I promised to write about all of the improvements we got during our Airstream’s visit to Colin Hyde’s shop in Plattsburgh NY—so here’s the second one: we installed a receiver hitch on the rear of the Airstream.

Carrying bikes on an Airstream trip is often a hassle. There are numerous ways to do it, and all of them come with compromises. I wrote in detail about 7 options to consider, in a separate blog that you can read here. You can carry them in the truck, on the truck, in the Airstream, and behind the Airstream.

My personal choice is to install a receiver on the rear of the Airstream, to hold a bike rack. I like this option for several reasons:

• you can use the same rack on the Airstream or the truck (when not towing)
• the rack can be removed easily when not needed, especially if you need access to a rear compartment
• a rear rack that is rated for RV use is stable and much easier to access than a roof-top or tonneau cover rack
• the truck bed is free for other stuff
• the interior of the Airstream is free for other stuff
• you don’t have to put permanent holes in the Airstream’s body (unlike the Fiamma rack)
• a well-designed receiver mount can carry more weight than a Fiamma rack
• there’s the option to use the receiver for other accessories, as long as they aren’t too heavy

The downside of installing a rear receiver is that it’s not simple. A small amount of custom engineering and fabricating is required to reinforce the structural ribs of the Airstream’s frame, as well as to design the receiver. The metal fabricating and welding requirements put this project out of the realm of most DIY’ers, and into a custom metal shop. So it’s somewhat expensive—figure at least half a day in the shop plus materials.

We ran into two challenges:

• The power stabilizers on our Globetrotter have a square shaft that directly crosses the path of the receiver tube.
• The ribs of the frame that we needed to attach to are very thin and designed only to support weight from above. They needed reinforcement to take the added load.

It would have been easy to just bolt a shorter receiver tube to one frame rib (thus avoiding the power stabilizer mechanism) and call it good, but that design would have failed in short order. 100 pounds of bikes plus bike rack becomes a much larger load when the trailer is bouncing on a rough road. Colin and his guys knew that the receiver tube needed to reach as far forward as possible and connect at multiple points in order to spread out the load.

So they cut out a U-shaped section of the receiver tube to span the power stabilizer shaft, and welded on a “bridge” to add strength back. You can see it in the picture below.

As noted in the photo, they also removed the belly pan and reinforced two of the frame ribs so they could take the stress of the bike rack without bending. The receiver tube is attached through the belly pan into those reinforcements with four strong bolts. The forward bolts are about two feet from the receiver opening, which spreads the load from the rack out nicely.

For the final touch they painted the entire assembly with POR-15, which is amazing stuff. I’ll put a topcoat of black paint on later, since POR-15 needs to be protected from UV light.

We’re 2,000 miles from home at this writing and we don’t have our bikes with us (alas) so we can’t test the receiver yet. But we already have big plans for cycling weekends around the southwest starting in November, and I can’t wait to be able to easily take our bikes with us from now on!

We love our 2020 Airstream Globetrotter 23FB …

… but there’s always room for improvement. In the case of Airstream’s 23FB models, which have a rear bath, we’ve heard and experienced two common complaints. This week we fixed both of them.

The biggest gripe is that the bathroom has no vent fan. I’ve never encountered any other modern Airstream model that lacks a fan in the bathroom. To my mind, it’s essential for getting the humidity of a shower out of the trailer.

It may be that Airstream though the Fantastic Vent located just outside the bathroom door would be good enough. It certainly does move a lot of air, and Airstream thoughtfully provided a cut-out in the wall above the bathroom door to allow steam to escape, but despite this the Fantastic Vent doesn’t do a good job at clearing the bathroom air. Nor can you run it on a rainy day.

Entreaties from my beloved about smells emanating from the bathroom eventually became ultimatums, and finally even threatened to permanently derange the peace of our Airstream. This was the final straw, so I vowed we would have a bathroom fan like every other Airstream owner has and deserves.

This week we towed the Globetrotter over to Colin Hyde’s shop in Plattsburgh NY for this project (and two others, which I’ll document in subsequent blogs).

The key, as in any other project involving cutting a hole in your Airstream, is to “measure twice and cut once.” Maybe even measure 10 times to be sure.

Chris, of Colin’s staff, has worked on my trailers before and I completely trusted his skill (as I do of all the guys who work for Colin). He removed the center LED light in the ceiling to get access, carefully measured and marked the locations of everything, then got my approval before cutting. The photo above shows what 23FB owners will need to know.

We took power from the ceiling lights, which means the fan will only run when the lights are on but that doesn’t strike me as an important limitation. The fan is barely visible from the outside (unless you’re on a ladder like I was for the photo above), and once installed it looks what the factory would have done.

This would be a tricky DIY job. It required some skill and careful work to cut the hole precisely, then some re-wiring, sealant for the roof, etc. Chris did everything in a couple of hours but if I’d done it I’d probably spend most of the day—assuming I had the proper tools and supplies. While I’ve done a lot of Airstream work, this is one upgrade that I was glad to hand off to a professional.

Now that it’s done, we’re all breathing a sigh of relief. Literally and figuratively.

I’ll write about the other upgrades we got done at Colin’s shop in the next blogs.

I get this question frequently as I’m at the gas pumps with the Airstream, and I know a few readers of this blog have been wondering as well. Having reached the one-year anniversary of towing with our 2019 Ford Ranger, I feel like I’ve gathered enough experience to offer a report.

The Ranger freaks people out because it’s a “compact” truck and it offers only 4 cylinders. Never mind that it’s as big as trucks used to be in the 1980s and that it has much more power output—it’s very common these days that people expect trucks for towing to be huge and massively over-powered. If you look beyond the physical size and lack of a “V10” emblem, the specs are undeniably impressive.

Our travel trailer is not particularly heavy or difficult to tow. It’s a 2020 Airstream Globetrotter 23FB which weighs 5,460 pounds empty, and about 6,000 to 6,200 fully loaded for travel. (The maximum weight, or GVWR, is 6,300 pounds.)

The 2019 and later Ford Ranger has a manufacturer’s tow rating of 7,500 pounds. Although I don’t generally put a lot of stock in manufacturer tow ratings, as they are heavily influenced by marketing needs, in this case I consider Ford’s rating pretty realistic.

The diminutive 2.3 liter “Ecoboost” engine is an astonishing feat of modern engineering. By comparison, my first Ford Ranger back in 1998, boasted a 3 liter V6 but it was truly the most gutless and slow thing I ever drove (and that includes my 1967 VW Bug). It was suitable for towing a pop-up camper at most—and then only if you could avoid steep hills.

Three decades of engineering advances have made an enormous difference. The 2019 and later Rangers bear no resemblance to the earlier ones whatsoever. Hard-working engineers and scientists have figured out how to extract an astonishing 270 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque out of those four little cylinders. That’s more than enough to pull our Airstream up a steep (8%) grade without slowing down.

Part of the trick is turbocharging, and another contribution comes from the 10-speed auto transmission. But without going into a piston-head dissertation, suffice it to say I’ve been satisfied with the power. So there goes the question, “Can that little truck pull that Airstream?”

Yes, it can. Read on for more …

We chose the SuperCrew variant of Ranger because we have a dog who rides in the back, and we don’t carry a huge amount of stuff. This seems to be the popular version judging from the other Rangers we have seen on the road. The only downside is the short 5-foot bed, which requires removing at least one wheel from a bicycle if you want it to fit entirely in the bed. We’re going to put a hitch receiver on the back of the Airstream for a bike rack later.

We also went with a tonneau cover to keep stuff in the back dry and protected. If you’re tight on storage, consider a full pickup cap instead.

I do have mixed feelings about getting 2WD instead of 4WD. We would use four-wheel drive rarely and it does add a fair bit of weight to the vehicle, but when you need it you really need it. We bypassed a few interesting side trips in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park last year because 2WD just wouldn’t cut it on the deep sand.

Fuel economy is pretty typical for a gas truck pulling an Airstream—nothing to write home about. We get about 13 MPG towing with no wind at 65 MPH. If we push to 70 MPH on the wide open western highways, fuel economy drops precipitously. With a strong headwind we can see <10 MPG and at that point I usually slow down a bit to compensate.

Up to now this might sound like a Ford Ranger commercial, so let me give you a bit of the downside. Obviously it’s a smaller truck, so if you travel heavy you’ll probably find it to be lacking for cargo-hauling space. And of course if you’ve got a 28-foot or longer Airstream it’s probably not for you.

For me, the big disappointment of the Ranger has been the handling and ride. Now keep in mind that my previous tow vehicles were Mercedes GL’s (two of them, a 2009 and a 2015). Despite being a large SUV with capacity to seat 7 people, towing with the Mercedes GL is a sublime experience, calm and lulling to the point that I seriously worried about falling asleep at the wheel.

The Mercedes GL tracks so straight and easily that you can drive across the USA with a single finger at the wheel. It has an all-wheel drive system that is really good, to the point that I never hesitated to take it off-roading. The handling is precise enough to challenge smaller cars at the track, and the ride is beautifully smooth thanks to an air suspension that is designed to cruise the Autobahn.

After that, the Ranger is a huge letdown. “Hey, it’s a truck” is what everyone says when I enumerate its shortcomings in handling. What they mean is that it bounces over uneven pavement, wanders like a butterfly when there are ruts in the road, and exhibits understeer that can be quite alarming on a curvy road.

From what I understand, this is partly the result of decades on non-engineering on the suspension. Like virtually every other pickup truck on the road it has a crude solid rear axle spring suspension that has barely progressed in sophistication since Eisenhower was president. What it needs is a decent fully-independent suspension designed to keep the wheels on the road, but don’t get me started on that rant.

The dinosaur-era suspension is made worse by an apparently deliberate choice by Ford to tune the steering to have a slight understeer. This is what they think truck owners like, I guess. When towing, the understeer becomes quite apparent.

The bottom line here is: It’s a truck, and probably not even among the better handling trucks available today. But if you didn’t just transition from a Mercedes GL, you may not notice.

I’ll be the first to admit the comparison between a $30k Ford Ranger and a $70k Mercedes GL is not fair. For the money, the Ranger is a much better value. I switched out of the Mercedes family after 10 years of ownership because the maintenance costs of the GL were ridiculous. Routine service, every 30K miles, was approaching $2,000.

To put it another way, I sold the 2015 Mercedes with enough residual value to buy the 2019 Ranger for cash, lightly used, with a 7-year extended warranty. It hasn’t needed any service since beyond an inexpensive oil change. Considering that, I can’t complain about the downgrade in handling too much.

If you have or buy one of these Rangers for towing, I have a couple of tips.

First off, always use the Tow/Haul mode. I was so entranced by the engine power that I thought, “No need for Tow/Haul”—and that was a mistake. It turns out that the Tow/Haul mode does more than just adjust the transmission’s shift points. Without it, a fault was triggered when we hit long 8% grades. We got a Powertrain Malfunction Light (which is a yellow wrench in the cluster) and a Check Engine Light, and the engine immediately went into limp mode. These lights eventually reset themselves, usually after turning off the engine.

This happened three times on a particularly hilly trip through Utah before I clued in and started using Tow/Haul mode. Surprise, surprise, no more problems after that.

Second, the fuel tank of the Ranger is sadly undersized for towing. A meager 18 gallons goes pretty quickly at 13 MPG, when allowing for a reasonable reserve. We stop for fuel about every 150-170 miles, but fortunately that jibes with our need for doggie breaks, bathroom breaks, and driver swaps. Plan accordingly.

The other thing that’s often overlooked in tow vehicle reviews is how the vehicle behaves when not towing. The Ranger’s small size works in its favor here, being reasonably easy to drive and park, and offering good fuel economy (for us) of about 22 City and 30 Highway. The handling, however is still truck-like.

Would I buy it again? Probably yes. For our needs, a small truck is fine, and it’s a decent around-town vehicle when we need it. But also, we can’t fit a full size truck in our carport at home and so our options are limited. I’ve thought about whether we’d go to a full-size truck if we didn’t have the carport limitation, and I don’t think we would. The Ranger does the job.

It has been a while since I wrote in this blog space, and the reasons are many. I’ve been extremely busy managing the business during the pandemic (as has been everyone in the RV business) but more importantly I’ve been learning how to Airstream differently.

That may seem to be a non-sequitur but bear with me. Airstreaming is not one style. Some people are primarily “hub and spoke” travelers, making short trips from their home base and then returning. Others, like I have been, are long-distance travelers who depart for extended trips and only return to home after visiting many destinations.

This blog was organized around my preferred form of travel—at least in my mind. But life has changed, as it always does. For the past two years I’ve been exploring Airstreaming as “regular people” do it. With Tothie and a little dog in our new Airstream Globetrotter I’ve been taking monthly weekend trips to places nearby: Prescott, Cottonwood, Patagonia, Silver City (New Mexico), and Apache Junction.

For me, this has been a revelation. Taking the Airstream out for just 3-4 days? Packing only what I need for a weekend? Relaxing and leaving the computer behind? Spending less than $100 on gas—and making reservations instead of just winging it? It’s all entirely foreign to me, but I’ve been really enjoying it.

Like the cobbler’s children who have no shoes, for the last 15 years or so the publisher of Airstream Life magazine has rarely enjoyed a simple weekend getaway in his own Airstream. There has almost always been a work agenda or a faraway destination.

It feels almost criminal to set up the Airstream, put out the chairs, and just relax with a cold drink or a book or a pair of binoculars. I was nearly at loose ends trying to get used to the idea of waking up in the morning with plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely tea and breakfast while mellow jazz plays on the stereo, then settle in with a book instead of a laptop computer.

I found myself thinking, “Is this what other people have been doing for so long? No wonder they love their Airstreams!” And it wasn’t long before I loved mine too. We planned a trip for every month from delivery (in August 2020) to May 2021.

And then I went back to the old shtick. I allowed myself to get sucked into a bunch of obligations all over the country, starting with rallies in Wyoming and Tennessee followed by mandatory stops in Vermont, Maine, Ohio, and Michigan.

As I write this I’m four weeks into a 12 week trip that will cover more than 8,000 miles. We’ve already been to 11 states and camped in 12 different campgrounds plus two fairgrounds for the rallies, and a couple nights of courtesy parking. The bulk of July has been nothing but work and driving, and I miss those slow Saturday mornings when Tothie and I could just sit and talk over a hot beverage with no obligations calling us out of the trailer.

Our all-American road trip may sound glamorous, but let me tell you honestly that it can also be grueling. I’ve driven across this country countless times (I literally lost count after 30) and I can tell you that the romance of the road fades pretty quickly when you’re hustling to make 400 miles for the third day in a row.

So this is the last time I’ll do this. I’m putting it in writing so everyone can call me out on it if I backslide. No more cross-country trips. With Tothie and Mickey (aka little dog) I’m going to focus on short, entirely work-free, relaxing trips in the southwest. In other words, I’m at long last going to roam like most Airstreamers do: short and sweet trips at regular intervals instead of the massive expeditions of my past.

For me, Airstreaming is changing and it’s only getting better. I like the idea that this lifestyle can enter an entirely new phase and stay interesting after all the years and miles. How that impacts this blog is yet to become clear to me, but I do hope to keep documenting thoughts about the Airstream experience through this new lens of less-frenetic and ambitious travel.