It's not a Schwintek failure

[TedS]

Interesting how the rear wheel braking reaction causes enough rear spring rotation to lift the front spring by the transfer through the equalizer. In this case, having no equalizer would be a benefit for braking.

[d2reid]

Jlawles2 , Cate&Rob , howson Scott'n'Wendy , TedS You guys are amazing, you understand so much more of things than I do. While I can't tell you why it's a bad thing, or tell you exactly what will happen, I just know that if you have your trailer nose to high or to low (unbalanced) things don't work as they should and will break quicker than if it's level.

"Unbalance the 5th wheel" is not a term I've seen before, ... applying a moment to the base of the hitch... Now, if raising the hitch requires modifying the frame of the hitch, that would be a completely different issue.

Moment—the product of the weight of an item multiplied by its arm. Moments are expressed in pound-inches (in-lb). Total moment is the weight of the airplane multiplied by the distance between the datum and the CG.

Ya, Unbalance the 5th wheel is pretty much a laymans term. As in the trailer should be balanced equally forward and aft over the axles. If not, things break faster.


Whoa, the term "moment" brought up some long forgotten memories of pilot training, I had to go look it up. My wife is always telling me I am not in the moment, I thougt she was telling me that I wasn't paying attention, now I understood she was trying to tell me I am unbalanced. It's always good to know stuff.

Not going to change the base of the hitch. My hitch has a jesus bolt (no religious conotation intended) that has different holes in it, you can take the bolt out and move it to a higher/lower hole and it changes the height of the hitch plate.

[TedS]

A trailer should never be balanced front to back over the axles when being towed. There will be no pin weight, not a desired condition.

Torque or moment is the product of force times distance: lb-in, lb-ft, N-m.

[Cate&Rob]

Interesting how the rear wheel braking reaction causes enough rear spring rotation to lift the front spring by the transfer through the equalizer. In this case, having no equalizer would be a benefit for braking.

Absolutely correct. Independent suspension by axle (a slipper spring setup is the simplest example) would be far better during braking because all tires would stay on the ground and share the braking. The down side of independent is not being able to share the load with the other axle springs when travelling across rough road surfaces.

The structure above fully independent axles must be able to carry the entire weight of the trailer on one axle. This is why converting a suspension from ‘equalizer” to “independent” should include frame reinforcement.

Rob

[Cate&Rob]

[USER="5974"]Whoa, the term "moment" brought up some long forgotten memories of pilot training, I had to go look it up. My wife is always telling me I am not in the moment, I thougt she was telling me that I wasn't paying attention, now I understood she was trying to tell me I am unbalanced. It's always good to know stuff.

LOL Dallas . . . I am going to “borrow” this insight . . . if you don’t mind.

Rob

[JBill9694]

My take on post #8 was that there was concern about the rear axle on the truck, not the trailer. As others have already noted, a 3" raise over several feet is likely to have little or not effect on the trailer axle loading, especially when you take into consideration the load equalizers.

[d2reid]

Update!

Ok, heres about $6000 worth of something you never want to see.

This is my story and I'm sticking to it.

I have a Gator X roll top tonneau cover. Love it. When I bought my F450 in 2019 I asked the Ford dealer to evaluate the Ford Reese hitch that fit the Ford puck system. They assured me it was fine. And, it was ok, but, had they lifted the hitch to it's highest point it would have been better, hindsight. So for 4 years I have had a 4" rail clearance. If I were a normal person that would be enough, but noooo, I have to go and challenge things by boondocking in the wilderness were the roads are not flat and the campshights are often rugged. As a result of twisting my poor hitch in horrible angles over rough terrain and then turn the whole thing while the 5th wheel overhang is rubbing on the truck rails that have the Gator X track mounted on top and catching my very expensive skirt rail system thereby ripping and grabbing the trim of the front cap and pulling with great force. For 4 years....

Sigh, I always pay for my mistakes.

Here's a fun fulltimers saga... We took the Momentum to a GD authorized dealer for repair. I showed and explained the issues, they gave me an extimate of $6k, shrug, if you are going to play you gotta pay. So we ordered the parts, when they came in we scheduled for the repair, 2 days tops. Even took it in Sunday evening so they could get started early Monday morning. Being full timers we had to pack up the pets and stuff and seek out a pet friendly place to stay. They said two days, I guessed four, just because I am a bit of a pessimist when it comes to these things. Not fond of the Motel 6 in Tucker, GA... Sunday, night, Monday night... Tuesday I gave them a call around 2pm for an update, hoping we could pick up our happy home. Nope, one tech quit and the other called in sick. Grrrr! but that's the way things go sometimes. So we said no worries we took a little trip, kind of expecting things to be ready by Friday. Nope, not done, and oh by the way, did you know you had a hole in your roof?

Not fond of the Extended Stay motel near Norcross, GA.

Okay, not going to get it by this weekend, lets go to Helen, GA and do Alpine village stuff like eat too much and drink a lot of beer. Did you know that "pet friendly" motels now charge a per pet, per day fee, $20, $40, and Hampton Inn quoted $75; per day, per pet... Lordy you have to carefull of the upcharges. Checked in on Saturday, the one tech came in on his day off to work on it. Cudos' there. Come to pick it up Monday morning.... Not. Haha, I know how this works, so we dawdled, didn't get to the dealer until 2. Oh boy was DW unhappy it wasn't ready. We packed for 2 days, did laundry at four days and now on day 9 we are seriously out of clean socks, and other stuff. We really miss our happy home., Even the cat was complaining at this point.

I facillitated the tech raising our hitch to it's highest point. The sealant around the cap was not cured, and we were going to drag 50 mles to an RV park so I talked to the tech about stretch and cure and he gave me an extra tube of sealant in case the nose caps seals got stretched/opened. Arriving at the RV park in pitch black dark. I hate setting up in the dark, I can't see that well in sunshine, in dark, I do a lot of GOAL. Fortunately the neighbors took pitty on my and brought out all of their flash lights and helped me not run over something/someone while getting into our site.

Then we leveled and slid the slides. The slide that was reapaired slid so smoothly I was, I was, words are hard to describe the feeling. It was amazing.

So the repair is done. The hitch is adjusted to give more rail clearance. All the slides work... uhhh, wait a minute, what was that crunching sound. While sliding the main slide out there was this loud crunching-tang sound. Oh no! Phew, a golf ball had rolled under the kitchen slide and when it got "pressed" it sprang out and hit the garbage can. No harm done, all's good. Anybody need a golf ball?

My poor wife is a nervous, stressed out wreck. Me? Somewhere in my life I have learned that adversity is to be endured. That you have to find the lighter side of things going wrong. It was not one of my favorite weeks, but, in the end, me and the little dog are setting comfortably on the couch typing this out. The slide is out, we are happy campers!

[Country Campers]

I always enjoy reading your "trials and tribulations" and it gives me hope that someday when I grow up I can have such a laid back attitude.

Brian

[Scott'n'Wendy]

Quite a week. Kudos to you 'roll with the punches' attitude. I'm working on trying to be like that. Not there yet.......but getting better...I think. DW probably doesn't agree...lol

Glad you have made it 'back home'.