Fifth wheel chucking (practical help needed)

it could be a lot of things..... what part of PA are you from?

I HAD a Lippert Flex Air hitch ( basically the same ) and had chucking from the airbag being low at times.... thats a fast check

Check the location of your fifth wheel hitch, It needs to be forward of the rear axle, preferably 4". Since you have a short bed truck, chances are it is centered on or behind the rear axle

Western pa (Pittsburgh area). I’ve wondered also about the air bag not working properly. The arrow and line that shows where it should sit hitched is right. So I “think” there is the correct amount of air.
The hitch is mounted with the GM mounting brackets which as far as I understand is the only place on the frame it can go.

Did you take it to the CAT scales to see what the real weights are?

What kind of roads were you on? Was it all kinds or one specific stretch? I know of one stretch near where we live where the joint spacing causes rhythmic bouncing...even just the truck by itself.

My guess is the fancy airbag hitch has something wrong. 5ers are known to pull great with no need for adjustment or fancy add ons.

Hitch and also the suspension. We have a TrailerSaver BD3 with air bags AND Equa-flex spring suspensions. We boondock a lot taking FS roads, but even on paved roads, we don't have that chucking.

Newer truck, older fifth wheel, can cause a nose high tow. If too much nose high, chucking may result.

Jerry

Unfortunately, all fifth wheels are different and the short ones are more susceptible to generating chucking forces. One thing you might want to check is your Flex-Air pin box. As fifth wheels rotate around an axis and due to the high hitch angle, the pin box pushes down and forward when the tires go over a bump or road imperfection. Check the lower arm of your pin box. If it is pointing down towards your hitch, then it is pushing forward during compression and making chucking worse. Decrease air pressure so it is pointing up.

I too have a 11,000# GVW fiver, 31 ft., and the chucking was horrendous to the point of my wife telling me to sell the trailer half an hour into our first trip. I chose to go with a Trailer Saver TS3 hitch which has geometry just the opposite of your pin box; the hitch retracts when being compressed. Chucking disappeared completely.

You will soon receive comments regarding truck improvements such as shocks; they don't do anything. Your trailer is pushing forward against your frame, completely out of of the suspension vectors.

If you want, private message an email address and I will forward a paper describing what causes chucking and possible solutions. I know it is frustrating; awesome truck, relatively lightweight trailer, and the tow is bad.

When I had a Reese hitch I found keeping some amount of water in the fresh water tank helped with chucking. But my 5er is heavier .. I allways thought it might of had more to do with the sloppy machining of the jaws on the standard Reese hitch?i went to a BW Patriot and ride much better but found a deal on a used airride hitch. With my AirSafe airbag hitch no chucking/bouncing etc

Well some stuff I did to reduce chucking,new Bilstein shock on the TV, Shocks on the trailer, leveled the trailer when hitched, and run with a nearly full fresh water tank which is just forward of the axles. We run about 22% pin weight.

In my experience, my '02 2500 D'max towing my '04 Komfort 25FSG (29'3" nose to tail, 11,360 GVW) chucked a bit, sometimes pretty hard. I =was= towing nose-high as I needed bed clearance for some of the backroad spots we camped at. My one real regret with that trailer was that it could have used an axle flip to reduce the nose-high attitude, but I never did it. Not sure how much it would have helped, but everyone I talked to said it would. If the OP's FW doesn't have the springs over the axles, that would be a place to start, for sure. Not all that expensive to do. The one recommendation that =everyone= said to do on a flip, was to weld the new spring perches onto the axles or you risk them slipping.

My Komfort did have shocks but, IMO, they were next to useless due to the angle of their attachment. They were nowhere near vertical. Had I flipped the axles, I'm sure they would have been a lot more effective. My '17 KZ doesn't have them, and I wish it did.

FWIW, new shocks on the truck helped somewhat, but not a whole lot.

Lyle