I hope I'm barking up the right tree

[KillerIsMe]

I have never owned a TT before, although in a previous life I pulled a two-horse trailer all over the Northeast. I was young and carefree back then, never gave towing much thought - just hitch and go. I'm not so young anymore and I care now so I've come here to ask your advice.

My TV is a 2014 Nissan Frontier V6 4WD with the factory tow package, and I'm not upgrading. I've had the truck since new, owe about $2500 on it, and it has just over 30,000 miles. It's a good every-day truck and I'm just not prepared at my age to turn a small amount of debt and a reliable known into a big amount of debt and an unknown. So I did the math on the truck's payload, added in myself, my wife, our daughter, the dog, and added in 70 extra "miscellaneous" pounds and I'm left with a maximum of 570 pounds on the hitch. Realistically I want to stay away from maxxing out so I'm trying to stay with a total hitch weight of 470 pounds or so.

We are trailer shopping and have funneled down our choices into our favorite, and that's a Venture Sonic Lite 168VRB. We went to look at one today and the real-world factory sticker shows the Sonic at a 250 pound hitch weight (dry of course), and a trailer weight of 3200 and GVWR of 4000. That unit has the options we want with the exceptions of TV and power tongue jack. The Nissan is rated to pull 6100 pounds, which I had no intention of doing, and as I said I have up to 570 pounds left of payload for the hitch. Can you folks help me out on this: am I OK with this combination? I will not be camping much more than 12 to 15 trips per year, and as we live in Northeast Pennsylvania we will stay mostly local.

Am I missing anything?

[troubledwaters]

I include the battery, and propane as part of the 1200 - 1500 lbs total I add to the dry weight of the Trailer. For estimating load and weight purposes I would use 1200 lbs for a small trailer (16') and 1500 lbs for a larger trailer (28'). This all becomes part of the "total weight of the trailer ready to camp". I than use 13 percent of that total weight to get to tongue weight. You can also shift weight to behind the axle of the trailer to keep your tongue weight down to the 12 - 13 percent range, which is generally all you need to keep your trailer stable.

[KillerIsMe]

Brochure weights tell you how the empty trailer is balanced.

This is what I thought, which is why I was looking at trailers with a relatively low tongue weight. I don't want to overwhelm the truck. My thinking is that, because the water tank is on the tongue side of the trailers' axle I can add weight up front if necessary by adding fresh water. I was figuring on buying one of those Sherline scales and adjusting the tongue weight as needed. That's the trouble with not actually owning the trailer - you can't just take it somewhere and weigh it, so it's basically research and guesswork. And when you are cutting it close like I am it can make the hair stand up on your arms.

[drsteve]

Why publish a tongue weight at all if it's always just loaded trailer X 13 percent?

13 percent of loaded trailer weight on the tongue will result in a stable setup with minimal sway issues. A light tongue can cause sway.

Brochure weights tell you how the empty trailer is balanced. As an example, look at a toy hauler. The unloaded tongue weight is usually quite high as a proportion of total unloaded weight compared to a normal travel trailer, because the manufacturer knows you're going to load hundreds of pounds of toys behind the axles, and they balance the empty unit so that when loaded, it still has an appropriate amount of tongue weight.

[Durb]

I have a friend that towed a Lance 1985 with the identical truck. The Lance has GVWR of 5700# however I do not know what his actual tow numbers were. His truck had some kind of package on it as his tires were oversized and the truck displayed some extra graphics. He did have an auto transmission. He used an equalizer hitch and reported to me that he was very pleased with the truck's towing performance.

He ended up selling the trailer and truck as he wanted to upsize but the quality and function of his equipment wasn't an issue. Good luck with your search.

[colliehauler]

First off welcome to the forum. I applaud your efforts to be a informed consumer. Would renting a similar size trailer give you a idea of how it tows?

It sounds like people with real world experience towing with the Datsun sorry Nissan don't have a issue.

Don't get to light on tongue weight or sway will be a issue. Being able to move things around to change weight might not be the best option.

[Jebby14]

just remember that you can have as much or little tongue weight as you like based on how you load. the 10-15 percent rule comes from what makes for a nice tow. theoretically you could load up the rear and have almost no tongue weight but you will have insane sway problems and be unsafe. I feel for you I spend the first years of my tt days playing with numbers to get just inside the margins. it sucked. towing was unpleasant. now with my f150 the worry is gone and vacation is much more pleasant.

[KillerIsMe]

Thanks for all the advice my friends. I guess the way I finally figured it is this: an Andersen WD hitch for my truck weighs 60 pounds. I added in 100 lbs. for the battery and propane tank and 420 lbs. for the natural 13% trailer tongue weight (4000 lb. GVWR) and it totaled up to 580 lbs. My owners manual states the maximum tongue weight for the Frontier I have as 610 lbs. Not ideal, but within the spec. Next I looked on the door jamb and found the maximum payload number of 1218 lbs. and the little yellow hand-written sticker that tells me to reduce that figure by 198 lbs. So I did. I'm thinking that leaves my available payload at 1020 lbs. Now I don't know if that figure includes a 150 lb. driver and a half tank of gas but I assumed it didn't. I added the weights of the four of us - I go 235, the wife 135 (FYI: I didn't ask, but I think that's about right), my daughter is right at 100, and the dog weighs 63. All together we weigh about 540 lbs. That weight plus the 580 lbs. on the hitch plus 120 lbs. of gas puts me at 1240 lbs., or 220 lbs. over my available payload. As an OG that has become more careful in my old age that number scares me a little bit. But the alternatives are to either buy a new truck or to look for a smaller trailer (there is a third option, but nobody wants to stay home).

So there you have it. When I posted my initial post I was under the assumption that I would add the Andersen, propane tank, and battery to the Sonic's dry hitch weight of 290 lbs. for a total of 450 lbs., and also under the assumption that if most everything was loaded over or behind the axle that weight wouldn't change by much. That's what was making me crazy about the published dry hitch weight - it's an actual measured figure but if it means absolutely nothing then why have it? Thank you all for clearing up my misconceptions.

But I have one more question and I promise I won't ask any more (maybe): we were looking also at a Jay Feather 7, model 18RBM. It has a sofa and a Murphy bed and an interior height of 78" (I'm 6'1" - some Jaycos have interior heights of 73") so it is appealing. You can Google it if you like but the question I have is - the dry hitch weight is 410 lbs. and the GVWR is 3975 lbs. If you add the Andersen, propane, and battery to the hitch it would increase the "dry" weight to 570 lbs. (410 + 160 = 570). But if you take the GVWR and multiply it by .13 the hitch weight comes out to 516.75 lbs. So does that mean that by loading the trailer to its max weight you would actually DECREASE the load on the hitch by 53.25 lbs.? If that's the case it opens a whole new set of possible trailers to me.

[cmcdar]

gmw photos wrote:

I owned and Loved a Nissan Frontier it did pretty well towing my 3550 Dry weight camper BUT my Frontier was a manual transmission and the (****) clutch could not handle backing up the camper.

I find that interesting.
My '06 Frontier is a 4.0 V6, 4WD, six speed manual. I bought it new. The truck has 134K miles on it. 50K miles of towing either the camper or two different horse triailers. Original clutch. Still works fine.

I found out months later that Nissan had two different clutches. The one in mine was a "dual clutch". Wow what a piece of junk.

Don't get me wrong I have driven Nissan pick ups exclusively since 1983. (with the exclusion of one Xterra) All were manual transmissions and I towed smaller trailers with all of them. You will notice I am STILL a Nissan lover (Titan).

I loved the Frontier it was just that **** clutch. I replaced it once and I could smell it going again. That was it, I had to move on.

[DutchmenSport]

KillerIsMe wrote:

DutchmenSport wrote:
...

Like to get your perspective my Friend. ...

I sent you a private message.

[westend]

Try that smaller trailer with your Frontier is my suggestion. Take a short trip with varied roads. If you have a good WDH setup, I think you'll do OK.

About the difference in brochure tongue weights---they're both lying. Go with what other users have found, tongue weights average 11%-13% of total pulled weight.

FWIW, I rebuilt an old Starcraft with a full beam frame. In the process, I pulled out a bunch of stuff but kept some and added others. At the end, I was just shy of 5000 lbs. That is 650 lbs over the brochure's dry weight. My tongue weight was 11.5%, on the low end, but acceptable. This all did make me realize one thing. Even back in '71, the brochure weights were off.

[afidel]

KillerIsMe wrote:
I might just have to give it a go. 61 years old, daughter is 10, wife says YOLO and I have to agree. I can't really afford (actually I CAN afford - I just don't want to) to buy a big new Titan, or F150, or whatever. My best friend died last year at 60 - never got to do some of the things he always wanted to do. Played it safe. I don't want to end up doing the same thing over a stupid travel trailer and something as trivial as a Nissan Frontier. What did it cost me - $25000? I don't think it's worth it for me to spend the next however many years agonizing over whether or not my truck will pull a travel trailer. If it won't it won't. I'll know by the end of this Summer and if it's a fail, well it's a fail. I'll look around for a big beater to pull it and call it a lesson learned. No matter what, it won't define my life.

That's what finally got me to buy my trailer, knowing that my 15 year old son wouldn't be around to camp with us for much longer I stopped fretting the cost and figured I'd try it with the minivan and figure out my tow situation if I didn't like using it despite technically being within all ratings. It didn't take more than driving the trailer home for me to realize there was no way I was trying that cross country, luckily you're probably in a much better place than I was given it's a real truck. My plan was to get a midsized pickup to replace my aging commuter car but then a overly concerned grandfather decided to buy the family the TV in my signature, it does a great job of towing my light little trailer but it's got so many compromises I never would have bought it myself.

[gmw_photos]

My funfinder weighs 4000 pounds as I travel, according to the CAT scale.
I run it at 580 pounds tongue weight. Hitched with a Blue Ox swaypro hitch. The combo tows extremely well, the Frontier is happy towing this.

Go for it. You will love the memories you get to make with your family.

ps, I would not recommend putting weight behind the trailer axle to try to fool the situation into a "lighter tongue weight". That is bad practice, IMO.

[KillerIsMe]

DutchmenSport wrote:
Just so everyone can get a visual of exactly what a 'Sonic' is, here's some images: Sonic, click here.

Put this together with the 2014 Nissan Frontier. Here's some images: Nissan Frontier, click here.

Visuals may help.

I'm not familiar enough with the Nissan to give a good response, (although I do have my own gut feeling), so I'll just provide another log for the fire and let someone else toss it in!

Like to get your perspective my Friend. When I was a kid my Uncle Jack hauled us nieces and nephews around in an old canned ham. I can't recall at all what it was, but he pulled it with a big-ass Buick. Made us kids ride in the ham while the adults sat in the front and did adult stuff. We went from western Pennsylvania to the Jersey shore "couple-two-tree-times a year" in that set-up, up to Lake Erie, maybe out to Wampum if we were lucky. Could have been hiccups, but I sure don't remember! Good days.

[KillerIsMe]

MFL wrote:
I think the floor plan makes a difference on tongue wt. If the axle is the same distance from the hitch ball. One trailers floor plan may put a few heavier appliances, further ahead of the axle. When loading the trailer, especially a single axle trailer, you can add or subtract tongue wt, by placement of goods/gear. You never want less than .10 for tongue wt, and yes .12-.13 would likely be better.

Figuring loading to full GVWR of 4,000 is worst case, so people use that to set a safety margin. I don't think you are looking at an unsafe tow, and a lot depends on the driver. Some folks can't handle being near a rigs limit, and the next may say it is great, while being well over the limit.

Jerry

Thanks my Friend. Axle is just a fulcrum - pile stuff in front of it, increase the tongue weight, pile stuff behind it, decrease the tongue weight. Physics 101. If my tongue weight is too much I'll put some water jugs in the shower to compensate. Still doesn't explain why the dry tongue weight on trailer A (just for an example) is 400 lbs., and the dry tongue weight on trailer B is 300 lbs. but when all is said and done (trailers loaded) both tongue weights will be the same if the loaded trailer weights are the same. That's some mystery math.