I can tell you a trailer with too much weight on the back is VERY
squirrelly and dangerous. In fact, if you use a regular 16-18 foot
utility trailer to haul a car, and put the car on backwards, it will be
dangerous because the front of the car weights more than the back.
Fmiser wrote:
Christopher wrote:
That sounds really nice. What is a weight distribution hitch?
To make a trailer dynamically stable, at least 10% of the mass
needs to be in front of the trailer axles. 15% is better. 50%
is best (it's then called a "semi-trailer" -like the big
trucks use - rather than a "full trailer"). With a majority of
the mass in front of the trailer axle, side-to-side
disturbances tend to be self-canceling. With more mass behind
the axle, the oscillations self re-enforce. This is a common
cause of upside-down trailers jack-knifed in the ditch.
With a ordinary hitch, mass = weight. So a 2,000 lb (900 kg)
trailer and a 4,400 lb (2,000 kg) car on it the gross weight
of the trailer is 6,400 lb (2,900 kg). 15% of that is 960 lb
(435 kg). That's how much weight will be on the very back of
your van. It _will_ raise the front.
The solution is "weight distributing". It is a bulky hitch
assembly that's commonly seen on camper trailers. With the aid
of one or two spring bars, tension is applied at the hitch
point lifting the back of the tow vehicle. The result is some
of the weight is "distributed" to the trailer and steer axles
- but the mass stays so the stability is not affected.
Now that I have one, I can't see ever doing without it - at
least when the trailer gross is more than 1/2 the truck
weight.
-- Philip
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