Looking for better Sway Control
Just bought a new to us 2006 KZ Frontier 2405 TT, and I am towing with a 2007 Nissan Armada. Before this TT I was towing a Antigua 215SSO, which was about a foot shorter, and 1200 lbs lights. It tow...
Forum Discussion
I also agree that you likely do not have the hitch set up correctly. You should not have bad sway issues with a trailer that is only 25&1/2' long and if you have a basic WDH and sway control. I could not find much info. on that KZ model either. I found 5300 lbs as the dry weight which means the actual loaded weight is going to be around 6500 lbs. GVWR is 7,000 lbs.
A fancy & expensive WDH hitch is not going to solve any weight, payload capacity or other issues you may have that need addressing first.
My own experience with our KZ TT is that the tongue weight ended up being almost double the dry tongue wt. and the loaded trailer weight is only 200 lbs under the UVW. Tongue ended up at 15% of the TT weight. Our TT weight is very close to yours and our Reese DC works extremely well. We tow with a 3/4 ton though. Even with a 3/4 ton, we don't have a lot of payload capacity left over to play with.
Without going to a scale, I would use 7000 lbs as a figure to base the tongue wt. on. Judging by a photo, the axles seem set farther back from the hitch than the average trailer (I *think*) so I would use 15% of 7000 lbs as the tongue wt. = 1050 lbs.
I'm not sure what rating your WDH bars are but I highly suspect your old ones are too small. I would say that you should have at least 1000 lb rated bars and potentially even more. But until you know exactly what your tongue weight is, you are just guessing. Not sure if your bars come in 600, 800, 1000, then 1200 lb. ratings? Ours jumped from 800 to 1200 lbs.
We bought 800 lb bars for our KZ unit before it arrived and the tongue wt. ended up being so much higher, we had to go to 1200 lb bars (Reese trunnion type). I initially had major problems trying to set up the weight transfer but with the 1200 lb bars, it worked out easily. The handling was almost much improved.
The best thing you can ever do is take your tow vehicle and trailer to a scale and get the trailer, tongue and truck weights and to also determine what weights are being transferred to the 3 axle sets. You want to end up with about 50% to the drive axle and which will end up about 25% each to the steer and TT axles. If your bars are undersized, you'll never get the WDH set up right. Not only that, you may find that you have a lot of bounce in the rear of the trailer, like we did. That increased bounce can also affect the handling of the tow vehicle.
Have you looked the payload and towing capacity of your Armada? In the Nissan Towing Guide it lists the max. tongue wt. as 650 lbs and max. trailer wt. as 6,500 lbs. It looks to me that you will be slightly over on trailer weight but way over on max. tongue weight. Not good to be towing way over the tongue capacity. Could not find the listed payload capacity but I would want to check that too. The only way to know what your actual payload capacity is to take the TV scale weight and subtract it from the GVWR. If you are significantly overloaded, that will definitely not help handling. Don't forget you need to allow for passengers, pets, groceries and other payload in the Armada.
Don't forget to look at checking for correct tire pressure. I'd also check to see if your shocks are worn and could do with replacing.
A fancy & expensive WDH hitch is not going to solve any weight, payload capacity or other issues you may have that need addressing first.
My own experience with our KZ TT is that the tongue weight ended up being almost double the dry tongue wt. and the loaded trailer weight is only 200 lbs under the UVW. Tongue ended up at 15% of the TT weight. Our TT weight is very close to yours and our Reese DC works extremely well. We tow with a 3/4 ton though. Even with a 3/4 ton, we don't have a lot of payload capacity left over to play with.
Without going to a scale, I would use 7000 lbs as a figure to base the tongue wt. on. Judging by a photo, the axles seem set farther back from the hitch than the average trailer (I *think*) so I would use 15% of 7000 lbs as the tongue wt. = 1050 lbs.
I'm not sure what rating your WDH bars are but I highly suspect your old ones are too small. I would say that you should have at least 1000 lb rated bars and potentially even more. But until you know exactly what your tongue weight is, you are just guessing. Not sure if your bars come in 600, 800, 1000, then 1200 lb. ratings? Ours jumped from 800 to 1200 lbs.
We bought 800 lb bars for our KZ unit before it arrived and the tongue wt. ended up being so much higher, we had to go to 1200 lb bars (Reese trunnion type). I initially had major problems trying to set up the weight transfer but with the 1200 lb bars, it worked out easily. The handling was almost much improved.
The best thing you can ever do is take your tow vehicle and trailer to a scale and get the trailer, tongue and truck weights and to also determine what weights are being transferred to the 3 axle sets. You want to end up with about 50% to the drive axle and which will end up about 25% each to the steer and TT axles. If your bars are undersized, you'll never get the WDH set up right. Not only that, you may find that you have a lot of bounce in the rear of the trailer, like we did. That increased bounce can also affect the handling of the tow vehicle.
Have you looked the payload and towing capacity of your Armada? In the Nissan Towing Guide it lists the max. tongue wt. as 650 lbs and max. trailer wt. as 6,500 lbs. It looks to me that you will be slightly over on trailer weight but way over on max. tongue weight. Not good to be towing way over the tongue capacity. Could not find the listed payload capacity but I would want to check that too. The only way to know what your actual payload capacity is to take the TV scale weight and subtract it from the GVWR. If you are significantly overloaded, that will definitely not help handling. Don't forget you need to allow for passengers, pets, groceries and other payload in the Armada.
Don't forget to look at checking for correct tire pressure. I'd also check to see if your shocks are worn and could do with replacing.
