Tongue weight musings

[redneck joe]

Doing some work on the trailer today and while endlessly turning the 11/16 nut at the stern i was thinking about the front of the boat, oddly.

I moved the bow stop about an inch rearward for the trip home a couple years ago and just left it. I only have a 50hp on a max rating of 115hp, about 100 lbs.

I dont recall ever seeing a mention to check the tongue weight after a motor swap or even in a restomod thread.

Is that something we should be mentioning?

 

[dingbat]

I guess it depends on how much you increased the weight and the draw bar rating of the tow vehicle.

In my case, the trailer mfg. wants 7-8% tongue weight which equates to #350 - #400 tongue weight.
The truck is rated for #500 tongue w/o equalizers.
Would need to increase the weight of the trailer by 25% before hitting my limit

 

[alldodge]

I moved the bow stop about an inch rearward for the trip home a couple years ago and just left it.

If there was an issue with not enough tongue weight it would have reared it's head by now with the sway factor. IMO your good

 

[redneck joe]

If there was an issue with not enough tongue weight it would have reared it's head by now with the sway factor. IMO your good

Yeah I'm good just thinking about others and yes i did talk about mine but I also left out the other 812 thoughts in-between those. I do try to cull my thoughts but they do make it past security occasionally...

 

[bruceb58]

My boat weighs around 6500#. I have 600# on the tongue(measured with a Sherline scale). That's a little over 9%.

 

[Pmt133]

I haven't scaled mine since the rebuild but I can still pickup and move the tongue, it's just quite heavy. With my weight it should be in the 2-300 lb range and thats about right.

Could always check it with a bathroom scale. You shouldn't max that out and thats how I used to do mine. Not 100% accurate but will be good enough to confirm if it's close enough.

 

[Jeff J]

I believe tongue weight is important but I don’t give it much thought. As mentioned, too light and you know it going down the road. Too heavy can also screw with the handling of the tow vehicle. I just try to balance the load a little nose heavy over the axle. Doesn’t matter if it is a lawnmower, car, tractor or boat. I never know the weight so no way to track percentages or actual tongue weight. I just make sure the tow vehicle slightly squats and I can’t lift the hitch. I adjust as necessary if it doesn’t feel right on the road.

I had to use a trailer intended for a 19’ Monterey to haul a 20’ Cobalt once. I knew it was bad as soon as I got it on the road. I set a block under the back of the trailer just in case when I got it to the shop. The boat sat down when I released the ball. I had to use the jack to pivot the front of the trailer down to reconnect. I won’t be playing that game again anytime soon. Only had one Cobalt trailer for 3 boats and one was already out for engine replacement. Every boat would have its own trailer if it was up to me.

 

[dingbat]

The boat sat down when I released the ball. I had to use the jack to pivot the front of the trailer down to reconnect. I won’t be playing that game again anytime soon. Only had one Cobalt trailer for 3 boats and one was already out for engine replacement. Every boat would have its own trailer if it was up to me.

Guessing you’re dealing with a single axle trailer. Problem don’t happen with tandems

 

[redneck joe]

Tandem don't have tongue weight issues?

 

[Jeff J]

Guessing you’re dealing with a single axle trailer. Problem don’t happen with tandems

Incorrect. It don’t know how far it would have dropped because I put a block under it but the hitch came 8 or so inches off the ball.

 

[Lou C]

Get a Sherline tongue weight scale; I spent a few hours adjusting my trailer and got it as good as possible on the trailer I have….5050 lbs and about 420 lbs on the tongue. That’s with a 1/4 tank of gas if full it’d be a bit more…tows just fine….

 

[jlh3rd]

If there was an issue with not enough tongue weight it would have reared it's head by now with the sway factor. IMO your good

yep.
I went from a 60 hp to a 115hp, and wondered if it would mess things up for trailering, but it didn't. So I don't care exactly what my tongue weight is.
It'a tandem.
I don't know what my options would have been if it messed things up as my bow stop is not adjustable.

 

[Pmt133]

yep.
I went from a 60 hp to a 115hp, and wondered if it would mess things up for trailering, but it didn't. So I don't care exactly what my tongue weight is.
It'a tandem.
I don't know what my options would have been if it messed things up as my bow stop is not adjustable.

Axles welded in place? That's typically the only other option. My bow stop is movable but I can't move the boat any further forward as it's at the end of the support on the transom roller. But I can move my axle back about a foot. Surprisingly the swap from the 3.0l to the 4.3 hardly changed mine either.

 

[Captain Caveman]

I believe tongue weight is important but I don’t give it much thought. As mentioned, too light and you know it going down the road. Too heavy can also screw with the handling of the tow vehicle. I just try to balance the load a little nose heavy over the axle.

That's about how I do it.

Boats usually have a few items (like batteries or gear) that can be repositioned in a pinch to get the weight properly balanced while en route.

One of the more common things that I see are people towing with the hitch drop too high or too low. Those adjustable drop hitches are pretty slick, but I don't like the look. I have two different hitches - one for my boat with a normal drop and one for my snowmobile trailer with a significant drop.

 

[jlh3rd]

sorry,
I don't intend to imply tongue weight is not important because it is.
But if you have no problems towing, then what does it matter. If it's too light, you'll know it.....if it's too heavy, you'll know it.
my axles are not welded, but I think my spring mounts are. Regardless, moving them to fix a balance issue would be.......hard.

 

[bruceb58]

sorry,
I don't intend to imply tongue weight is not important because it is.
But if you have no problems towing, then what does it matter. If it's too light, you'll know it.....if it's too heavy, you'll know it.
my axles are not welded, but I think my spring mounts are. Regardless, moving them to fix a balance issue would be.......hard.

This is why you weigh your axles and your tongue weight instead of guessing. Waiting until you trailer gets into a crazy dangerous sway after you do an evasive maneuver on the highway is too late.

 

[Pmt133]

My fun tongue weight story is that I had my cousin load a trailer for me (mistake 1). Nothing crazy, tandem axle skid steer around 7000lbs total. Pintle hitch the whole 9. He loads it and lets me know its ready to go. Now mind you we were strapped at the time. Down a couple trucks and needed to make the move so we used my own personal vehicle. I get in and leave and had mostly back roads to the job site except a short stint for 1 exit on the parkway. So 35 mph or less for 27 of the 28 miles. (Mistake 2)

Everything felt fine until I hit 45. Felt it immediately as the trailer begins tacking back and forth, gently at first so I just coast back down to 35 and pull off. I get out and inspect the trailer and it looks like its loaded properly and then upon closer inspection I see what happened. The chains are cut to the right length for loading. He put the fronts in the back and the back in the front. Visually it looks right as that centers the counterweight over the center of the fenders and leaves the 1000 lbs of the bucket on the tongue... however the fenders on that trailer aren't centered on the axles. So him loading it at night in a yard with no light it looked fine (and looked fine to me) but wasn't. Thats on me for not checking.

I'm lucky to live and learn as if I hadn't felt it begin it very easily would've thrown the whole rig off the road. I triple check everything now and load anything I'm moving myself. It had about 50lbs of tongue weight.