Re: TomM VDayPlans...towing...chainsaws

[jlandry@domain.elided (John A. Landry)]

The aliens commander decided MikeIIDC@domain.elided would make a perfect
specimen for dissection, and he yelled...

>A lot of the wobble problem is with tongue weight.  I have had some very light
>trailers hooked up that start to wobble because my distribution was way off,
>and have had some very heavy ones track pretty darn good (used to own an
[snippage]

Mark and Mike,

I can attest to the importance of tongue weight on trailer / tow vehicle
behavior.  I seem to recall you should strive to have 10 to 15 percent of a
trailer's weight on the tongue.  With my 18 foot dual axle travel trailer I
tow with my Traveler, if the tongue weight drops below this approximate 10
to 15 percent, boy do I feel the difference.  The trailer sort of wants to
bounce around and do it's own thing.  When I leave for a trip with the
trailer, the front mounted 23 gallon water tank is topped off and the rear
mounted holding tank is empty, the trailer balance is perfect and it's road
manners are very well behaved.  On the way home with the water tank empty
and the holding tank full... whoa!  A completely different story.  I resort
to moving as much baggage to the front of the trailer to get the tongue
weight back up.  BTW, this trailer has no sway or equalizer bars.

So try to keep the load weight on this flat bed as low as possible (low
center of gravity and forward enough to get some weight on the tongue.  I
realize it's sometimes hard to estimate tongue weight without having a good
understanding of how much your loaded trailer weighs and how much your tuck
springs compress, so you'll just have to use feel and good judgement.  If
the load can be adjusted in transit and you have problems with squirrelly
road manners, you might try increasing the tongue weight a little.  You'll
know you have too much weight on the tongue (for the tow vehicle to handle)
if the hitch is dragging the ground! <grin>

Good luck,

John L.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jlandry AT halcyon DOT com      | 
Conservative Libertarian        |  "The road to  tyranny, we must never
Life Member of the NRA          |   forget, begins with the destruction
WA Arms Collectors              |   of the truth."
Commercial Helicopter - Inst.   |                     William J. Clinton
http://www.halcyon.com/jlandry/ |    10-15-95, speech at the Univ. of CT