Buckling bronco!

WVcampground wrote:

Yosemite Sam1 wrote:

I kind of forced it one notch up and might be lifting a little the back of the tow vehicle.

And you wonder why it's Buckling?

Is your TV front wheel drive? If not get one, then force it up a smidge more and take the rear wheels off!:B

Oh yeah, that would be a ton of savings. I got those pricey off road tires. :D:B

If it's "bucking" the hitch itself is actually sliding forward and backwards, which means the hitch pin is smaller than the hole, allowing for movement of the hitch every time you apply brakes, or accelerate from a stop. Over time, the hole that goes through your receiver hitch and the hitch shank will wear bigger and bigger, allowing for more movement, which will make the "bucking" even more pronounced. It's just the nature of the beast.

"Bucking" has nothing to do with porpoising. Bucking is forward backward motion. Porpoising is upward and downward motion.Porpoising occurs because of weak springs, no weight distribution bars, or just extremely bumpy roads.

Yosemite Sam1 wrote:

I kind of forced it one notch up and might be lifting a little the back of the tow vehicle.

And you wonder why it's Buckling?

Is your TV front wheel drive? If not get one, then force it up a smidge more and take the rear wheels off!:B

Road surface caused a lot of bucking with my pop-up pulled with an S10. I think the harmonics on the local freeway really did it just wrong. Many other road surfaces it was fine. Ultimately the F150 cured the issue with a combination of stiffer suspension, longer wheelbase and more weight. Never had a weight distribution hitch.

GrandpaKip wrote:
Without knowing the tongue weight is 12% or so, setting up WD is just guessing.
I assume you mean bucking (buckling would be really bad), also known as porpoising. If you are traveling the same roads as you did with the previous trailer and this wasn’t happening, then there is most likely a tongue weight and/or WD setup issue.

I'll try different chain settings, meanwhile that I have not weighted it yet.

I kind of forced it one notch up and might be lifting a little the back of the tow vehicle. I figure the double axle does not put the weight up-front into the tongue unlike the single axle fulcrum phenomena.

BarneyS wrote:

WVcampground wrote:


You're making some assumptions.

You assume that all RV dealers do not know how to set up a WDH. You're assuming WDH manufacturers put instructions in with the product to just "get close". They could easily put in those instruction "visit a scale, weigh everything, and adjust following this procedure".

You can go to a scale and adjust to your hearts content but then you need to load the RV and tow vehicle exactly the same every time you hit the road. If you're going to go to those extremes to get 100% dead on perfect, you need to have the weights 100% the same to maintain it at all times. Better add ballast as you burn off fuel somehow too.

I did not assume anything about "all" RV dealers. I said "most". That is not an assumption but a fact that I have learned over the many years of towing and RVing.
I agree with the statement about what they "...could easily put..." but they don't.

My experience is that most RVers load pretty much the same way every time they go out. I know I usually did as did most of those I am friends with, and when the time came that I changed something major I weighed again. You know as well as I do that the last sentence about ballast is a trolling statement and not worth arguing against.

I have no idea what your towing experience is but your statements make me believe that you have not done much towing with a travel trailer. If you had, then you would most likely agree with me that the only way to get your hitch set up correctly for the best possible towing experience is by weighing it and not by simply measuring fender clearances.
Barney

I was not trolling anything or anyone. But this scale foolishness is nothing but forum hogwash.

If you need to have it so perfect that weighing a rig is required, then you need to walk the walk and account for changes in the weights in real time as they occur, or you defeated your time and effort spent at the scale. Someone needs to inform Cequent PP, Blue Ox, Equalizer, and a few others that they and their instructions are all wrong according to the experts at RVnet.

The fact is you have hundreds of thousands of WDH's installed yearly and most of the time by RV and trailer dealers. They do not have or go to scales, and the RV towing public buying them gets by just fine for the most part. Like anything else some get setup incorrectly.

I do not worry about a WDH because I do not use one, probably because of my limited towing experience. This BS that you need a scale to properly set one up is just that, BS.

Nothing to argue about, I'm out.

WVcampground wrote:


You're making some assumptions.

You assume that all RV dealers do not know how to set up a WDH. You're assuming WDH manufacturers put instructions in with the product to just "get close". They could easily put in those instruction "visit a scale, weigh everything, and adjust following this procedure".

You can go to a scale and adjust to your hearts content but then you need to load the RV and tow vehicle exactly the same every time you hit the road. If you're going to go to those extremes to get 100% dead on perfect, you need to have the weights 100% the same to maintain it at all times. Better add ballast as you burn off fuel somehow too.

I did not assume anything about "all" RV dealers. I said "most". That is not an assumption but a fact that I have learned over the many years of towing and RVing.
I agree with the statement about what they "...could easily put..." but they don't.

My experience is that most RVers load pretty much the same way every time they go out. I know I usually did as did most of those I am friends with, and when the time came that I changed something major I weighed again. You know as well as I do that the last sentence about ballast is a trolling statement and not worth arguing against.

I have no idea what your towing experience is but your statements make me believe that you have not done much towing with a travel trailer. If you had, then you would most likely agree with me that the only way to get your hitch set up correctly for the best possible towing experience is by weighing it and not by simply measuring fender clearances.
Barney

Without knowing the tongue weight is 12% or so, setting up WD is just guessing.
I assume you mean bucking (buckling would be really bad), also known as porpoising. If you are traveling the same roads as you did with the previous trailer and this wasn’t happening, then there is most likely a tongue weight and/or WD setup issue.

It's not really worrisome. The lip of my cup just missed my mouth in my drive yesterday.

And it's sort of defy my expectations and conventional wisdom.

That with tandem axle and heavier TT, I thought it will be more stable. Yeah, it is for now swaying but the little buckling surprised me. And I won't believe that California and Nevada have the same contractor making that bad roads, lol.

BarneyS wrote:

WVcampground wrote:
Snip...

Scale numbers? I agree his setup is most likely the culprit but I have yet to see a manufacturer of a WDH tell you to go to scales to set one up. I also have yet to see an RV dealer take a rig to a CAT scale to set one up. It's done by measurements from a level surface, it's not a guess.

There are several things wrong with this statement.
First, the manufacturer has no idea what kind of trailer or truck his equipment is going to be used on and so gives generic information on how to set one up. This is designed to get you into the ball park and may often be ok for some users but not all.

Second, The dealer is not going to spend the time necessary to properly set up the hitch because it takes too much time and time is money. Rarely do the generic setups get the WD exactly right for an optimal towing experience.

Third, most dealers techs just go by the book and set the hitch up according to the directions or just "how they always do it". This, in most cases, is not the best set up for that particular combination of truck and trailer.

Forth, The dealer cannot know exactly how the owner is going to load the trailer so cannot get the WD set properly. The only way to do that is scale the trailer.

Which brings us to to the last part of your statement which is not accurate.
Setting up the WD by using fender measurements is only a guess as to what is the best WD possible. Variations in spring movement and truck measurements make this method good for a "ball park" setting but to get it correct the only way is to measure the axle weights on a scale.

This is very easy to do now that scales are all over the place in truck stops, waste disposal yards, landscaping yards, etc. I used to weigh every year on my way South for the winter to make sure I was within my trucks ratings and to check how well my WD was holding up. That can change with wearing of hitch parts in certain hitches

Bottom line is that I would not trust the dealer to get the WD setup correct and would suggest to anyone that they should get scale weights if they are serious in setting up their trailer and truck to tow as well as it possibly can.
Barney

You're making some assumptions.

You assume that all RV dealers do not know how to set up a WDH. You're assuming WDH manufacturers put instructions in with the product to just "get close". They could easily put in those instruction "visit a scale, weigh everything, and adjust following this procedure".

You can go to a scale and adjust to your hearts content but then you need to load the RV and tow vehicle exactly the same every time you hit the road. If you're going to go to those extremes to get 100% dead on perfect, you need to have the weights 100% the same to maintain it at all times. Better add ballast as you burn off fuel somehow too.