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Gravity always pulls straight down. When determining the moment arm from a support for a gravity load, use the horizontal distance. When a level beam is lifted or lowered at one end, then the beam becomes the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle and the distance raised or lowered becomes the vertical leg. The horizontal leg can be determined using Pythagorean theorem or other trig functions. For the 20' (240") I used above the reduction in horizontal length is.
240 - (2402 - 22) 1/2 = 0.008, all units in inches
Since the overall horizontal length of the beam does not change significantly, neither will the moment arm for load distribution change significantly.
As for not towing nose high, I've always thought this was more of a clearance issue for hills (and maybe wind resistance) than for load distribution.
Ah ok, you are looking at it that way. I was looking at it as a COM (center of mass) type equation.
Anyways, I think you are right either way. There is unlikely any palpable change with 2".
How is your Towing attitude? Is your camper and TV level? When you say sway do you mean body roll or fishtail? I'm going to assume fishtail. And you're pretty freaking close to MGW. I suggest a diet. Then..
Since you backed the toy into the garage that's a darn good start and since you're still having issues you're going to need to lighten the load on the tail somehow like getting a teeny tiny set of wheels for your side-by-side and putting the big ones up front or just take the front wheels off and put them up front and strap the vehicle down with the rotors resting on some thick towels AFTER unloading the side by side( they don't have a lot of storage but you'd be surprised how much stuff I see stashed in on and around those Vehicles it adds up). I'd also ditch the aft fuel tanks or run with empty aft fuel tanks and get a cross bed fuel tank for the TV that would help a lot. Sandbags up front in the Genny house will increase your PIN weight.
Adding weight over the axles or just adding more gross weight here and there usually won't help unless you reduce the overall weight first and restart your balance configuration watching the pin weight as you go.
If it was my rig I would just put the whole thing on a diet and see where I can lose weight and then start the balance configuration over from scratch after inspecting every nut and bolt and widget under the camper and my TV.
'20 Baby Grand 230RL
'93 Ford F350, 4WD, Crew, long box, 7.5L, SRW
Demco High Jacker 6076P-16k
Demco custom rails 8552005-71
How is your Towing attitude? Is your camper and TV level? When you say sway do you mean body roll or fishtail? I'm going to assume fishtail. And you're pretty freaking close to MGW. I suggest a diet. Then..
Since you backed the toy into the garage that's a darn good start and since you're still having issues you're going to need to lighten the load on the tail somehow like getting a teeny tiny set of wheels for your side-by-side and putting the big ones up front or just take the front wheels off and put them up front and strap the vehicle down with the rotors resting on some thick towels AFTER unloading the side by side( they don't have a lot of storage but you'd be surprised how much stuff I see stashed in on and around those Vehicles it adds up). I'd also ditch the aft fuel tanks or run with empty aft fuel tanks and get a cross bed fuel tank for the TV that would help a lot. Sandbags up front in the Genny house will increase your PIN weight.
Adding weight over the axles or just adding more gross weight here and there usually won't help unless you reduce the overall weight first and restart your balance configuration watching the pin weight as you go.
If it was my rig I would just put the whole thing on a diet and see where I can lose weight and then start the balance configuration over from scratch after inspecting every nut and bolt and widget under the camper and my TV.
My rear end was 2" lower than my front end. I just installed Airbags so that should fix that.
I also realized I can take out my queen bed in the garage, so thats GREAT. It's exactly in the worst place, so taking it off should hopefully help my pin weight a decent amount. It's also an easy job.
Between that and the 350# of sand I pout under my bed, I should hopefully have a good towing experience now!
Here is a different post where I described how the towing experience felt.
I am not experienced with trailering/RV dialect enough to give you an exact word that describes it. It just feels a bit floaty and like things very easily disrupt the balance of the system. I'm not feeling actual unprovoked sway the entire time or anything like that. Besides external forces (like a semi passing) it also feels like any action I take gets very exaggerated too. I can compare this to towing a 10k trailer with my tundra, which maxed out my GVWR. I would feel sway when a semi passed and I would feel repercussions from big bumps. HOWEVER, other than that felt like a freight train and even if I DID go to 75-80 (which I avoided), it felt solid. So maybe the best way to describe it is that I felt like (maybe correctly or incorrectly) I had to be hyper aware the entire time versus a normal amount of awareness during towing.
I had to apply the trailer brakes manually twice during my 3hr round trip. Once after a semi passed at a high speed and the second time was when I drifted in the lane just a bit and corrected. Correcting back introduced some uneasy sway. Again, I don't have enough experience to tell you if it was actually needed, but I felt the rear end step out of line a little and start to oscillate so I reacted immediately to that to nip it in the but.
Nice, reduce tail (and overall) weight (empty tanks etc.), level the rig, that should help with fishtail (yaw). The less weight you have and the better balance you have the less influence your trailer has on your TV, esp a SRW.
'20 Baby Grand 230RL
'93 Ford F350, 4WD, Crew, long box, 7.5L, SRW
Demco High Jacker 6076P-16k
Demco custom rails 8552005-71
One small thing to consider is how far the sxs is pulled in to the garage. I use to have a 15' garage on my previous toyhauler and had to put the 11' sxs in all the way forward.....
One small thing to consider is how far the sxs is pulled in to the garage. I use to have a 15' garage on my previous toyhauler and had to put the 11' sxs in all the way forward.....
14ft SxS, backed in all the way in my 15ft garage.
This video is definitely worth watching! It goes much further into the various scenarios of weight distribution than others that focus only on the risk of a tail heavy trailer. Of particular note is the information about too much hitch weight causing problems.
Alright guys, so I added 350# of sand in the front, took out all my water other than about 30 gallons, took off the happijac queen bed up top, and loaded anything I needed as front as I could. My new trailer weight was 18,920 with a pin weight of 3120 (16.5%). I also added airbags to my truck.
It felt SOOOOOO much better. I didnt have that white knuckle feeling the whole time. Of course I still felt swaying every once in a while like if a semi passed. But it would self settle and that would be that (instead of oscillating worse and worse till I intervened).
thanks for alll the adivce guys. Hopefully ive solved the issue. Next is a 5 hr trip and the one after is a 2,000 miles yellowstone trip in July!
Glad you worked things out. If the added 350 lbs in the front is going to be permanent, might I suggest something less bulky, and less likely to leak than sand? Say steel weights? Then when stopped for an extended time you can keep up on your body building.
John
2018 Momentum 395M
2018 Ram 3500 Dually
Every day is a Saturday, but with no lawn to mow.
Nice. It's all about weight n balance. Keep the diet going if possible: foam mattresses vs. regular ones, lighter versions of all kinds of stuff. Further away from MCVW the better shell handle and more importantly you have a little "insurance" in case you need to take evasive action. When maxed out safe to say you have not so much, if any. Being able to control the weight you tow is priority one. Keep up the diet!
'20 Baby Grand 230RL
'93 Ford F350, 4WD, Crew, long box, 7.5L, SRW
Demco High Jacker 6076P-16k
Demco custom rails 8552005-71
Glad you worked things out. If the added 350 lbs in the front is going to be permanent, might I suggest something less bulky, and less likely to leak than sand? Say steel weights? Then when stopped for an extended time you can keep up on your body building.
Batteries are a great way to add weight.... perhaps 6 L16 lead acids....or perhaps 1000ah of lithium.
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