Upgrade my Fastway E2?

[Iraqvet05]

I’ve had a Fastway E2 hitch for 6 years now. The hitch worked well on our old Jayco 5k lb 26BH but now we are pulling a much heavier 28BHBE. The E2 is a 1k trunion bar version and our dealer said it would work on our new TT and even transferred it to the new TT....but now I’m questioning the hitches’ ability to handle the addition weight.

We left Kansas City a few days ago and it was very windy, I’d guess 30-35 mph gusts. I haven’t had much experience driving in windy conditions. For a nerve-racking hour I struggled to keep the TT in my lane, often getting pushed into the rumble bars or pushed close to semis passing me. I didn’t see any bumper pull campers traveling that hour down I-49 but saw several 5ers. Those conditions are making me question my WDHs ability to handle sway but I’m not sure how well an Equilizer or Blue Ox , for example, would do in those same conditions. I’ll add that I was towing light that day and had an empty truck bed, if that matters. Any suggestions?

[JBarca]

Iraqvet05 wrote:

John, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I wanted to stop at a CAT scale and weigh since it was one of the few times we have had the new trailer loaded, albeit light but the DW wanted to get home today. We really packed light for this trip since it was just a weekend get away 2 hours down the intestate. Clothes and groceries for the 4 of us don't amount to much and I never tow with more than 5-10 gal of water in the FW tank so that doesn't amount to much. As my kids get older (now 15 and 10) I find them packing less toys and junk and more electronics or board games so I think the trend of loading heavy is a thing of the past.

Yes, that's my TT in the link. The trailer rides fairly level on a newer 2.5" drop shank I bought last year and I'm using 6 washers on the trunion angle thrust as Fastyway recommends but the ball seems to be straight up and down, not angled like I have seem some Equalizers set up. I thought I had some understeer and adjusted the bar perches up one but that didn't seem to help with either the steering or sway on the way home today. I again experienced some moderate gusts (20-25 mph) that seem to push the TT around a bit more than I was comfortable with but it wasn't as bad as Friday's winds.

I have newer AT tires with about 1000 miles on them and ran the rear tires around 68 PSI instead of the full 80. I dropped the PSI several weeks ago to soften the unloaded ride but failed to air them back up for the trip. Anyway, I think I'm going to price a 1200 Equilizer and see if I can swing it. We are headed to South Dakota in June and I really want to get this sway issue handled before then so I'm not so fatigued from driving in windy conditions.

Your welcome and glad to try and help. And thank you for your service!

A few things stand out in your reply. Good feedback and this helps. There is no one thing you can throw at this to fix all the issues. Any one or a combo of them can create what you are feeling in the truck.

If you want to figure out what is not working right, you have to look at "all" the areas in the list I posted. Yes, I know this is going to take time to do it. But it is the only way to sort this out. I have been there myself and helped others get out of their issue too. If you have optimized all of them, then you at least know that. Right now, you do not have much data to help guide you. This is going to be a process of elimination. Here goes. I had some time tonight so I typed it out. We respect you for asking to help make this better. And it can and will in time.

The loaded tongue weight (TW) is critical to a stable towing camper. If this it not where it should be, there is no friction based anti sway of any brand that is going to overcome it. Figure out how to make time to load the camper the way you tow it and get the loaded gross weight and just the trailer TW. And since you are going to the scale, load the truck the way you go camping too. We can get to that more in a bit on how the truck plays into this.

There is one thing that "use" to shock me every time I went to the scales. Darn, where did all this weight come from? I was lightly loaded, I thought. Trust me, we all have our camping stuff and all those 20#'s here and 10#'s there all adds up. You never really know how much you have or don't have, until you weigh the camper. Being too light on TW is a bad thing. I have finally come to grips with how much stuff weighs and how to adjust the camper loading in my favor and not against me.

Next is the adjustment of the WD hitch. A question, which Fastway do you have, the round bar or the trunnion bar hitch? I made a guess it was the trunnion but maybe not. So tell us. I skimmed over their instructions here https://www.fastwaytrailer.com/pdf/e2_Trunnion_Instructions_2016-06.pdf

And I agree with the end principle of how they want WD on the on truck set. It is targeting for between 50% and up to 100% front axle load restoration. Which means, you restored 50% as a minimum of the weight removed from the truck front axle by using and adjusting the WD hitch. Your 2017 F250 manual is talking "approximately" 50%. The number is not an absolute, if you are 55%, 60% and even 75% is not a bad thing in some cases. Going to 100% or over 100% creates other issues. Going a lot less then the 50% can have other issues especially trying to make the friction based WD hitch anti sway work right. So now you have a target to shoot for.

Did you take any fender height measurements? and if so what are they?

You stated the 6 washers that Fastway recommends, that may have been taken out of context. Fastway stated to "start" with 6 washers. And if you read later on, it states to add more as needed first to gain more WD on the truck and then do an L bracket move if head tilt does not shift enough weight back to the front of the truck.

You really cannot go by only how many washers and if the ball does not look tilted like other Equal-I-er hitches. Your goal is what is the front axle weights and fender heights doing. Once you get the trailer TW set in the 12 to 15 % range, then you need to start over on re-setting the WD on the truck. The WD on the truck has to be optimized, the WD bars fairly parallel to the frame and the hitch shank adjusted "after" setting the WD to level out the TT or be slight nose down. This is optimizing the WD and the anti-sway setup.

Next on the list is the tires. You have 2 things going on that can create great havoc on towing. You are running low tire pressure. That can be real bad. The front and rear tires need to have stiff "enough" sidewalls to not have the truck wiggle around. There is no high friction anti sway WD hitch that will correct soggy truck tires. Air the tires up to door sticker and start from there. If you know the trailer TW is in the right percentage, the WD hitch is setup optimized along with the anti-sway system, then the tires have to do their part. The good news, you have the right truck suspension. I'm assuming your rear door sticker is around 80psi. If so , set it there and the front at door sticker too. This then leaves the front tires as the only adjustment left "above" door sticker. Test tow the setup and if the truck still feels it shifts left and right with high wind gusts or other sway producing events, then start going up by 5psi jumps until you either you reach max cold side pressure of the tire OR the truck front end bounces so hard going over a bump, it felt like shifted left to right. That bounce effect is too high a pressure, back it down 5 psi. This optimizes the tire pressure. A gasser can bounce this hard. A diesel not so much.

Next is, you only have 1,000 miles on fairly new AT tread tires. This is a wild card some call, tire squirm and the more aggressive AT thread may aggravate it even more. What brand do you have? and what size and load range? One of us may be able to spot if that brand is one of the newer molded tires that has what feels like a friction loss of the tire until it gets broken in about 3,000 miles. The truck is part of this too. Ideally someone with a F250 can chime in on what brand they had that gave them heartburn. This is a real issue for us towing large campers.

I can tell you that Continental Contitrac TR's that are now being produced will set a 2005 F350 off into an instability it never had before until they get about 3 to 4K miles on them. The prior 2 sets never did this, but the ones last year did. Something in the industry has changed in tire molding as others have reported other brands doing the same thing. And I can say that Michelin LTX tires have their issues too with low pressure. Air up enough and they can work better.

While this tire squirm is a factor, you can adjust the air pressure now. You do not know yet of the tire squirm is a factor in your setup, yet as you have not yet optimized all the other areas.

You mentioned going to a 1,200# Equal-I-zer hitch, how do you know the 1,200# rated hitch is the right one? Your camper has a GVWR 9,250#. When the camper is fully loaded, 1,200 might be too small. Then you have to either unload gear or go buy the 1,400# Equal-I-zer. It would be best to weigh the loaded TW of what you have now and then make a decision. You might be sitting at 1,100# right now and being that close, the 1,200 may not be enough once you get the TW up where it needs to be. Another reason to get the weights first and then make choices.

If and when you go to the scale, try and adjust the WD hitch to get the front axle fender heights where they should be before going. When you get to the scales, you need to come back with 3 sets of weights. (means 3 weight slips) This is assuming you are using a 3 section truck scale. Each weight set will have the; TV frt axle on 1st scale, TV rear axle on 2nd scale and both TT axle tires on 3rd scale.

These are the 3 weight sets:

1. Drive on the scales, TT and TV loaded, TT hitched and WD engaged (hooked up). Take a weight.

2. Do not move the truck. Jack up the tongue, unhook the WD bars, let the jack back down and the jack foot free from touching the scale. The truck is taking full tongue weight of the camper on the ball. Take a weight. This is, TT and TV loaded, TT hitched and WD diss-engaged (No WD in effect. it is not hooked up).

3. Hook up the WD bars and drive off the scales with the camper. Unhitch the camper in the truck yard, come back with just the truck. Weigh front and rear truck axle. This is truck loaded weight with no camper.

With those 3 weight sets you can check all of these:
Truck and TT combined axle loads against their ratings
The gross combined load against the truck rating
The truck GVW against the GVWR
The camper tongue weight
The camper gross weight
The loaded camper TW percentage
Confirm the WD settings on the TV front axle and see if the WD hitch is actually setup correctly by weight.

Hope all this helps and let us know how it goes.

John

[Iraqvet05]

JBarca wrote:
Hi,

I looked up your camper, is this it? https://www.jayco.com/tools/archive/2018-jay-flight/28bhbe/


Looking at the spec's of the camper, the way the tongue weight balance is made into the camper, when the camper is empty (dry) it only has 9.76% tongue weight per the empty gross weight (dry weight) of the camper.

Point being, with a dry tongue weight that low you have to be careful how you load the camper. You need to know the "loaded" tongue weight (TW) of the camper and the total loaded camper weight. Get that loaded TW higher up, shoot for 13% to 15%.

There is a lot of cargo capacity in that camper (CCC 2,735#) . By adding enough gear and cargo to the camper, if you add 1,200# of cargo, (not hard to do with kids) that brings the estimated gross weight to 7,715 # and 13% of that is 1,003#. More gear and or carrying water and the TW needs to even get higher.

First thing, weigh the camper loaded like your last bad day on the road trip. And weigh the tongue weight for that loading and sort out where your tongue weight percentage is. If it is low, move gear around to get it up where it needs to be. Look up Sherline Tongue scale. You can get one once you have a scaled gross weight, you can move gear around at home and measure the new TW with the Sherline.

With a camper 33' 5" long the entire camper and truck setup has to be dialed in perfect. You have a good truck, but it needs the camper and the WD hitch setup spot on optimized. And truck tire pressure too.

I do think sooner or later you will need a larger capacity WD hitch as you will exceed the 1,000# bars with a camper GVWR of 9,250#. A camper that big and long loaded close to max will easily go over the 1,000# WD bars.

A few other things,

The Fastway E2 needs good tongue weight to make the anti sway work. It needs the TW to create the high friction to help hold the trailer.

If you were towing with fresh water in the tanks, does that add or subtract loaded TW? You need to know this if you haul water during towing.

Before changing WD hitches, make sure you understand what is not optimized in your setup and fix that first. Here is a list to start with.

1. Weigh the truck and camper loaded the way it created the problem. Get an actual gross camper weight and a loaded tongue weight of the camper.

2. TT needs 13 to 15% loaded TW per loaded GVW to create naturally stable towing of the trailer. Move gear as needed to have this.

3. The WD hitch has to be setup and optimized for the "loaded" camper TW. If the dealer set it up with an empty trailer and empty truck, the settings are not right for a loaded camper. It needs to be readjusted. Make sure the truck and camper is loaded "normal" for camping before you set the WD hitch up.

3A. Part of WD hitch setup is the camper towing stance. Shoot for a level towing camper. Adjust the WD hitch up or down the shank until the camper is level or slight nose down when the WD on the truck is correct. Get a new hitch shank if the one you have will not allow enough adjustment to level out the camper or slight nose down. A high nose on the camper can create unstable towing sometimes on high winds.

4. Make sure the TW aligns with the WD bars and the hitch are at or less then the hitch rating. Do not overload the WD hitch.

5. Tire pressure on the camper and the truck can make or break a the ability high friction hitch anti sway feature to work right on any brand hitch. The TT needs to be at max cold side wall pressure. The truck needs to start at least at door sticker pressure. From there, it is a pressure experiment to go up in pressure until the side walls of the tires are stiff enough to hold the camper stable when towing. Do not exceed max cold side wall pressure of the tire.

6. With your truck that new, I suspect you are not on brand new tires but mentioning this for the future. Some brand new tires can create a friction issue to the road until they get 2 to 3K miles on them and then they settle out. And some brand tires just plain have soft sidewalls regardless of air pressure. Even LT truck tires.

Hope this helps.

John.

John, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I wanted to stop at a CAT scale and weigh since it was one of the few times we have had the new trailer loaded, albeit light but the DW wanted to get home today. We really packed light for this trip since it was just a weekend get away 2 hours down the intestate. Clothes and groceries for the 4 of us don't amount to much and I never tow with more than 5-10 gal of water in the FW tank so that doesn't amount to much. As my kids get older (now 15 and 10) I find them packing less toys and junk and more electronics or board games so I think the trend of loading heavy is a thing of the past.

Yes, that's my TT in the link. The trailer rides fairly level on a newer 2.5" drop shank I bought last year and I'm using 6 washers on the trunion angle thrust as Fastyway recommends but the ball seems to be straight up and down, not angled like I have seem some Equalizers set up. I thought I had some understeer and adjusted the bar perches up one but that didn't seem to help with either the steering or sway on the way home today. I again experienced some moderate gusts (20-25 mph) that seem to push the TT around a bit more than I was comfortable with but it wasn't as bad as Friday's winds.

I have newer AT tires with about 1000 miles on them and ran the rear tires around 68 PSI instead of the full 80. I dropped the PSI several weeks ago to soften the unloaded ride but failed to air them back up for the trip. Anyway, I think I'm going to price a 1200 Equilizer and see if I can swing it. We are headed to South Dakota in June and I really want to get this sway issue handled before then so I'm not so fatigued from driving in windy conditions.

[Boomerweps]

All I can say is Kansas can be VERY WINDY!
I drove out and back to Utah from PA twice and all four runs through Kansas we were pushed around a lot. Without a TT. Sometimes you just have to adapt to the conditions. My wife absolutely hates to drive on the Kansas portions of the trip.
Indeed, check your weights, loading, and WDH setup. But Kansas winds on the interstate can be near brutal.

[bikendan]

IMHO, the E2 is fine for small to medium trailers but the 4pt Equal-i-zer is a better choice for that trailer.

[JBarca]

Hi,

I looked up your camper, is this it? https://www.jayco.com/tools/archive/2018-jay-flight/28bhbe/


Looking at the spec's of the camper, the way the tongue weight balance is made into the camper, when the camper is empty (dry) it only has 9.76% tongue weight per the empty gross weight (dry weight) of the camper.

Point being, with a dry tongue weight that low you have to be careful how you load the camper. You need to know the "loaded" tongue weight (TW) of the camper and the total loaded camper weight. Get that loaded TW higher up, shoot for 13% to 15%.

There is a lot of cargo capacity in that camper (CCC 2,735#) . By adding enough gear and cargo to the camper, if you add 1,200# of cargo, (not hard to do with kids) that brings the estimated gross weight to 7,715 # and 13% of that is 1,003#. More gear and or carrying water and the TW needs to even get higher.

First thing, weigh the camper loaded like your last bad day on the road trip. And weigh the tongue weight for that loading and sort out where your tongue weight percentage is. If it is low, move gear around to get it up where it needs to be. Look up Sherline Tongue scale. You can get one once you have a scaled gross weight, you can move gear around at home and measure the new TW with the Sherline.

With a camper 33' 5" long the entire camper and truck setup has to be dialed in perfect. You have a good truck, but it needs the camper and the WD hitch setup spot on optimized. And truck tire pressure too.

I do think sooner or later you will need a larger capacity WD hitch as you will exceed the 1,000# bars with a camper GVWR of 9,250#. A camper that big and long loaded close to max will easily go over the 1,000# WD bars.

A few other things,

The Fastway E2 needs good tongue weight to make the anti sway work. It needs the TW to create the high friction to help hold the trailer.

If you were towing with fresh water in the tanks, does that add or subtract loaded TW? You need to know this if you haul water during towing.

Before changing WD hitches, make sure you understand what is not optimized in your setup and fix that first. Here is a list to start with.

1. Weigh the truck and camper loaded the way it created the problem. Get an actual gross camper weight and a loaded tongue weight of the camper.

2. TT needs 13 to 15% loaded TW per loaded GVW to create naturally stable towing of the trailer. Move gear as needed to have this.

3. The WD hitch has to be setup and optimized for the "loaded" camper TW. If the dealer set it up with an empty trailer and empty truck, the settings are not right for a loaded camper. It needs to be readjusted. Make sure the truck and camper is loaded "normal" for camping before you set the WD hitch up.

3A. Part of WD hitch setup is the camper towing stance. Shoot for a level towing camper. Adjust the WD hitch up or down the shank until the camper is level or slight nose down when the WD on the truck is correct. Get a new hitch shank if the one you have will not allow enough adjustment to level out the camper or slight nose down. A high nose on the camper can create unstable towing sometimes on high winds.

4. Make sure the TW aligns with the WD bars and the hitch are at or less then the hitch rating. Do not overload the WD hitch.

5. Tire pressure on the camper and the truck can make or break a the ability high friction hitch anti sway feature to work right on any brand hitch. The TT needs to be at max cold side wall pressure. The truck needs to start at least at door sticker pressure. From there, it is a pressure experiment to go up in pressure until the side walls of the tires are stiff enough to hold the camper stable when towing. Do not exceed max cold side wall pressure of the tire.

6. With your truck that new, I suspect you are not on brand new tires but mentioning this for the future. Some brand new tires can create a friction issue to the road until they get 2 to 3K miles on them and then they settle out. And some brand tires just plain have soft sidewalls regardless of air pressure. Even LT truck tires.

Hope this helps.

John.