Gene K

WDH and Tongue Weight

Unladen Truck Weight - 5000 lb
With Trailer Hooked and No Spring Bars - 6000 lb
With Spring Bars - 5900 lb

Is that 1000 or 900 lb Tongue Weight?

acdii

That sounds like 1000#. When you release the tension it applies the full TW to the truck, tension up the bars and it transfers weight forward and back, so you effectively moved 100 pounds to the trailers axles.

Gene K

That's what I thought. Had someone tell me I was wrong. Thought I better double check.

smokeywren

The 1000 pounds is hitch weight. Hitch weight = tongue weight plus the weight of the WD hitch.


The 900 pounds is the amount of hitch weight remaining on the two truck axles after part of the hitch weight was distributed to the trailer axles by the WD hitch.


In order to compute tongue weight, you would have to know the actual weight of the WD hitch. Good WD hitches with good sway control, including a Blue Ox SwayPro and an Equal-I-Zer, weigh around 100 pounds, so a good guess at tongue weight of that trailer would be 900 pounds.


Instead of computing tongue weight, I prefer to weigh the tongue on a tongue-weight scale, like this one:
http://www.etrailer.com/Tools/Sherline/5780.html

Gene K

I know technically the WDH is not part of tongue weight. I just wanted to make sure I knew what I thought I knew.

Of course that brings up the whole question of whether the weight of the WDH should be counted against the hitch. Yes the hitch carries the load but hitches are rated by tongue weight not hitch weight.

acdii

Ah but did you weigh the truck with the hitch installed? That will skew the results too.

If you can't afford a TW scale, go buy a $9 walmart bathroom scale, 2 7' 2x4, 2 foot long pipes, either copper or electrical, and a 2" thick 1 square foot or larger paving stone.

Screw the 2x4's togetner and lay on edge, then put a line across them every foot. Lay the paver on one side of the jack foot, centered 1' away, place a pipe in the middle and then the 2x4 with the 1' mark on the pipe, set the foot of the jack at the 2' mark, then put the scale at the 5' mark, centered with the pipe in between. Zero the scale before resting the jack on the 2' mark and get the reading off the scale, multiply by 3 to get the actual weight. If you think the weight will exceed 200 pounds weigh at the 6' mark and multiply by 4. If you get 8' you can weigh out to 7' and multiply by 5, but that would have to be for a really heavy trailer.

Gene K

It was a hypothetical. I just wanted to make sure I understood it correctly. Someone had me questioning what I thought I knew.

smokeywren

Play on words. The receiver is rated for the max weight on the receiver, which the receiver manufacturer calls tongue weight (TW). So technically TW is the total tongue weight on the receiver, including the weight of the WD hitch or WC ball mount.


But trailer manufacturers call TW the weight of the tongue without any WD hitch or WC ball mount. So that gets confusing. To reduce confusion, I call TW the weight of the tongue, then when you add the weight of the WD hitch, that's hitch weight. But maybe I'm just adding to the confusion?


When you use a TW scale to determine if you are overloading your receiver, the WD hitch should be installed on the trailer, with the spring bars laying on the a-frame and the shank/ball mount locked into the coupler. Or else weigh the tongue without the hitch installed and without the spring bars, then add the shipping weight of the hitch to the scaled tongue weight to get total tongue weight, or what I call hitch weight.

acdii

Good point. There is confusion out there in regards to the ball weight too, somewhere I read it was included with the GVWR, and then elsewhere it is not. Doesn't hurt to add it though.

smokeywren

GVW and GVWR are much simpler. GVW of the vehicle is the scale weight on the front and rear axles of the vehicle, regardless of whether there is a trailer tongue on the ball or not.


But of course, if you have tongue weight on the ball, then the weight on the axles of the truck will be higher than if no trailer is attached.