NW WA Meet / BS Thread

It's set. Going off-roading and camping tomorrow. just not sure where yet. Anyone else interested?

 

Go check out the Whiskey Dick area. I thought it was pretty damn cool out there.

 

That did look nice.

 

Alternatively, anyone having a fabrication and welding day? I need eight tabs welded on to my bed rack and a solution to mount Maxtrax and a mtb. Unfortunately, the only item I have at this time is an angle grinder and I have never welded. I hope to start sometime.
I had some friends lined up here but one injured himself and the other works opposite days due to my changing of shift.

 

Towed about 800# plus the utility trailer on the highway, and at around 55-60mph it felt like I was driving on a washboard road. The rear end was shaking violetly up and down. Too much weight for the leafs im assuming?

I had to get off the freeway and take surface streets. Would Springs or shocks help this, or is it just too much weight for the truck?

 

A common mistake is not centering the load over the axle of the trailer. We all do that sometimes. That alone should improve the ride greatly.
Were you saying you also had another 800 lb in the bed of the truck? I had about that much in the bed of mine and it was almost on the bump stops.

 

Thanks. I know, I thought about that but can't figure out how to truly secure the load without having the rail directly up against it to tie down on.

I'll try some ways of securing it when I move it again.

 

Yep. It makes it hard when you don't have a full load to help pack everything together.

 

What @Pirate Steve said, too much tounge weight. Balance the load over the trailer axle for optimal ride quality.

 

Good input thanks. Any clever ideas on how to secure it over the axle? For future reference..

 

Pussy

 

At that point you would need a tie down at all 4 corners, to secure it centered rather than hugged to the front with a single strap.

 

Let's go for a cruise UP north way!

 

In my towing experience, you want the weight biased towards the front, not centered. Nuetral/negative tongue weight causes very bad things to happen. Keeping max tongue weight rating in mind, I believe the distribution percentage for a trailer is 60 front/40 rear.

I've towed and hauled quite a bit of weight in the Tacoma and I've never had this violent vertical-shaking wheel-hop occur. Granted, I have a 1st gen and not a 2nd, but towing is towing.

Was it strictly related to those speeds and no other causative inputs? Springs or shocks being worn out certainly wouldn't help.

 

That can be done. Looping a strap around the box and back to each corner I assume would work. Not sure how that would play out in real life though.

 

Pretty sure I saw you at some point during my errands today. Could you rotate the tool box 90* and put it up against the side rail? I'm assuming it's on wheels, you could run two ratchet straps around it over the top and under the bottom if you need to hold the drawers shut. That would let you move it aft over the trailer wheels and still let you ratchet strap it down. You might want to throw something under the tool box wheels to help keep it from rolling, or put the smaller cart in front of the tool box to keep the tools from going forward.

 

I bet moving the load rearward from where I had it would do wonders by reducing tongue weight. It felt like too much weight on the tongue was causing it to bounce from every little road imperfection.

 

Basically more is better for securing loads in place and can make your trailering experience much better when done right. I'm used to chaining heavy equipment to a lowboy, so making sure loads are legally secured is learning me.

 

You may have been riding on or near your bump stops? Doesn't look quite that low in the pic, but again I'm not that familiar with 2nd gens.

 

I used the word centered, because it almost is, but yes favor the tounge more maybe 60/40.