2016 Coachmen Apex 23LE - First Trailer

bulldogvols wrote:
To support the TT purchase we added in a w/d hitch with 4-point sway control and will have electric brakes on the trailer. With the w/d hitch in place, how best should I go about calculating the tongue weight and its placement? Does it go into the payload for the Durango or spread out in equal parts to the TV and TT?

No disrespect intended but it sounds to me like you're doing everything you can to convince yourselves that this will be an acceptable combination when many who have been doing this for quite awhile are saying "not so much". :E

First, you need to know how much your particular TV weighs, full tank of gas, hitch equipment mounted, no one in the vehicle but yourself. Take it to a weigh station, get the number, subtract your weight from the scale reading and you'll then know ... subtract that number from the vehicle's GVWR and you'll then have it's real world payload capacity that you'll use to accommodate the weight of everyone and everything added as cargo PLUS trailer tongue weight that is transferred to the TV from the trailer when hitched up.

The purpose of using weight distribution isn't to "support the TT purchase" but rather to transfer weight back to the TV's steer axle with the trailer hitched to the TV ... without it that steer axle will unload and steering will become problematic, especially as weather conditions deteriorate. Conventional wisdom says you want 10% to 15% of the trailer's GVW - i.e. how much it weighs loaded and ready to camp - represented as gross tongue weight, but based on my experience you really want it up in the 13% to 14% range. With a factory listed UVW of ~ 4300 lbs and considering this is a family (with all their attendant "junk") my bet is you'll easily see this trailer's GVW weigh in somewhere around 5500 lbs loaded and ready to camp. 13.5% of that is ~ 740 lbs which must be accommodated within your TV's real world payload capacity, with the remainder used to account for everything else. Keep in mind also that kids have this nasty habit of constantly getting bigger and heavier (hey, even we adults tend to as well!) so you'll also want some buffer for that as well. Got a dog? ... he/she counts too, as do bikes and anything else you may want to drag along with you.

Gross trailer weight, loaded and ready to camp, can only be verified once you've got the trailer and can take it to a weigh scale. I use a purpose designed Sherline Tongue Weight Scale to periodically check gross tongue weight but you can easily do it with a bathroom scale and tongue weight beam. In the meantime though, because you don't yet have this trailer in hand, you can use those trailer GVW and gross tongue weight numbers I offered as a reasonable estimate to compare against your Durango's numbers. Regardless, your Durango has a rather short wheelbase for a trailer of this length and although it may have a narrow ratio 6-speed transmission more suited to towing than the older 4-speed I have in my Avalanche the fact is that V6 can only do so much in hauling what is effectively a barn door down the road at highway speeds. Again JMO, but based on the various trailers I've towed, one of which was almost identical in size and weight to this Apex, I wouldn't for a moment consider towing it with anything less than a V8, other than an F150 Eco V6. Remember too that this isn't just about pulling the trailer forward against all the forces fighting to slow it down (i.e. wind resistance) but also being able to safely stop the trailer, especially in the case of emergency ... and asking a vehicle of this size to quickly stop nearly 3 tons of trailer, even considering the trailer does have it's own braking system, is a mighty task in itself. :E