The Home Machinist!

I am tempted to weight test an assembled truck with my F350 super duty crew, it's 6680#'s empty, and has got to be putting nearly 2000#'s on each front tire. These are UCF-205-16 pillow blocks, rated at around 1500#'s each static, and over 3000#'s rolling. I give up some prototypical looks for sure, but they are self-aligning, have massive weight capacity, and should last forever.

I definitely wouldn't want to put THAT much force on them (3000 lbs each rolling, I don't think they would have very much service life under those conditions), but here's the deal... you have 8 of them on each car, so even if a single car weighed 4000 pounds, that's still only 500 on each bearing, well within the capacity, especially since it will be turning slowly, say around 450 to 500 RPM at your likely max speed. I doubt that your cars will ever be loaded that heavy, but I don't think you'll need to worry about the bearings at all as long as you keep them lubed properly.

I figured your F350 would weigh more than that. My dad has a 2001 Chevrolet K3500 4wd extended cab and it weighed in at 7,300 with no fuel tanks, tool boxes, parts or people in it, and it is an 8.1 liter, not even the diesel. We took all that stuff out of the bed the last time I went and got coal. That was about 10 years ago now. I put some 8" sideboards on there, and had them dump the bed as full as it would go without spilling off going down the road. Got about 4,000 pounds of coal in there! That's what I'm still using today.

I won't load them that much of course, but that's the specs on the bearings, so worst case I'll have them at 1/3rd static loading and they should last a long time. Probably the heaviest thing they could see, is if I decide to actually pull sellable logs out of the lower end of the property, I could remove the bulkheads and have them across both flat cars on pivot plates, but it doesn't really make sense because by the time I get a piece of equipment in there to load it on the train, that equipment could just drag the logs up to the driveway.
I went to the dump with a heavy load, and when I came out I was almost out of gas and didn't have any extra gear in the cab. Their scale is certified, and it said 6680 was the weight(no driver) on the way out. It's a long bed crew cab with a V-10. Not dually though. It's a beast, I took home *two yards* of 3/8 clear for my driveway it must have been 4800#'s. The guy at the gravel place was like "I'd only put two yards in THIS truck, no others". For what it's worth I wasn't on the bump stops, but she was riding pretty squishy.

Those V10s are stout. My father-in-law has one in his motor home. 35 ft motor home and that thing will pull it really well, with a small car towed flat-foot behind it to boot.

I do like the engine, it's very smooth and quiet going down the freeway, reminds me of being in a jetliner with the quiet "whirring" noise.
I don't drive enough miles to bother going diesel, I think I've gone 20,000 miles in 11 years. It does like the gas though, I run about 11 empty and 8 loaded.

I'm getting closer to assembling the first set. I was looking at some different options for springs and bump stops, and think I found a solution. Energy suspension makes a universal conical bump stop that is 1-1/2" tall and 1-1/2" round with a 3/8" stud in it. I'm thinking this can be bracketed from the truck side to the bolster behind the springs, so that when empty or lightly loaded the springs can work, but when loaded heavy the bump stops are there to provide some give. To the best of my knowledge, there are no "progressive" springs, so they are going to have a fairly narrow "working" range, and then bottom out with nothing else in there. Another option would be shorter, stiffer springs behind the other ones, that don't touch until a certain amount of travel has been taken up.

Ryan, can you confirm, are you available today? I sent a PM, but it’s still in my outbox. So not sure if I should make the trip.

Thanks
Glenn

I'm still good for today Glenn, had a nightmare up in Canada and ended up having to leave my car up there and stay at my fiancé's place. I'm home now, thankfully have my truck as backup, and can meet you anytime today.

Ok enrouteETA 3 PM