xcntrk wrote:
K Charles wrote:
Tongue weight is the weight of the tongue on the trailer. The WD hitch might take weight off the rear axle of the truck but it doesn't change the tongue weight. The way you have it I can put 1000 lb bars and remove a few links of chain and pull my TT with our fusion 'cause the WD hitch took weight off the tongue, it did not, the the tongue weight is still the same.
Hmmm, so my understanding is that WD actually removes tongue weight and redistributes to the trailer axles? Sounds like that's not the case however and instead a WD hitch uses leverage to force some percentage of the rear axle load to the front?
Application of WD does not change the tongue weight.
The only way to change tongue weight is to add/remove weight from the TT and/or change the location of weight within the TT.
"Tongue weight" should not be confused with the vertical load applied to the hitch. They are equal only when WD is not applied.
When WD is applied, load is removed from the hitch and transferred to the TT's axles.
Tongue weigh stays the same -- but the vertical load on the hitch is reduced by the amount of load transferred to the TT's axles.
The amount of load transferred to the TT typically is equal to 15-25% of TW, although some people achieve 30%.
TW should not exceed the receiver's max TW rating.
However, the TV doesn't care what the TW is. It only cares how much vertical load is exerted on the hitch, and that depends on how much load is transferred back to the TT's axles via the WDH.
Load added to the TV's front axle via the WDH typically is equal to 2-2.5 times the magnitude of the load transferred to the TT's axles.
Load removed from the TV's rear axle typically is equal to 3-3.5 times the load transferred to the TT.
The actual factors depend on TV wheelbase, distance from TV's rear axle to ball, and distance from ball to midpoint between the TT's axles.
Ron
