WD Question For Ron
If you have a conventional tow trailer with a tongue weight of 1000 and with a properly adjusted WD, 300lbs is transferred back to the steering axle and the remaining 700lbs is transferred back to the...
Forum Discussion
TomG2 wrote:
You may want to PM Ron, if his is the only answer you are looking for. What you asked is not reality. One would not want to transfer all thousand pounds off the rear axle, even if it were possible.
I only mention the following because it seemed that several folks thought it was not possible.
Bob got his true question answered, so this is not important in that respect, but it is actually possible to remove all the 1000# tongue weight off the rear axle. Somewhere on the net is a picture of a front wheel drive car that (in constant danger of jack-knifing) was able to carefully move the rig with the rear wheels entirely dismounted from the vehicle. In that case the tongue weight, hitch weight and all of the previous non-hitched rear axle vehicle weight was removed from the rear axle by the WD bars.
In addition, at any time the rear axle fender-well height merely remains the same as prior to hitching, there is zero tongue weight on said rear axle. The front truck axle, now forced to share the total tongue weight with the TT axle(s), may be overloaded at that time, however. This situation also points out the danger of removing too much weight from the rear axle, in that traction, and vital steer-tracking, is then lost on a rear wheel drive as the weight on-axle becomes less and less.
I agree with Ron that any weight transferred to the trailer axle may be subtracted from the truck payload (keeping in mind the hitch weight).
I further add that this may bring a heavily loaded TV back within payload guidelines in some instances where it is barely overloaded prior.
Roughly speaking, I once believed the axle(s) of a very short trailer, with a lengthy TV, can approach absorbing 2/3's tongue weight, and even a moderate TT + long WB truck, about 1/2 the tongue weight to the TT axle, if both truck axle springs are compressed equally. But this doesn't seem to quite compute with Ron's formula above, if I got it right. It seems the distance from ball to front axle must come into play. I think Ron's formula is correct but may not be applicable to the this question.
Wes
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