I am looking at purchasing a Toy hauler that has the 100 gal. fresh water under the front pop-out bed. The Dry hitch weight is 580lbs. Add the water weight (almost every pound except a few) that will go onto the hitch. That would be (when full) 1460lbs.

My question is. With the WD set-up (EAZ Lift w/ 1000lb bars) how much of that weight will actually show up on my hitch when I go to weigh the rig at the scales. What % of the hitch weight (in general) will be distributed away from the hitch?

My hitch is rated for 890 lbs on the hitch. My Expedition is rated for 860lbs on the hitch. With a full tank of gas and the wife we are looking at 6300lbs (Vehicle weight) add the hitch weight and I can go up to the GVWR of 7300lbs.

Thanks,
D

 

It all depends on how tight you crank the WD spring bars. As much as 50% of the hitch weight can be transferred to the front axle of the truck, probably more. Many years ago, I remember seeing an ad for one of the WD hitch manufacturers; the vehicle was a front-wheel-drive '70-something Olds LandYacht with a travel trailer attached. The WD spring bars were cranked so tight that they were able to remove the rear wheels from the car and drive around. I guess the sway control was pretty tight also. Disclaimer: Don't try this at home!

Anyways, Try to find a scale that you can spend some time on so that you can play around with different adjustments on your spring bars and find the 'neutral' 50/50 balance. When you find it, mark the links in the spring bar chains or whatever the mechanism is so that you can repeat it every time you hook up.

 

thanks for the info

 

To be honest, it sounds like you have too much trailer and not enough tow vehicle. Depending on what the tongue weight to trailer weight ratio is (on a travel trailer you want from 10: 90 to 15:85, in percents), you may be able to shift some of that weight back over the trailer axles by adding another tank further aft and only filling the front tank half way.

 

What's the GVWR of the toy hauler? The 1460# tongue weight you're refering to sounds way too heavy for a travel trailer. Assuming that the hitch weight is 10% of the gross trailer weight, that trailer would gross at 14,600 pounds!

It sounds like your math isn't quite right. 100 gallons of water at 8.34#/gal is 834 pounds. It looks to me like you added that to the dry hitch weight, plus a few extra pounds to come up with your 1460# figure.

To correctly estimate your hitch weight, add the 834# to your dry trailer weight. The laden tongue weight should be 10% of that figure.

Since your dry tongue weight is 580#, I'm guessing the dry trailer weight is 5,800#. Is that pretty close? So now add 834# of water to 5,800# and you get 6634#. Multiply by 10% and your new laden tongue weight is now 663#. Now add the estimated weight of the 'toys' and any other gear to the laden weight and refigure the tongue weight.

The maximum weight listed on your hitch is the maximum WITH the equalizing bars.