Holding tongue weight steady
I am looking at buying a twin axle TT and all the weights are ok, except the tongue weight is close to the max for my Pathfinder. The stated tongue weight is 479# and my max is 500#. I know that addin...
Forum Discussion
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.
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.
