PDA

View Full Version : weight distr. setup/problem


badstang79
Tue, June 26th, 2012, 11:29 AM
Hoping I can find some help here,
I have a 28' bunkhouse, dry weight is some where around 7360 lbs. on it with a tongue weight of about 800 lbs. I did some measuring after reading about proper setup on my hitch, unloaded the back sits at 40.25" and the front at 39.75". Without the bars and trailer on it's at 37" in back and 40.5" in front. When I put the bars on it only comes up a quarter inch in back and stays the same on the front. I went and had the dealership that set it up redo it, but the only thing that changed is the number of links. The trailer is level with the bars on. What adjustments can I make to level out the truck a bit if any?

Also I had long tubes put on with a sido magnaflow system, and compared to my factory manifolds and cherry bomb, seems like it takes a lot more grunt to pull it. Have tunes on the way. Will these help?

badstang79
Tue, June 26th, 2012, 11:39 AM
I forgot to add that my hitch is a curt system rated for 1000lb. tongue weight and 10000 lb. trailer weight. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jackpine
Tue, June 26th, 2012, 01:42 PM
It sounds like you need to "shorten" the chains on the WD hitch by attaching to a lower link.

You do this by attaching the trailer tongue to the ball on the hitch and then you use the tongue jack to raise both the front of the trailer and the rear of your truck until you can get the next link in the chain attached. Then, you retract the tongue jack and measure the result. This should have raised the rear of the truck and lowered the front. Ideally, you want the front and rear of the truck to compress the exact same amount with the trailer connected, and, you want the trailer to ride level. This equalizes the additional load on each axle of the truck.

If there's too much load on the rear axle, it is probably overloaded. This also reduces the load on the front axle making steering less dependable and when braking, the trailer front "dives", which puts even more load on the rear axle, raising the front of the truck even more.

Now, it sounds to me like the trailer may sit "nose up" if you do what I said about shortening the chain. The way to fix that is to lower the ball. This may change the chain length again. You'll have to spend some time doing this. It's a bit of a trial and error process. You'll probably end up with "close" - the front and rear of the truck will be compressed within 1/2" of equal and the trailer will be close to level.

- Jack

badstang79
Tue, June 26th, 2012, 02:11 PM
Thank You Jack! I was wondering if I didn't need to adjust the ball height. I'll give it a shot.