Vehicle "rise" while towing.
Have towed for years with various vehicles. And have always followed the general rule of levelling the tow vehicle front, back to pre-tow hookup. In fact, I just read through most of the Sticky at the...
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JBarca:
good info that seems to shed light on the changing recomendations.
I'll also add my experience related to 4 people I've helped set up a WD hitch. This was after they complained to me that they felt the trailer was giving them sway and didn't feel comfortable with the way the combo handled.
In each case looking at front "rise" measurements and rear "Sag" measurments I found that the front was always high compared to unloaded and not bringing the front back to even 1/2 the difference. Once I adjusted the setup to bring the front back to at least half or more of the distance (I was shooting for close to unloaded) the problems went away and they were amazed at the difference in handling.
At the time my thought was that with the front end rising they were getting more camber on the front axle which coupled with a lighter front end, heavy back end was letting the front end be to sensitive to steering correction.
Yes, in the extreme it would probably oversteer rather then understeer.
My conclusion after helping all the folks I did adjustment for was to keep increasing front load (dropping the front) till the wander problem disapeared. it seem to take bringing it back to at least 1/2 the difference to be effective.
Now all this was done on smaller lighter vehicles, <1/2 ton trucks, Suburbans etc.
good info that seems to shed light on the changing recomendations.
I'll also add my experience related to 4 people I've helped set up a WD hitch. This was after they complained to me that they felt the trailer was giving them sway and didn't feel comfortable with the way the combo handled.
In each case looking at front "rise" measurements and rear "Sag" measurments I found that the front was always high compared to unloaded and not bringing the front back to even 1/2 the difference. Once I adjusted the setup to bring the front back to at least half or more of the distance (I was shooting for close to unloaded) the problems went away and they were amazed at the difference in handling.
At the time my thought was that with the front end rising they were getting more camber on the front axle which coupled with a lighter front end, heavy back end was letting the front end be to sensitive to steering correction.
Yes, in the extreme it would probably oversteer rather then understeer.
My conclusion after helping all the folks I did adjustment for was to keep increasing front load (dropping the front) till the wander problem disapeared. it seem to take bringing it back to at least 1/2 the difference to be effective.
Now all this was done on smaller lighter vehicles, <1/2 ton trucks, Suburbans etc.
