Vehicle "rise" while towing.
Have towed for years with various vehicles. And have always followed the general rule of levelling the tow vehicle front, back to pre-tow hookup. In fact, I just read through most of the Sticky at the...
Forum Discussion
Towing; as with most things in life are a compromise. The manufactures are also saddled compromises.
Some say to bring the front end height 100% back to non towing status. Some say 50%. Some say even less.
I say those numbers are useless....or next to useless and here is why.
Essentially, you want all four tires to have the same weight on them whether towing or not. When all four tires have the same weight on them handling and braking is optimized. Ever wonder why trucks now days have the engine jammed up under the dash? Some mechanics think its to make them mad but the real reason is to get the weight bias as close to 50/50 as possible. Now you know.
That being said the proper way to do a towing setup is to weigh the vehicle and try to make all 4 tires the same weight on your tow rig with your trailer attached.
One could have two trucks with drastically different weight biases. Case in point is a 2500 Ram with a Cummins in it. The Cummins engine is very heavy and the Hemi is light. That being so, I would put more weight on the rear of the Cummins truck and less on the Hemi truck to make all four tires do the same work even though both are 2500 series truck.
Now, if you set up your truck while towing with a 50/50 weight bias you will have optimized handling but braking won't be optimized. (there is that compromise again) Under panic braking with a 50/50 weight bias vehicle a lot of weight goes to the front of the vehicle and the rear tires do very little.
For "me" I put somewhere around 48/52 front to rear weight bias in my truck/trailer towing combo. This seems to make the best "compromise" for "me" for handling and panic braking.
Some say to bring the front end height 100% back to non towing status. Some say 50%. Some say even less.
I say those numbers are useless....or next to useless and here is why.
Essentially, you want all four tires to have the same weight on them whether towing or not. When all four tires have the same weight on them handling and braking is optimized. Ever wonder why trucks now days have the engine jammed up under the dash? Some mechanics think its to make them mad but the real reason is to get the weight bias as close to 50/50 as possible. Now you know.
That being said the proper way to do a towing setup is to weigh the vehicle and try to make all 4 tires the same weight on your tow rig with your trailer attached.
One could have two trucks with drastically different weight biases. Case in point is a 2500 Ram with a Cummins in it. The Cummins engine is very heavy and the Hemi is light. That being so, I would put more weight on the rear of the Cummins truck and less on the Hemi truck to make all four tires do the same work even though both are 2500 series truck.
Now, if you set up your truck while towing with a 50/50 weight bias you will have optimized handling but braking won't be optimized. (there is that compromise again) Under panic braking with a 50/50 weight bias vehicle a lot of weight goes to the front of the vehicle and the rear tires do very little.
For "me" I put somewhere around 48/52 front to rear weight bias in my truck/trailer towing combo. This seems to make the best "compromise" for "me" for handling and panic braking.
