I'm taking the Excusion this Saturday to pick up a new 28' enclosed car hauler. I have pulled a 27' boat with the Ex so I fairly comfortable with the weight & length. My concern is with the sway effect from the large box. I do have a Reese Strait-Line on order but the dual cams will not arrive for a few weeks. So, it looks like I may be pulling the 4K LBS empty trailer home with no weight distribution or sway control. How concerned should I be?

Also, I'm wondering if I would be hauling this way even with the Reese as the tongue weight would be below the 600 pound minimum. How do people with large enclosed trailer deal with the change in weight between loaded and empty?

Thanks in advance.

Mark

 

Mark, I have only towed my 24' car hauler empty on back roads, my Ex didn't even know it was back there. Loaded is a different story, without weight distribution and sway control around trucks is no fun. I learned to move away from the trucks and to keep it below 70 mph I towed mine this way on a 1,000+ mile trip in June with 3700 lb car, except for the sway the Ex handled it fine. Remember to put the car weight on the trailer axles except for the necessary tongue weight.

I am going to purchase a sway control system for my rig. Is your new trailer a flat or v-nose?

 

My new (used) trailer is a flat nose. I'm not planning to load the trailer until I get the WD hitch in, so I'm hoping it will be OK. My Ex already has the sway bars and I'll be updating the spring to the V/B codes as well.

 

Since you still outweigh the trailer by quite a bit there shouldn't be any problems. Yes, you've got a lot of sail area without much weight holding it down but you've also got a lot of rubber on the road for the weight. Normal crosswind shouldn't be a problem.

 

just blue skying it here...

but how about throwing some bags of sand or something else you need from Home depot onto the right spot in the trailer to help with the balance / load so it has enough tongue weight ???

just wondering

 

Thanks to everyone for their input.

Got back from my trip with the new trailer. Here are some things I quickly figured out about enclosed trailers and my Ex:

1) WAY different than pulling a boat! Best way to describe was trying to push a grocery cart backward.
2) The rear springs warped notably during periods of sway. (I already have the Helwig rear sway bar)
3) Trucks and down hills are not your friends when it comes to sway.
4) When pulling at 55, the Ex got 10.7 MPG, even with 10% ethanol blend.
5) The Prodigy P3 controller worked great.

Some things more specific to my trip:
1) I bumped my tires to 55/65 from 45/55. Not sure if I should have gone higher per some of the other post but want to see how things change with the Reese Hitch.
2) The base trailer has a 390 lbs tongue weight, 4,040 lbs empty weight. My trailer had been upgraded to bring the GVWR from 9,950 to 12,000 lbs. I’m guessing that dropped my tongue weight below 10% as the geometry stayed the same but the total weight increased.
3) My ex has almost 90K on it so the springs could use a refresh.
4) My smaller size mirrors worked for the boat but are too small for the trailer. Found myself looking back on curves to see if any large trucks were approaching.
- Mark

 

Just an update on the tongue weight. I had to call the MFG and they gave me the emply weight (4,644 lbs) and tongue weight (366 lbs). That is a little under 8% so that probably did not help my sway issues.

- Mark

 

Your towing problems are 90% related to the trailer weight distribution. Increase the tongue weight percentage and you will cure a lot of your problems. Yes, you will have some other wandering issues but not sway.