Newbie question, reducing tongue weight from 30% to 10%

Johnf7 wrote:

horton333 wrote:
You now say you believe you went 300 miles at 1500# hitch weight, but earlier you said you thought 800# would break tires and axles "for sure"?? Anyway it's your trailer, but this has left me scratching my head.

Yes, You are right. The way i said it wasnt very good.

I thought I had the weights figured out using what the trailer mfr told me. I was wrong.
And yes I think over time overloading the hitch and vehicle rating will break something. I'm guessing the hitch will develop cracks in the welds, the rear tires could overheat because the total load on the rear axle exceeds the load rating of the tires, cant be good for wheel bearings, etc. whatever the failure mode, I think overloading by a substantial amount is a bad thing.

The hitch tongue weight rating is 600lbs, and I don't intend to exceed that rating. I think 800 is too much and worry that overage will break something over time. I didn't design the system so maybe there's enough design margin to handle 800lbs of TW, but I don't want to to find out.

Well 1,500# on a 600# hitch could lead to failure of the hitch, but I doubt it would for the tires unless they were under-inflated. Again your weight distribution would take the 800# static weight down to 600# live weight anyway and it's live weight that it relevant to the stress ..... but at this point I'm really not sure what your situation is so not much more to say.

horton333 wrote:
You now say you believe you went 300 miles at 1500# hitch weight, but earlier you said you thought 800# would break tires and axles "for sure"?? Anyway it's your trailer, but this has left me scratching my head.

Yes, You are right. The way i said it wasnt very good.

I thought I had the weights figured out using what the trailer mfr told me. I was wrong.
And yes I think over time overloading the hitch and vehicle rating will break something. I'm guessing the hitch will develop cracks in the welds, the rear tires could overheat because the total load on the rear axle exceeds the load rating of the tires, cant be good for wheel bearings, etc. whatever the failure mode, I think overloading by a substantial amount is a bad thing.

The hitch tongue weight rating is 600lbs, and I don't intend to exceed that rating. I think 800 is too much and worry that overage will break something over time. I didn't design the system so maybe there's enough design margin to handle 800lbs of TW, but I don't want to to find out.

You now say you believe you went 300 miles at 1500# hitch weight, but earlier you said you thought 800# would break tires and axles "for sure"?? Anyway it's your trailer, but this has left me scratching my head.

RedRocket204 wrote:
load up your specific trailer and remeasure the tongue weight to know what you are dealing with.

This is exactly why I bought a Sherline gauge. With the gauge I can design a specific loading scheme for empty as well as for each of my cars. In each case I'll mark the floor for the specific car and specific a specific amount of rear ballast to achieve 12% tongue weight.

While I’m new to towing, my only surprise so far was finding out I had over 30% tongue weight when empty. I stupidly assumed it was 15%, and did my first tow based on that figure. Turns out I was probably in the vicinity of 1500lbs tongue weight (5800lbs total trailer weight). Unfortunately, 1500lbs is 150% over the rated tongue weight of the vehicle/hitch (regardless of WD). Because I have self-leveling rear shocks, it wasn't visually evident that I was so far over the max TW, and it wasn't until I started towing that I noticed the problem.

Anyway, I did about 300 miles (1/2 of it in heavy rain with moderate-strength cross-winds, what we call a Noreaster), over a couple very small mountain passes. At the start of the trip I noticed right away that the front was a bit light. When I tested the brakes, the trailer e-brake setting was good, but I also noticed my front brakes locked up early (ABS kicked in). I had my WD set to 2 links and drove very carefully, much of the time with my thumb ready to hit manual-trailer-brake button. I kept an eagle eye out for the onset of instability, and kept my speed down.

Now that I’ve measured TW, everything sort of makes sense. I’m sure when I get it all weight balanced better it’ll tow a lot nicer. I’m trying to decide what to get for ballast,
I could put a tractor weight bracket in the back and buy 500lbs of tractor weights, or go with the disposable sandbags (in those big Rubbermaid rubber bins). I priced out bags of lead shot, and that’s pretty expensive stuff (75cents/lbs). Sand is only 7 cents/lbs.

horton333 wrote:
... he is headed towards less than 10% rapidly and you know where that leads .....

Yep!
Trailer Sway example - Take 13 seconds to watch this. It could save your life

RedRocket204 wrote:
Keep in mind that RV Toy Haulers are designed with higher tongue weight to offset when the toys are loaded up. With a cantilever being created from the toys being loaded in the back of the RV Toy Hauler, it ends up reducing the tongue weight. My suggestion is to cargo load up your specific trailer and remeasure the tongue weight to know what you are dealing with.

And BTW, many, many hitch receivers actually have two weights on them. One for without WDH and one with WDH. I recall you mentioning you were provided with WDH when you bought that trailer? Are you using the WDH and does your SUVs hitch receiver have a WDH tongue weight number?

With that short a trailer and WD he is going to lose 200#s off the 800# anyway ..... puts him at the rating.
Taking some off that 600 once the car is on.....well it may be a bigger problem than the empty weight cause he is headed towards less than 10% rapidly and you know where that leads .....

Keep in mind that RV Toy Haulers are designed with higher tongue weight to offset when the toys are loaded up. With a cantilever being created from the toys being loaded in the back of the RV Toy Hauler, it ends up reducing the tongue weight. My suggestion is to cargo load up your specific trailer and remeasure the tongue weight to know what you are dealing with.

And BTW, many, many hitch receivers actually have two weights on them. One for without WDH and one with WDH. I recall you mentioning you were provided with WDH when you bought that trailer? Are you using the WDH and does your SUVs hitch receiver have a WDH tongue weight number?

Johnf7 wrote:

horton333 wrote:

The 10% is a minimum, the extra hitch weight is not going to hurt anything so don't add bags or other weight to bring it down.

Well, one problem is that the hitch is only rated for 600lbs of tongue weight. I don't mind if it is at 600lbs all the time (empty or with car), but I don't want it at 900 or 1000lbs because that'll break something for sure (rear tires, hitch receiver welds, etc. ).

Not going to happen - and funny how the weight keeps going up all time.....soon it will be 1500 then you will need sandbags. ;-)

horton333 wrote:

The 10% is a minimum, the extra hitch weight is not going to hurt anything so don't add bags or other weight to bring it down.

Well, one problem is that the hitch is only rated for 600lbs of tongue weight. I don't mind if it is at 600lbs all the time (empty or with car), but I don't want it at 900 or 1000lbs because that'll break something for sure (rear tires, hitch receiver welds, etc. ).

Johnf7 wrote:

dodge guy wrote:
They set it like that because they know you will load .... once you get it loaded properly mark the floor so you know where the car will always go.

Thanks for the good advice and insight. I guess I should keep a pile of 10 sandbags in my garage for when I tow it empty (to get the tongue weight from 30% down to 12%). Sand is cheap i and I can dump the excess when I do my pick-up. My usual load will be cars weighing between 1000-1750lbs. And they have close to 50/50 weight balance. So I will need to load the cars with the tow ring at the back door to significantly change ring weight.

That said, is it nuts to keep 600lbs of steel plates or bags of steel shot (canopy weight bags) in the trailer that can be moved fore-aft like ship ballast? I will very rarely need the last 1000lbs of towing weight capacity for any loads and movable weights would be more compact/tidy than in/out with sand bags. Too bad the axles are not movable. I suppose this is also a reason to buy a custom trailer with balance setup for your own specific needs.

Glad I spent the $ to get the scale. Wish I could've used weighsafe's ball with integrated scale but my WD bars would hit it in tight turns.

The 10% is a minimum, the extra hitch weight is not going to hurt anything so don't add bags or other weight to bring it down.