CADreaming wrote:
Thanks to everyone for their input. jrichards, I may be overthinking this whole thing; however, after talking to so many sales people and reading SO many blogs on proper towing, I'm trying to un-confuse myself. One salesman told me that as long as our trailer weight didn't exceed our tow vehicle weight, we were fine. Another tried to tell me that adding a WDH would give us more towing capability (see what I mean ... ). We don't plan on using this TT to live in but, rather, as a supplement to some extended traveling (I still like "hotel camping" ... ). Thus, we don't plan on hauling a ton of "stuff", but we still want to be comfortable ... and safe.
Taking the given numbers at face value, it appears that towing a 5400 lb trailer (max) may be okay; however, per some of the postings I've read, if we have 6600 lbs GVWR - 5500 curb wt (weighed on a scale) - 600 lbs passengers/gas/WDH, we get a real tongue wt of 500 lbs -- much less than our 690 lb book rating.
Taking the new tongue weight and using the 15% ratio which I keep reading about, then the maximum trailer wt should be 500 lbs (tongue)/ .15 = 3,330 lbs maximum trailer weight. If you use a 10% ratio, then it becomes: Maximum Trailer Weight = 500 lbs / .10 = 5,000 lbs. which means the trailer we're looking at is over our limit by 400 lbs.
I'm just wondering whether I'm forgetting something in this equation or if my figures are wrong. Thanks.
I think you're thinking about it almost perfectly. There are several limiting numbers, none of which should be ignore. And you should always ignore the sales guy, lol. I had one tell me if you're using a WD hitch, then tow ratings and capacities no longer matter.
A WD hitch doesn't increase your tow rating, but it does reduce your tongue weight. A rule of thumb I've seen that seems pretty good as a real world
estimate: a WD hitch will redistribute 20% of the tongue weight to the trailer and 20% to the front axle of the tow vehicle.
So, while I don't think you should exceed 690lbs before hooking up the WD hitch, a WD hitch will redistribute weight, so your calculation is conservative. If you have 500lbs of payload capacity left for the trailer and you're assuming 20% of the tongue weight will be shifted back to the trailer, I think you could look at a non WD tongue weight of 625lbs (500/.8)
