Tongue Weight Rating

myredracer wrote:


In regards to adding a bike rack to the rear of a TV (I think that's what was meant), that is dead load added to the rear of the TV and counts as payload. Further (with risk of being smacked), I think it's a bad idea to load a TV aft of the drive axle.

Leaving all the other arguments aside my my minority view and what most if not all feel is incorrect is that this dead load IMO is not like load added against only the payload of the TV, but is also wt. counted against the tongue wt. Here I guess is another way I look at this ....

1. You can have two ways to carry a bike. One is on what we typically think of as a bike race with two simple supports. Another would be to put the bike into a basket at the end of the same length drawbar as the more simple two support "bike rack". If the two support bike rack weights 10lbs and the basket weighs 50lbs IMO the simple two support bike rack would result in 60lbs of TW against whatever WC specs are on the TV receiver, whereas the basket would result in 100lbs of TW against the WC of the receiver.

I also see you point about loading a TV behind the rear axle, but especially as I showed in my particular Van and what you have in something like the Ford Extended 15 passenger Van you can have varying payload added or subtracted behind just the rear axle which can be hundreds of lbs. I realize in my view this wt. added behind the rear axle doesn't count lb for lb as additional TW, but the equilivant wt. at the point of the ball that would result in the same off loading of the front axle of the TV is what in my view should be considered "additional" tongue wt and this "additional" tongue wt. only shows up in a WDH configuration because the spring bars must redistribute this wt. plus the tongue wt. just from the trailer so that the TV returns to its pre "additional" wt. behind the rear axle wt or height and that after that behind the rear axle cargo (including the wt. of the WDH/Sway system) is added.

As I previously said I'm not going to try and convince others that my point of view is the correct one since I'm obviously "spitting into the wind" so to speak, but we all have our opinions and views and I'm only attempting to explain what I think is my logic that has formed my view/opinion.

Larry