system.

Also check out my thrillers on Amazon.

Imperfect Justice
ThrillerWriter Doug

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[Squatch]

I sense a Doug vs. Doug battle...

 

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[Thrillerwriter]

I sense a Doug vs. Doug battle...

Is there something I should know about old Doug

 

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Is there something I should know about old Doug

 

[LENNYSMAMA]

We just bought a 2023 Outer Banks in Race Red and love it. We bought it as a vehicle to be towed behind our Winnebago Forza. Look forward to some great discussions and information on the forum. I've done a lot of RV mods and fixes so feel free to reach out if you need help. Over the next few days I will be installing a Roadmaster baseplate and an Air Force One braking system.

Also check out my thrillers on Amazon.

Imperfect Justice
ThrillerWriter Doug

What color interior did you choose? Struggling with that.

 

[Thrillerwriter]

We got really lucky and happened to be at the dealer the morning after the unit had been sent from Ford the night before. So we didn’t order it but it had pretty much everything the way we wanted it so we decided to go for it.
It has the dark blue and black interior.
I got the baseplate, lighting kit, and brake controller installed. I’m waiting for the freightliner dealer to install the air brake system on our rv and we will be ready to try it out.

So far we absolutely love it.

 

[Gassyjack]

Be sure to review the flat towing threads.

 

[Thrillerwriter]

Yes I have read them all and have been towing a jeep Cherokee for a few years.
The transmission issues worry me but I think it is very important to have a charging cable on the battery and the neutral tow enabled or you are asking for trouble

 

[Thrillerwriter]

Be sure to review the flat towing threads.

Thanks for the heads up on this. As I said I have read the threads but I didn’t realize how many were having issues and the severity of the problems until I went through the threads. I have to admit it makes me nervous but I had the same fear before towing the Jeep the first few times.

I did it wrong a couple times with the Jeep. Didn’t realize the electronic parking brake got activated…. Until I tried to go and it was pulling pretty hard. Then when I got that off it sprang forward… yikes

Another time I didn’t get it truly into neutral. Easy to tell on the Jeep because you don’t leave it in neutral, but park so you can tell pretty fast its not towing.

What I do is hook up on flat ground so that I can rock the vehicle back and forth after putting in tow mode. If it moves then I’m OK. But just to be safe I have the wife watch the wheels turn before we take off.

The Bronco worries me a little because you don’t put the transmission back in park like the Jeep so you can’t easily tell that the transmission is disengaged without looking at the dash indicator and seeing neutral tow mode is truly on.

I also heard that if the battery goes dead then it might shift out of tow mode. That would really suck because you wouldn’t be able to tell from the rv. I made sure that I installed a charging cable from the 7 pin connector of the rv that connects through a circuit breaker I installed on the bronco to the battery. I want that battery always charged just to make sure.

All that being said we are going to try a few short trips to make sure everything is OK before we head out on the road. Enjoy your bronco.

 

[Thrillerwriter]

Well we took the Bronco out for a maiden voyage behind our Winnebago and it worked well. The air brakes worked as expected, the tow mode while not simple to get into, seemed to work once we got it set.

Getting out of it wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be, but after a little playing around it worked. After some practice I think it will be straightforward.

I checked that my charging cable was indeed charging the battery, and I verified that the brake pedal was being pressed by the air system. Everything worked as expected.

The thin red curly cable is the breakaway which will activate the bronco brake system if the bronco breaks away from the rig. The blue line is the air line from the rv that activates a cylinder that pushes down on the bronco brake pedal.

The large red cable is the lighting cable that activates the bronco taillights through diodes.

The black cables are safety cables in case the tow bar fails somehow (yeah right lol)

We only did a short drive so I’ll put up more info when we do a real test.

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