[Huck BB62]

About towing the H3, I towed ours, with a bed FULL of krap, my 18' car hauler packed full of krap, and the H3 packed FULL of krap from Bfield to Oregon. Grant's pass is pretty harsh. My 2500 did it just fine, but it is a diesel. The H3's only 4700lbs! (I had about 10k on total)

As far as towing 5000 lbs. One thing that bothers me on the H3 is no tow/haul mode. They put this on every other GM vehicle I have. It changes the way the tranny acts. You can do this yourself, just row the shifter by hand. Start off with the load slowly, it REALLY saves the clutches in the tranny. Let your engine wind up pretty high before you go to the next gear. When you're stopping, downshift with it to aid in stopping too. The tranny's plenty tough enough, and the dang axles are surely low geared enough, it's just not supplied with the tow/haul mode. If you're in doubt, put the biggest stacked cooler you can buy on it.

Put a finned aluminum rear diff cover and use synthetic (the shop guys tell me that synthetic's in there from the factory, who's to say?). Tests have shown that these two things lower operating temps a LOT.

Pump up the tires to maximum, this really helps the way the H3 will handle during the tow.

Get a Prodigy brake controller and make sure your trailer brakes are well maintained and adjusted.

No problems. KEEP YOUR SPEED DOWN. Bad things happen so fast when you're towing too fast. One of the absolutely worst things to do is to too lightly load the tongue. I bought a tongue gauge. You should always have 10% of the trailer weight on the tongue. If you don't, it's going to be sway happy and swat you badly.

Think about it, that tranny's used in half tons. 225hp is far more than a 350 had during the 70s.

Trailer brakes are required on anything over 2000lbs here in Cal, they should be everywhere as far as I'm concerned.