trailer tongue weight

[HeavyJ]

Has anyone ever utilized the trailer tongue weight adjustment on their trailer? I have a 2008 Z21 that I tow with my F-150 and I was looking into how I could take a bit of weight off the tail end of my truck. If you have adjusted it, did it help or make any significant difference?

[AHens]

I would be very cautious taking off tongue weight.

[flatsboy]

If you having issues with the rear end sagging too much. Get these they work wonders. You'll never be able to adjust the boat on the trailer enough to change it.
But the active suspension will work wonders...

https://www.etrailer.com/Vehicle-Sus...FZyPswodKHUIlQ

https://activesuspension.com/product...ercrewext-cab/

[OldTimer57]

1. Weigh the trailer at a local CAT scale. Disconnected from truck and sitting on the scale by itself.

2. Take a bath room scale, put it under the jack wheel in front with trailer connected to truck, and jack trailer up until it is off the hitch. This weight needs to be at LEAST 5% of the total trailer weight, and 10% is a better number.

I bought a new astro in 1992 and it was a dog to tow. I could pick the front end of the trailer up by hand, easily. IN fact, when we washed it, I could raise the front end (motor trimmed all the way up) and stand it up until the rear of the trailer frame touched the driveway. It would remain that way. Anything would make it "waggle" under tow. In a thunderstorm it was an exciting process. I moved the wheels back enough to get to that 10% number and it towed perfectly from that point on.

There's a good video around of a guy with a model trailer on a wide belt sander. He moved the center of gravity forward and backward and illustrates what this does to stability. Once you get the center of gravity BEHIND the wheels, the trailer is unstable, and any bump will cause a waggle that progressively gets worse until the trailer comes off or the towing vehicle leaves the roadway. The farther forward the CG moves, the more stable (and, of course, the more load on the truck's rear suspension - not so important if you have air bags).

If you have air bags, rear sag won't be an issue. Otherwise a weight-distributing hitch will work wonders. It transfers part of the load to the front wheels so the rear end of the truck doesn't sag.

[bayoufellow]

You only need to move the boat or axle an inch or two to make the above adjustment. With some trailers it is easier to move the axle. I had a tandem axle setup in which the axles were welded. I moved the winch support bracket forward (one inch) to get the needed additional tongue weight.

[AHens]

I think he`s looking to remove tongue weight. Some winch stands are welded.

[OldTimer57]

Dangerous to take this very far. You need 300+ pounds of tongue weight on a 21' boat to even be remotely close to that 10% figure. Rear end sag is much less important than trailer stability.

[DrewFlu33]

Echoing the above...I'd personally leave it alone unless your springs are bottoming out or something. Taking away tongue weight can VERY quickly flip an annoying situation into a dangerous one. I know from experience.

Have you experiemented with a hitch ball with slightly less drop? I know a lot of people say that won't change tongue weight, but my personal experience begs to differ. It intuitively makes sense as well: At the extreme, you can picture lifting the tongue up far enough that the tongue weight becomes zero, or eventually "negative" (just before the skeg is sitting on the pavement. At the other extreme, if you were able to drop the tongue low enough, the tongue weight could theoretically be 100% of the trailer weight, though obviously that'd be limited by the road surface in reality. More realistically, moving it up or down slightly from where it is has to change the tongue weight at least to some degree as you're moving the center of mass higher/lower and therefore, the axis of rotation forward or backward.