I'm wanting to buy an old Farmall F-20 to restore and looking up the weight of it says 4400 lbs. Looking online my Blazer specs claim 5500lbs. Including the trailer it might be getting pretty close.
I have a 98' Blazer LT with 170k on the odometer and I'll be pulling the trailer loaded about 80 miles. My main concern is transmission temperature. Do the LT 4x4's have a tranny cooler? Think my old gal could handle it? I just serviced and greased her as well as checked the gear boxes and transfer case. All good there.

 

I've pulled other blazers with my blazer a bunch of times.(which weigh in right around the same as that Farmall). Never had an issue. They do have tranny coolers from the factory- it is built in to the passenger side of the radiator.

 

Select the gear accordingly. If you know your ride you should be able to tell when the torque converter lockout clutch engages. Ride it on high enough rpm the clutch locks out the TQ.

Or simply stop all once in a while when down on the other side of inclines, depending on how much ascent you have to do.

 

Great thanks! I'll keep the RPM's up. Luckily where I live there's just rolling hills and nothing very steep. I didn't think of it last night but I'll have to account for that weight when I'm trying to brake. Definitely not using the bumper hitch-I have the removable hitch to use that ties into the frame. Now I need to figure out where to store the tractor lol

 

jrm000kc,

I have a 99 Blazer LT with 4wd and 3.73 rear end. I managed to burn up my transmission clutch plates by several summers of pulling 2,200 lbs of boat and trailer up steep hills.

My sins included the following: No transmission cooler, using 4th gear, and not knowing the transmission fluid temperature.

I paid for this by having the pleasure of spending over 2-grand to have the transmission rebuilt.

I now know never to use 4th gear, only up to 3rd. I also had a transmission cooler installed. Finally I purchased a OBD-real-time instrument gauge that allows me to monitor the temperature of the transmission fluid (along with many other parameters). My understanding is that anything above 200'F starts to significantly shorten the life of the transmission.

For the short term, get yourself either a Scan Gauge or Ultra Guage OBD gauge system. Although our instrument panels do not have a gauge for it, our transmissions do have a sensor that can be monitored real-time with these systems.

(e.g. UltraGauge OBDII Scan tool & Information Center)

Note that the water temperature is not a good proxy for the transmission temperature.

I hope this helps.

Christine

P.S. And you are correct to worry about the braking.

P.P.S. Can you rent a large truck from Uhaul and use it to tow the tractor instead of your blazer?