BarmanBean

iTrader: (1)

Brought her home yesterday!

BarmanBean

iTrader: (1)

Did well on the way home considering the limited time spent setting up the WDH, was also done on unlevel ground so basically just eyeballed it. The front queen mattress was also removed as the previous owner kept it, so the weight was pretty off anyway.

It porpoised a lot more than I expected, maybe due to lack of overall tongue weight. We spent today stocking it a bit and bought a mattress for it. We are excited

The equalizer hitch was fairly easy to setup over all, ultimately had too much weight distribution to start, dropped the bracket height a notch and it was in the middle. I'll post actual measurements when we get it loaded up and I have a chance to dial in the hitch.

PlasmaJab

Yeah porposing isn't fun. But when you drop the new queen on it that will help a bit. Dropping the nose down on the trailer a touch to put more weight on the ball can help with that too. The spreadsheet is awesome for figuring that out.

BarmanBean

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, so far it has a new queen mattress up front along with an EZup tent and some lighter tools in the front storage section. We will continue to load it up as "normal" and I'll take it over to a parking lot before our next trip planned in October.

One great thing is that we towed this home on Saturday and we took a deposit to sell our old pop-up camper just the night before. Was a great feeling to complete the "camper swap".

Simnut

Try to load your hitch to it's suggested tongue weight for that trailer, then start to load the trailer near the CG or it's axles. Weight too far apart will not tow well

BarmanBean

iTrader: (1)

Some updates, today was busy!

We've been outfitting the trailer with some storage, minor upgrades and maintenance, etc. I built a ladder to go with the rear bunk beds (turned out great, only cost about $25 for supplies!) and repacked all 4 bearings. If you pick up a used trailer of any kind, I can't recommend strongly enough to repack the bearings--and even if they have an EZ-lube setup (zerk fitting), take the time to take them apart and actually repack them. Mine were completely filled with 2 types of grease, clearly someone had fed a bunch of grease through the zerk at one point. It feeds from the rear (ideally) and should repack the bearings I guess, but I'm not sold on the system. I also discovered one outer bearing was completely missing a needle bearing and obviously needed to be replaced. Good peace of mind to know that everything back there is good to go.

With the trailer somewhat loaded up, I dragged the trailer over to the local elementary school (nice flat parking lot) and reset the WDH. Ended up flipping the shank to move the hitch ball up a bit and dialing things in. Ideally, I would have added a washer to the hitch head, but I didn't have any extra washers on hand so I ended up moving the L-brackets up one notch to achieve what seems to be a good setup based on the numbers. Here are my measurements:

Truck, no trailer, hitch head installed:
Front: 36 3/4"
Rear: 39 1/2"

Trailer hitched up, no weight distribution:
Front: 37 3/8" (increase of 5/8" from stock)
Rear: 37 1/4" (decrease of 2 1/4" from stock)

Trailer hitched up, WDH adjusted and in place:
Front: 37" (increase of 1/4" from stock)
Rear: 37 7/8" (decrease of 1 5/8" from stock)

Truck, no trailer, hitch head installed:
Front: 37 3/4"
Rear: 29 1/2"

The trailer frame measurements for the final setup are as follows:
Front: 21 1/2"
Rear: 21 7/8"

So the trailer is just barely nose-down.


So the trailer increased the front height by 5/8" and the current WDH setup removes just over half of that increase.

I measured the approximate tongue weight of the trailer (that weighs somewhere around 6k pounds) to be right about 700lbs using the bathroom scale method, putting me at about 11.67% tongue weight.


SO HERE'S THE PROBLEM. I'm still feeling like the setup is porpoising excessively. It's not horrible, but is definitely more noticeable than I hoped it would be after proper adjustment of the setup on level ground. I'm thinking that the tongue weight is a bit lower than I'd like it to be. Unfortunately it might get lighter when we load the fridge (located in rear of trailer). I'm half-tempted to add a couple bags of sand or something to front storage compartment to see how it reacts. After so much reading here, however, I'm also guessing that cruddy rear struts and squishy suspension might be contributing as well. Might save some pennies for some rear suspension upgrades over the winter.

Other than the porpoising, the setup feels pretty good.

clarkbre

BarmanBean:

Wow, you've been busy! Good job on pulling maintenance before the trailer decided it was needed. Maintenance avoids failures.

Your numbers look pretty good and it sounds like your hitch is doing it's job with returning some of that weight back to the front axle.

For the porpoising, what is the fluid level on the fresh, gray and black tank? I've noticed on my trailer that the black and gray don't have much effect on it; however, any water in the fresh will cause the trailer to porpoise quite a bit. This has caused me to empty as soon as possible before driving too far.

BarmanBean

iTrader: (1)

Nothing in any tanks. My black and grey tanks seem to be behind the axles and will most likely always be empty when traveling (I say "seem to be" because the underside of the trailer is enclosed so it's a bit hard to tell and I haven't REALLY investigated). The fresh water tank looks to be right over both axles, so not sure it would have an effect either way aside from just increasing overall weight. We don't have any specific plans for boondocking right at the moment and I haven't sanitized the tank yet, so it will most likely remain empty as well.

acdii

If you are still using the stock shocks, get rid of those. They cannot compensate for compression of the suspension quick enough to eliminate the bounce. Not saying they will eliminate the bounce, but make it more manageable. Even when perfectly setup, mine will so a bit of bouncing on rough pavement. Adding weight to the bed or front storage will help, as well as a full FWT. If it is anything like mine, it sits just in front of the axles, and will add a little weight forward. As long as it is 100% full, it will ride OK, a half tank can cause other issues as the water slops around, so either travel full or empty when it comes to water.

Nighthawk87

I switched to 5100s and it made a huge difference. It’s only like $140 for the rear.

I’m the end I sold the truck and got a 2500. That made my towing experience way better. The F150 is barely adequate for anything over 5000 pounds I think. Sure it can be done but not comfortably. I tried a lot of different