Towing with factory air suspension
 

So my Yukon Denali has factory rear air suspension. It works well and self levels when carrying loads inside the truck as well as moderately heavy trailers. It tows great with the 6.2/6L80E. As spring time comes around we like to go to the lake for weekends and take the RV. It's a 31' Outback with 3 slides and is pretty heavy. Dry weight is 7787, loaded with our stuff (pots, pans, groceries) I'm sure it's over the 7900lb mark. Problem is, 7900 is the "rated" capacity of the truck. I'm not a bit worried about making it stop or go. My concern is with the factory air suspension handling it. I'm sure it's not a cheap system to service :judge:

Yes, I do have the HD, which pulls it great. It has added air bags as well as added leafs and factory brake controller. I'd just rather not pack everyone into an extended cab truck when we have a Yukon XL sitting here lol I'm mainly trying to avoid taking multiple vehicles on trips to the lake if I can help it.

The air assisted shocks do cost a few dollars and the air pump isn't cheap either. I see them blown out all the time up here in the north.

I'm sure it could pull it but that's still a alot of weight after you add in people, fuel etc etc inside the cab. If the tongue weight is somewhat light it should help you out. You'd better have a load/weight distribution hitch with active sway assist.

I do have a load leveling/sway assist hitch. For people it's usually just my wife, my two daughters and myself. My daughters are young so they require a bunch of extra stuff still. The biggest PITA is their car seats, they're massive and the back seat of the HD isn't. They fit well in the Yukon. I can't complain too much about the HD though. It's being paid for by my company 100% and then some sooo....

I may hook up to it one afternoon this week and make a dry run and see how it does if it feels like too much then I'll probably vote against it. I used to tag a 20' boat trailer behind this thing too (yeah, all sorts of illegal haha) the HD never noticed if I had the boat behind the camper or not, but it's fairly light at about 15-1800lbs + a few hundred for the trailer depending on what was in it. I've since started keeping the boat at my dads place which is 10min from the lake. I go set the camper up and then come get they boat typically. I got way too lucky too many times not getting a ticket from DOT for being over length. I figure my time was about up lol.

How'd you do? I pull a 6600lb 33' trailer with my Escalade. Seems to do fine but I'm going to add a larger trans cooler soon to keep the temps down.

When I used to pull my large (3k) pop-up I didn't even feel it back there. I've always used a weight distribution hitch too.

Honestly I haven't hitched it up. I have been prepping the truck for it though. I picked up a set of 1000lb air bags (the ones that go inside the coil) and a decent brake controller for it. Trans cooler will be done also. I think with those additions I'll be good. Tongue weight should be around 800lbs and the bags should help level that. One thing I have going for me here is that it's fairly flat with a few rolling hills to the north of me. I'm not pulling any sort of mountain passes and such.

I've just been pulling it with the HD and having the wife pull the boat with the Yukon for the time being. Where we typically go is only about 45min from the house so it's not a huge deal for now.

I'll be sure to update this though when I do eventually hook it all up. I've found some good info on these suspensions through all the digging I've done.