Mods to Increase Tow Capacity

[kvermeer]

I realize this sounds stupid but it's important to jack up your trailers now and then and ensure the wheels/hubs are spinning easily. Any extra drag on an EV is worth eliminating if possible.

Not stupid, any extra drag on a trailer is worth eliminating but there's no need to lift the trailer to spin them. The way I check this is by feeling the trailer hubs (and the drums on trailers with electric brakes) with the back of my hand after getting to my destination. If it's enough to matter to the tow vehicle, that friction drag will show up as hundreds of watts of heat in the bearing and you'll feel the temperature rise in the housing.

If I'm going a long distance, I'll pull over a few miles in such as to the side of an on-ramp to double-check my load, tire pressure/temps, and bearing temps. I've caught one dragging brake shoe and two bad bearings this way before they caused major incidents.

Also, Trailer Buddy zerk caps are worth their weight in gold - or stainless steel, which seems to cost about as much these days:

https://www.etrailer.com/Trailer-Bearings-Races-Seals-Caps/Bearing-Buddy/BB1980A-SS.html

Yes, I can pull the tapered roller bearings and hand-grease them, and I believe you if you say that's more effective than just shoving grease in the end. But I would rather hit the trailer buddies with a shot of grease once a month than hand-grease the bearings once a year, I can trust myself to do the former and know I'll skip the latter. This is especially true on boat trailers that are constantly suffering water intrusion.

That said, I'll do this religiously not because I'm worried about the drag on an EV, but because I'm worried about the bearing failure causing the whole wheel to come off. I don't care about the range hit, and I don't care about tongue weight on the hitch, I care about maintaining control and structural integrity of the vehicle when dragging a trailer frame across the highway. We've all seen boats and campers on the side of the road at crazy angles because they've only got one wheel, that's because they didn't check their bearings.

 

[2thlesswithta2s]

lol so in the states I frequent nobody actively looks or inspects for GVW on gas vehicles rated under 10'000 lbs GVW or less.. Not saying it's smart but it's not like its being checked end of the day its a 100 ish horsepower truck, much of a load and likely it will be a tail wagging the dog. Assuming it irs to get any load capacity you'd have to start with better shocks, springs, a-arms and likely drive axle bits if you were going to push it. I can't picture a single jet ski on a light trailer put all the fuel and such in the bed of the truck and be nice to it when driving.. I would run a standard electrical temperature gauge off the inlet to the radiator just so I could know when the towing becomes more than the drive system can take, probably the gear box temps as well.

But it might affect warranty coverage, or if you're in an accident it could affect insurance & maybe even legal liability.

 

[E90400K]

But U-Haul won't rent you a trailer if your vehicle isn't spec'd to pull the weight of the trailer (plus, I assume, some load.)

Exactly why I brought up the low tow rating issue months ago. I said the very same thing.

 

[Blackspots76]

The trailer I have has a 2000 pound carrying capacity (its a 5 x 10 trailer, and it officially has a 2300lb capacity, actually, but I put a wood floor on it, since its just a mesh floor). If I buy the Slate, I'm going to tow things with that trailer and not worry about weight (to at least the maximum of the trailer)

Note: My 2006 F-150 XLT 5.4L that I owned from July 2009 till Jan 2025 had a 8600lb tow rating, my mom was wanting me to tow an RV trailer for one of our vacations, but I refused to since I had never done that before with my truck, and my truck was getting rather high in miles when she wanted to do that.

 

[GaRailroader]

The towing capacity has been revised to 2000 pounds with a payload of 1550 pounds.

 

[bloo]

Holy shit.

 

[kvermeer]

The towing capacity has been revised to 2000 pounds with a payload of 1550 pounds.

Yes!!!

That's plenty to get useful payloads on my aluminum 6x10. What fantastic spoilers!

The infographic on https://www.slate.auto/en/specs still reads 1440/1000, but this update has a bunch of great stuff.

 

[E90400K]

The towing capacity has been revised to 2000 pounds with a payload of 1550 pounds.

Gee, I guess the engineers did a very late Slateboard chassis redesign to double the towing capacity. Now that funky hitch won't rip the back end out...

Hummm...

 

[E90400K]

 

[E90400K]

Now we just need that DIY tow upgrade kit to get the rating up to 4,000 pounds.

 

[Driven5]

Glad to know their executives were conservative in what they chose to broadcast from the preliminary engineering assessments. That bodes well for other things too.

Using the logic from prior baseless assertions, there should now be zero need for any upgrades to safely tow 4000 pounds anywhere other than Davis Dam.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

Glad to know their executives were conservative in what they chose to broadcast from the preliminary engineering assessments. That bodes well for other things too.

Using the logic from prior baseless assertions, there should now be zero need for any upgrades to safely tow 4000 pounds anywhere other than Davis Dam.

Based on my previous math of - a vehicle rated to tow 0lbs can tow 1000lbs, so a vehicle rated to tow 1000lbs can tow infinity lbs - now gets updated to a vehicle rated to tow 2000lbs can now tow two entire infinities of pounds! This is great news.

 

[Nivek]

Based on the info I have seen, It seems to me like Slate is sandbagging the tow rating. They wouldn't put a class 3 hitch on it if its not capable of more than 1k lbs.

They were indeed sandbagging it in more ways than one 🍻

 

[E90400K]

Based on my previous math of - a vehicle rated to tow 0lbs can tow 1000lbs, so a vehicle rated to tow 1000lbs can tow infinity lbs - now gets updated to a vehicle rated to tow 2000lbs can now tow two entire infinities of pounds! This is great news.

Wait, I didn't know we were doing physics questions today. No one told me!

 

[HTXSlate]

They read the forums!!!

Y'all are welcome. lol

Not stupid, any extra drag on a trailer is worth eliminating but there's no need to lift the trailer to spin them. The way I check this is by feeling the trailer hubs (and the drums on trailers with electric brakes) with the back of my hand after getting to my destination. If it's enough to matter to the tow vehicle, that friction drag will show up as hundreds of watts of heat in the bearing and you'll feel the temperature rise in the housing.

If I'm going a long distance, I'll pull over a few miles in such as to the side of an on-ramp to double-check my load, tire pressure/temps, and bearing temps. I've caught one dragging brake shoe and two bad bearings this way before they caused major incidents.

Also, Trailer Buddy zerk caps are worth their weight in gold - or stainless steel, which seems to cost about as much these days:

https://www.etrailer.com/Trailer-Bearings-Races-Seals-Caps/Bearing-Buddy/BB1980A-SS.html

Yes, I can pull the tapered roller bearings and hand-grease them, and I believe you if you say that's more effective than just shoving grease in the end. But I would rather hit the trailer buddies with a shot of grease once a month than hand-grease the bearings once a year, I can trust myself to do the former and know I'll skip the latter. This is especially true on boat trailers that are constantly suffering water intrusion.

That said, I'll do this religiously not because I'm worried about the drag on an EV, but because I'm worried about the bearing failure causing the whole wheel to come off. I don't care about the range hit, and I don't care about tongue weight on the hitch, I care about maintaining control and structural integrity of the vehicle when dragging a trailer frame across the highway. We've all seen boats and campers on the side of the road at crazy angles because they've only got one wheel, that's because they didn't check their bearings.

I have those. Had not greased the hubs in 2 years so did a complete tear down and repack. Will be using the zeros here on out.