I am thinking about looking at a 1996 GMC 3500 Crew Cab 4x4 with a 6.5l diesel and an automatic. It is not a duelly. The truck's engine has 168,000 miles and the tranny was rebuilt about 2,000 miles ago. What I want to know is how much will it be able to tow? I want to pull a 31' Airstream that weight about 7,000lbs empty and I would probably put about1000 - 1500lbs into it. Would I be okay with this?

Thanks,

Rod

I believe that that truck is rated for 9200lbs but thats a subjective number depending on how its loaded. upgrades to the cooling and exhaust as well as a pyro gauge would be a good idea when towing that much weight with a 6.5

im sure other will chime in with more info as well

Piece of cake. If your going to do any hills or hot weather an upgrade to the 97 cooling is recommended. Get a new PMD and a remote mount cooler and harness. Good tires and away you go. I pull a 33' Marathon 4 season weighs in at just a hair under 11k. My truck handles it beautifully. Of course the dual wheels control it much better than srw, but no biggy. Heck, all the new half ton trucks are "rated" to tow over 10k now. Ford even picked a number 500 lbs more than Chevy so they could make that gay commercial saying you need two Chevys to tow as much as one Ford. I hate that commercial. Great, now I'm pi55ed off again........

As I was perusing the owners manual of the 2000 GMC K3500 Crew Cab just bought, I was surprised to find that the recommended towing weight was only 7500 lbs for my truck. It didn't specify DRW or SRW for the specification listed.
Here is a picture of the manual pages. I am sure if this violates some copywrite provision, a moderator will act accordingly.

Here is the one for K (4 wheel drive, C = 2 wheel drive) 3500 (1 ton) Crew cab38074

I also added the regular cab specs too.38075


This is 2000 year book from GMC, what do they know anyway..;)