M101 Pulling Vehicle

[Nick]

I pull my M101 with a Dodge Dakota Quad cab, 4.7 L V8 with a 5 speed manual tranny. I had the motor and tranny for my 48 Power Wagon, 5 NDT tires and some other misc parts. I pulled it from the Bay Area, home, about 4 hours. Never knew it was there. Same with two cords of wood, except for a little squat in the back of the Dodge, never knew it was there

 

[ida34]

Did you really have two cords? Holy smokes that's a lot of bulk/weight.

It was two face cords and we had to stack it in to fit it all. It was piled high in the middle. The first step was getting up a muddy hill that was pretty steep and about 40 or 50 foot long. I put the truck in low range to get it to dry ground. This was through the guys yard. The trailer was noticeably lower when loaded. I took it slow as I do not have side racks on the trailer. If I did I would have felt just fine pulling it faster. I had it about 45 mph (the speed limit) and was taking the corners slow because I did not want to loose any wood. I only had to go a mile or so.

I have had a couple of yards of gravel in my M105 but towed it with the deuce. The 105 took an incredible amount of weight. I pulled the M105 empty to a guy when I traded him for the M416. I would not put any weight on the M105 pulling it with the explorer.

My explorer has the trailer towing package and can well handle 3500lbs. Anything over 3500lbs in Michigan requires brakes with a break away feature. Even a fully loaded M105 is still withing the stated capabilities of the explorer.

 

[Bob H]

I use my Jeep Cherokee XJ 4.0 to pull my M101A2 , most recently I had 1200lbs of ready mix (15 - 80lb bags) & a 40 gallon water heater in it. (Didn't even look loaded down)
No the Cherokee doesn't like that kind of weight, especially with the 32 inch tires on it.
Keep it out of overdrive @ 60mph or less & accept that 12mpg is all yer gonna get and she does fine. (without the cargo cover)
I would not even think of it without the A2's surge brakes. It towed like it wasn't even back there.

Pay attention when you are shopping, as the M101 trailers are really M116 trailers with a cargo body on them.
Mine is a 1990 M116A2 frame with a 1968 M101A1 body and was sold and titled as a 68 M101A1. I'm sure it could go the other way too
You could get a M101A2 body on a A1 chassis. Just look for the 8 lug 16 inch wheels & tires and the big surge brake assy on the front.

 

[CSeachranaiche]

Let me sure I understand this correctly. Surge brakes work independent of the truck pulling it. You do not have an electronic braking system connecting the trailer and the truck. When the vehicle slows the brakes activate on their own. If i am incorrect please inform me. Thanks.

 

[Recovry4x4]

You got it right. Anything that hooks to the trailer works the brakes.

 

[papercu]

more on the surge brakes. Wayne
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regu...nal/E7-3815-Surge-Brake-Final-Rule-3-6-07.pdf

 

[RKBA]

I have a M101A2 with the surge brakes. One thing to be aware of is pintle/lunette fit. The trailer ring is much larger than the 2" ball/pintle combo that I have. It can't be towed lke this with surge brakes; the sloppy interconnection creates a big problem. The trailer basically oscillates between full brake and no brake when stopping as the ring shifts back and forth inside the coupler, beating the tow rig to death.

I am temporarily going to use a Croft Trailer ball adapter to hopefully mitigate this:

http://www.crofttrailer.com/site/products/175/183/1338/details.html

It appears to me that the A2 surge brakes assemblies will swap straight over with standard 12x2 electric trailer brakes. I might go that route at some point and get rid of the entire hydraulic system.