Upgrade my Fastway E2?

Iraqvet05 wrote:

John, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I wanted to stop at a CAT scale and weigh since it was one of the few times we have had the new trailer loaded, albeit light but the DW wanted to get home today. We really packed light for this trip since it was just a weekend get away 2 hours down the intestate. Clothes and groceries for the 4 of us don't amount to much and I never tow with more than 5-10 gal of water in the FW tank so that doesn't amount to much. As my kids get older (now 15 and 10) I find them packing less toys and junk and more electronics or board games so I think the trend of loading heavy is a thing of the past.

Yes, that's my TT in the link. The trailer rides fairly level on a newer 2.5" drop shank I bought last year and I'm using 6 washers on the trunion angle thrust as Fastyway recommends but the ball seems to be straight up and down, not angled like I have seem some Equalizers set up. I thought I had some understeer and adjusted the bar perches up one but that didn't seem to help with either the steering or sway on the way home today. I again experienced some moderate gusts (20-25 mph) that seem to push the TT around a bit more than I was comfortable with but it wasn't as bad as Friday's winds.

I have newer AT tires with about 1000 miles on them and ran the rear tires around 68 PSI instead of the full 80. I dropped the PSI several weeks ago to soften the unloaded ride but failed to air them back up for the trip. Anyway, I think I'm going to price a 1200 Equilizer and see if I can swing it. We are headed to South Dakota in June and I really want to get this sway issue handled before then so I'm not so fatigued from driving in windy conditions.

Your welcome and glad to try and help. And thank you for your service!

A few things stand out in your reply. Good feedback and this helps. There is no one thing you can throw at this to fix all the issues. Any one or a combo of them can create what you are feeling in the truck.

If you want to figure out what is not working right, you have to look at "all" the areas in the list I posted. Yes, I know this is going to take time to do it. But it is the only way to sort this out. I have been there myself and helped others get out of their issue too. If you have optimized all of them, then you at least know that. Right now, you do not have much data to help guide you. This is going to be a process of elimination. Here goes. I had some time tonight so I typed it out. We respect you for asking to help make this better. And it can and will in time.

The loaded tongue weight (TW) is critical to a stable towing camper. If this it not where it should be, there is no friction based anti sway of any brand that is going to overcome it. Figure out how to make time to load the camper the way you tow it and get the loaded gross weight and just the trailer TW. And since you are going to the scale, load the truck the way you go camping too. We can get to that more in a bit on how the truck plays into this.

There is one thing that "use" to shock me every time I went to the scales. Darn, where did all this weight come from? I was lightly loaded, I thought. Trust me, we all have our camping stuff and all those 20#'s here and 10#'s there all adds up. You never really know how much you have or don't have, until you weigh the camper. Being too light on TW is a bad thing. I have finally come to grips with how much stuff weighs and how to adjust the camper loading in my favor and not against me.

Next is the adjustment of the WD hitch. A question, which Fastway do you have, the round bar or the trunnion bar hitch? I made a guess it was the trunnion but maybe not. So tell us. I skimmed over their instructions here https://www.fastwaytrailer.com/pdf/e2_Trunnion_Instructions_2016-06.pdf

And I agree with the end principle of how they want WD on the on truck set. It is targeting for between 50% and up to 100% front axle load restoration. Which means, you restored 50% as a minimum of the weight removed from the truck front axle by using and adjusting the WD hitch. Your 2017 F250 manual is talking "approximately" 50%. The number is not an absolute, if you are 55%, 60% and even 75% is not a bad thing in some cases. Going to 100% or over 100% creates other issues. Going a lot less then the 50% can have other issues especially trying to make the friction based WD hitch anti sway work right. So now you have a target to shoot for.

Did you take any fender height measurements? and if so what are they?

You stated the 6 washers that Fastway recommends, that may have been taken out of context. Fastway stated to "start" with 6 washers. And if you read later on, it states to add more as needed first to gain more WD on the truck and then do an L bracket move if head tilt does not shift enough weight back to the front of the truck.

You really cannot go by only how many washers and if the ball does not look tilted like other Equal-I-er hitches. Your goal is what is the front axle weights and fender heights doing. Once you get the trailer TW set in the 12 to 15 % range, then you need to start over on re-setting the WD on the truck. The WD on the truck has to be optimized, the WD bars fairly parallel to the frame and the hitch shank adjusted "after" setting the WD to level out the TT or be slight nose down. This is optimizing the WD and the anti-sway setup.

Next on the list is the tires. You have 2 things going on that can create great havoc on towing. You are running low tire pressure. That can be real bad. The front and rear tires need to have stiff "enough" sidewalls to not have the truck wiggle around. There is no high friction anti sway WD hitch that will correct soggy truck tires. Air the tires up to door sticker and start from there. If you know the trailer TW is in the right percentage, the WD hitch is setup optimized along with the anti-sway system, then the tires have to do their part. The good news, you have the right truck suspension. I'm assuming your rear door sticker is around 80psi. If so , set it there and the front at door sticker too. This then leaves the front tires as the only adjustment left "above" door sticker. Test tow the setup and if the truck still feels it shifts left and right with high wind gusts or other sway producing events, then start going up by 5psi jumps until you either you reach max cold side pressure of the tire OR the truck front end bounces so hard going over a bump, it felt like shifted left to right. That bounce effect is too high a pressure, back it down 5 psi. This optimizes the tire pressure. A gasser can bounce this hard. A diesel not so much.

Next is, you only have 1,000 miles on fairly new AT tread tires. This is a wild card some call, tire squirm and the more aggressive AT thread may aggravate it even more. What brand do you have? and what size and load range? One of us may be able to spot if that brand is one of the newer molded tires that has what feels like a friction loss of the tire until it gets broken in about 3,000 miles. The truck is part of this too. Ideally someone with a F250 can chime in on what brand they had that gave them heartburn. This is a real issue for us towing large campers.

I can tell you that Continental Contitrac TR's that are now being produced will set a 2005 F350 off into an instability it never had before until they get about 3 to 4K miles on them. The prior 2 sets never did this, but the ones last year did. Something in the industry has changed in tire molding as others have reported other brands doing the same thing. And I can say that Michelin LTX tires have their issues too with low pressure. Air up enough and they can work better.

While this tire squirm is a factor, you can adjust the air pressure now. You do not know yet of the tire squirm is a factor in your setup, yet as you have not yet optimized all the other areas.

You mentioned going to a 1,200# Equal-I-zer hitch, how do you know the 1,200# rated hitch is the right one? Your camper has a GVWR 9,250#. When the camper is fully loaded, 1,200 might be too small. Then you have to either unload gear or go buy the 1,400# Equal-I-zer. It would be best to weigh the loaded TW of what you have now and then make a decision. You might be sitting at 1,100# right now and being that close, the 1,200 may not be enough once you get the TW up where it needs to be. Another reason to get the weights first and then make choices.

If and when you go to the scale, try and adjust the WD hitch to get the front axle fender heights where they should be before going. When you get to the scales, you need to come back with 3 sets of weights. (means 3 weight slips) This is assuming you are using a 3 section truck scale. Each weight set will have the; TV frt axle on 1st scale, TV rear axle on 2nd scale and both TT axle tires on 3rd scale.

These are the 3 weight sets:

1. Drive on the scales, TT and TV loaded, TT hitched and WD engaged (hooked up). Take a weight.

2. Do not move the truck. Jack up the tongue, unhook the WD bars, let the jack back down and the jack foot free from touching the scale. The truck is taking full tongue weight of the camper on the ball. Take a weight. This is, TT and TV loaded, TT hitched and WD diss-engaged (No WD in effect. it is not hooked up).

3. Hook up the WD bars and drive off the scales with the camper. Unhitch the camper in the truck yard, come back with just the truck. Weigh front and rear truck axle. This is truck loaded weight with no camper.

With those 3 weight sets you can check all of these:
Truck and TT combined axle loads against their ratings
The gross combined load against the truck rating
The truck GVW against the GVWR
The camper tongue weight
The camper gross weight
The loaded camper TW percentage
Confirm the WD settings on the TV front axle and see if the WD hitch is actually setup correctly by weight.

Hope all this helps and let us know how it goes.

John