Flip Neck Box Mechanical RGN Question:

With where your fifth wheel is you just as well have kept the other truck.

You need to get your king pin centered on the front driver or further forward if you have the clearance. With it all the way back like that you're tag axle is just going to take weight off your steer.

Now I don't know how fellas pulling mechanicals slide the fifth wheel after picking up the load, because I assume you need to have it all the way back to meet your ramps. I guess you block under the front of the trailer tight and then drop your air? Regardless of how it's done, you need to figure how to get your king pin as far forward as possible to make use of the truck, otherwise all you accomplished is to be able to haul less weight than before due to this tractor being heavier. At least I assume it is. What is your tare, and what does that tractor weigh?

 

First step should be to cut those ramps off right behind your mud flap brackets. Remove the stops on the fifth wheel as well. There is no reason to have the ramps that long. They can drop low at a steep angle to start picking up the neck then curve to a shallow angle as you go up. As they are now you are just adding length and hurting weight transfer.

As it is you haven't even gained much in capacity because you can't even transfer weight up to the steer.

That tractor as it sits I'm going to guess is somewhere around 27-29K bobtail and around 53-55K with the trailer empty depending on how much equipment you are carrying in the headache rack/trailer deck.

With 7 axles on a 45T trailer 90K lbs should be your max load capacity. Your empty weight is so unnecessarily heavy you're just increasing your costs for no reason. My other truck is a standard 389 sleeper truck and he can get 75K on a 3 axle RGN easily.

I'll bet you get basically 0 weight transfer to your steers unless you reduce weight carried by the pusher significantly. Does your truck have a regulator for the pusher or is it automatically load balancing. If it does have one do you know how to set it properly?

 

Also, your turning radius is going to suck compared to what you are used to. With the fifth wheel that far back it is going to be considerably worse.

 

He's just got it at the back of the frame for hooking up. I do something similar when I'm swapping trailers a lot and just don't feel like sliding it constantly. I can run any legal weight load with the slider at the back and still have 15K on my steer.

In his other photo he has it slid up centered over the first drive which will load the tridem evenly but give him 0 steer transfer.