Holding tongue weight steady

mkirsch wrote:

atreis wrote:
Some people just can't seem to accept that smaller vehicles can tow smaller trailers just fine when properly setup and one stays within the limits.

People can accept that just fine. The problem arises when you can NOT stay within the limits.

In this case, it would have been almost impossible to stay within the limits. The trailer's DRY tongue weight was pushing 500lbs, and the tow vehicle's maximum tongue weight *IS* 500lbs. The trailer's total dry weight was pushing 4200lbs and the vehicle's maximum tow capacity is only 5000lbs. There is no way on God's green earth that this combination would have been within the limits when loaded and ready to camp.

Case in point. I advised the op on page 1 that that trailer was too heavy, and have NEVER EVER advocated that anyone exceed limits, and have, in fact, advocated the exact opposite MANY times.

However, because I tow a lightweight trailer with a lightweight vehicle, people assume that I must be overweight, or that I must be advocating that. No. I'm within limits. I weigh once a year to make sure I STAY within limits. What I do advocate for is the proper use of lightweight tow vehicles for towing lightweight trailers WITHIN PUBLISHED LIMITS.

atreis wrote:
Some people just can't seem to accept that smaller vehicles can tow smaller trailers just fine when properly setup and one stays within the limits.

People can accept that just fine. The problem arises when you can NOT stay within the limits.

In this case, it would have been almost impossible to stay within the limits. The trailer's DRY tongue weight was pushing 500lbs, and the tow vehicle's maximum tongue weight *IS* 500lbs. The trailer's total dry weight was pushing 4200lbs and the vehicle's maximum tow capacity is only 5000lbs. There is no way on God's green earth that this combination would have been within the limits when loaded and ready to camp.

It is not wise to blindly recommend/advise anyone to on the Internet to exceed the vehicle ratings without the in depth engineering analysis. Can certain limits be exceeded? Maybe. Don't tell every newbie he can and should.

For the OP, I recommend sticking with single axle trailers with 3500 pound GVWR. That will likely keep the loaded TW under 500 pounds.

I've been accused of that, even though I very consistently and always have posted to stay within the mfg limits. *shrug* Some people just can't seem to accept that smaller vehicles can tow smaller trailers just fine when properly setup and one stays within the limits.

(NOTE: The above has nothing to do with OP's post. I'm glad the OP is going to look at lighter weight trailers. That seems appropriate in this case.)

It's been awhile since a member of the Can-Am cult has posted. ;)

drb116 wrote:
Thanks all for the feedback. I think I will need to look at a trailer that is a little lighter.

Probably a wise decision. There's a couple things missing in your initial calculations.

1. The weight of everything and everybody you put in or on the tow vehicle, eats up your available payload. That includes aftermarket accessories (maybe a rooftop cargo carrier), people, pets, luggage, car seats, snacks and toys, weight distributing hitch, and trailer tongue weight. Maybe one of the kiddos want to bring a friend. Maybe grandma wants to come along.

2. Holding tongue weight to a specific weight is near impossible. Different things may get loaded for different trips, groceries get loaded and used as you travel, water gets loaded and used as you travel, black and grey tank levels go up and down.

Depending on their location in relation to the trailer axles, holding tanks can have a significant impact on tongue weight. Possibly driving it up or down considerably.

As others mentioned. loading to rear of trailer, in order to manage tongue weight, can cause handling issues.

I suspect Horton333 is a customer of CanAm RV who specialize in setting up small vehicles for towing oversized trailers. I see he is from Ontario and uses a Hensley hitch which is the formula for many of their setups besides beefing up the receiver and putting low profile tires on the tow vehicle.
Barney
Easy guess. Who else but Canam has engineered a hitch setup like that for the 300... I've heard of one place in L.A. but that's it. The Hensley hitch was for the SUV, which slightly preceeded the car. Canam are not using Hensley anymore, and the car would be better without it, but the SUV it helps a fair bit and I'm not going to to have two setups on one trailer.
It's instructive that the SUV, which is safely within glossy numbers, needed help but the car, which is extremely beyond the manual #s, needs only a normal WD and friction sway setup to be extremely stable.
As for "oversized trailers", that's an assumption not supported by experiment. Canam runs slalom tests on their recommended setups, among other engineering tests. The car setups all outperform the pickup when pulling the same trailer through the course, significantly outperform often. There are issues, but demonstrably they are not the issues that people who worship on the marketing glossies assume they would be, safety definately is better.

Now to be clear, this original poster's thread is about a situation that is well within capability of a stock setup: not something that needs a custom fabricated and welded hitch setup like my car does, but I thought I expound some for those people interested in how things actually work.

horton333 wrote:

Lantley wrote:

horton333 wrote:
Don't obsess on the 500#, it's arbitrarily set at 10% of the rated trailer weight by marketing, not engineering, as are most small vehicle hitch OEM specifications. The number is a lot less important to the actual capacity than some people assume.
The limit for you is the engine power, and if you check you will note when they upped the power recently the hitch capacity went up too, but did the hitch itself change....?
Now as for the actual capacity that is harder to determine, but I've read several people who have reported acceptable results towing 5,000# class trailers with a Pathfinder and I'd bet money every one of them had significantly more than 500# tongue weight so you should not worry.
Worry more about a properly adjusted setup as the problems with SUVs are more with stability, those poor overhang ratios need to be compensated for. You absolutely need a weight distributing hitch, which will reduce the live weight some and it is the live weight that counts not the dead weight which is specified by the trailer manufacturer. You need some type of sway control too, that depends a lot on the trailer design but if you have a typical trailer in that weight class then add it for sure.

Bad Advice^^^^

The inability to articulate anything about 'why' in your opinion it is bad speaks loudly ....

It's not about my ability to articulate, its more due to the fact I don't care to waste my time responding. Your advice is just so ridiculous, that it is not worth my time to discuss in further detail.
I'll let the others that also disagree with you comments carry on the debate.

horton333 wrote:

drsteve wrote:

Well I'm glad somebody knows more than those silly engineers who designed this thing... and it's good that the people you read about on the internet are exceeding the tow ratings without ever having a single problem. I'm sure they too are much smarter than those engineers.

As my post alluded, and is well established, it's not engineers who set the tow ratings on cars and SUV class vehicles, marketing does. They also have to assume a worst case setup, the real world can do much better. The SAE standards coming in will not change that BTW, they only set the maximum that can advertised and they do not prevent marketing from reducing the numbers.

You are trying to give false authority to your opinion by invoking engineering specification into this.

Well established by who? It seem like the marketing department would be more likely to overstate the capability of the product in order to look better than the competition.

You are saying that engineering specifications are a "false authority"? They seem more likely to be credible than someone who says "nevermind the towing numbers, the internet said it was OK..."

well, be carefull about unloaded tongue weight. My unloaded tongue weight as I measured was 850lbs, very close to the mfg stated. REAL tongue weight after the trailer was loaded, batteries added, etc. is 1400lbs without water, 1500lbs with water.