Show us what you tow.

my son tows a trailer like that with a Chevy 3500 dualie diesel... loaded with 3000 or 4000 lbs of stuff on a windy day, it can be a handful on a mountain road.

 

It was windy today, but the truck did well. 85 miles on the interstate and 15 miles of highway. I could feel the crosswinds but it wasn't bad at all. I can tell it's back there but the truck pulled it with no problems.

It will be loaded to capacity, staying in line with the trucks specifications as well. Ordered a weight distribution hitch today as I have an 1800 plus trip ahead. I have a brake controller installed but it wasn't needed for this tow.

I wouldn't go any bigger than this though, truck and trailer combined weigh in at 6640 lbs. I'll keep in mind what you mentioned, parts of my travel include the mountains.

 

It isn't a Tacoma, but it's close! 4200#s empty. It trucked right along!

 

Loaded front to back and up to the roof. Made for a long drive from Portland Oregon to Wenatchee Washington with 40mph headwinds part of the way. Trailer scaled at just under 6k the camper weighs 1.5kthis is a more normal and practical load...

 

the trailer my son has grosses 7000 lbs when max loaded, although he more typically has it 5000-6000 lbs. be way easy to exceed the GCWR with that, as well as overload the rear axle of the tacoma with too much tongue weight (15% of 6000 lbs would be 900 lbs... a gen 2 DC 4x4 has a payload of about 1000 lbs including driver/passengers...)

 

Thanks for the info, plan on making a few trips to the scale to ensure everything is as it should. I'll know in a few days if the anderson weight distribution hitch I ordered will work (length wise, the A frame is shorter than expected on the trailer).

 

on my Casita, the propane bottle bracket was exactly where the WDH saddles should go, so i had to do some cutting and welding (well, I did the cuttong and prep, my neighbor dropped the bead on them). and, yeah, I realize the Andersen doesn't use that sort of saddle.

 

All of this is good to know, it's this forum that helped me decide on the brake controller and what to consider when looking around along with what others encountered.

 

My trailer manufacturer planned their nose layout knowing we were going to use a Curt WDH system. That stinks about yours

 

to be fair, its a short (16') 3500 lb gross trailer, and normally would NOT need a WDH, but my Taco AC TRD Off Road was way too bouncy on its tall tires and short wheelbase and soft springs, so it had a nasty tendency to porpoise. I added airbags to the Tacoma, and now don't even use the WDH, and no porpoising.

 

You shoild still be running a WDH

 

why? the tongue weight is only 350 lbs MAX (and probably more like 250 lbs as the trailer is 2000 lbs empty and we don't carry that much in it), these are tongue light. I logged around 3000 miles this fall hauling the Casita all over the west w/o the WDH but with the airbags, it was just fine. and I certainly know when my tug is nose light. If anything, it rode and towed better with the airbags than it did with the WDH without the airbags.

 

I agree, if the trailer is behaving fine, no reason at all to run a WDH. AT 3500 pounds it's not even close to pushing the limits.

 

It'd be interesting to get weighed with the WD hitch, with just the airbags, and with no load assist.

 

Hey ( left coast nerd ) John
Used to pull an 1800lbs tent trailer.
Just went to a lance 1245 hybrid just under 2500lbs
Pulled it home from Southern Cal over the grapevine with no wdh.
Took it on maiden voyage over 17 to Sunset Beach. Did find a little bouncy on the back roads. I have airbags.
The previous owner pulled it with a 2014 tacoma. He got talked into the wdh he used once. So I have it thinking about giving it a try. What do you think ?

 

smallest lance I can find is the 1475 ? dry weight 2500 lbs, gross weight 3700 lbs ? is that the one ?

anyways, sure, if you got it, give the WDH a try. if its the conventional spring-bar type, you'll need a couple BIG wrenches to adjust and tighten it (I used impact sockets and 1/2" drive breaker bars). if you have airbags, I suggest you load the truck, adjust the airbags back to the empty ride height, THEN hitch up, and adjust the WDH without touching the airbag pressure for the suggested percentage of sag per the WDH docs... Somewhere I read Toyota suggested going closer to 0% sag, instead of the 20-30% suggested by the WDH makers.

IIRC, you do something like this...

1. start on dead level ground. level the trailer with its tongue jack, measure the height of the trailer hitch.
2. install the WDH on the truck so that with the truck loaded and preleveled via its airbags, the ball is at the same height as the trailer hitch...
3. measure tongue height of truck without trailer, lets call that H1. lower trailer onto tongue, measure height without WDH, thats H2.
4. Take (H1-H2) as the initial sag (S1), and take from 0% to 25% of that S1 as target sag S2, and subtract (H1-S2) to get target height H3.
5. via trial and error, hook up the spring bars on the WDH, and measure the hitch height again, if its not the desired H3, release the spring bars, adjust the tension on your WDH and repeat this step.

I believe when I setup my WDH, my S1 was about 3-4" and I aimed for an S2 of about 0.5-1".

 

Just picked this up this past week end. 3400 dry. 2016 Evergreen I-Go cloud 198FDS

 

why oh why does everyone quote the EMPTY ('dry') weight of a trailer? whats the GROSS (max) weight? what you're going to be towing is going to be a lot closer to the max than the min, when you figure water, propane, food, clothes, bedding, and general 'stuff'...

I do like your Anderson WDH on that one, if I'd gotten one of those, I might still use my WDH, but the spring bar variety I ended up with is just too much of a pain...

and yikes, Evergreen apparently went out of business in 2016/// That seems to be a real common thing with the 'stick built' trailer industry. Thats yet another reason I went with a molded fiberglass trailer, the established makers of those (Scamp,Casita, Escape, Bigfoot, Oliver, others) have all been around 20-30 years or more, and show no signs of going away. Yeah, they are more expensive (but they last a lot longer), and they don't use dealers, so you have to buy direct from the maker, or second hand. They *all* use the same appliances, accessories, axles, and stuff.

 

My trailer had an advertised dry weight (as equipped and with batteries/propane) of 4,500lbs. We rarely tow much distance with the tanks full (fresh/grey/black).

The gross on the trailer is 5,500lbs. The one time I had it on the scales it was just over 5,000lbs.

Just assume people are going to be 500 to 1,000lbs over the dry weight...no need to stress in it.

 

Yeah
Lance only made the 1274 a few years.
They had a problem with the supplier of the hybrid tent. (Called them)
We where looking at the fiberglass trailers. Then this one came up. Good price and only used a few times.
Coming from a tent trailer made sense.
Fairly well made. Not a fiberglass or airstream. But better than most.
Thanks for your input.