Quote:
|
Originally Posted by CastleRockCamper
RMR,
Your reply was very detailed, and informative.
|
Thanks. My goal was to get the decision away from solely being a "can my truck handle the weight" opinion/emotional consideration and objectively show via a mathematical analysis that there are also braking and steering
safety issues. It's those braking/steering issues that we
should be thinking about as much, if not more, than whether the truck is "tough" or "strong" or "heavy duty" enough to "handle" the tongue weight. Furthermore, because the loss of braking/steering isn't huge (around 15% to 20% depending mostly on tow vehicle wheelbase), it usually doesn't manifest itself until you have to make an emergency maneuver or panic stop...
and then you suddenly discover the reserve margin of control/braking is simply not there.
I have experienced that loss of front braking safety margin caused by tongue weight induced front unweighting myself. Two years ago I skidded partway into an intersection with the front wheels locked up because of this...fortunately traffic was light and there was no collision. At the time I was towing with a Jeep Cherokee...short (100 inch) wheelbase so the tongue weight unweighting effect on the front suspension was large...and it happened even though I
was using a WDH. The problem was (1) the WDH spring bars were not strong enough and (2) the trailer was very heavily loaded at the beginning of a two week trip. The ironic part of this almost-accident was I'd already grasped these concepts and only 30 minutes before had stopped enroute at an RV dealer to buy heavier duty spring bars...with the intent of installing the heavier duty bars at my first campsite. After installing the heavier duty spring bars that very night, the handling, braking, and ride quality of the Cherokee for the rest of the trip were enormously improved. Good thing too...a day later I again had to make a fast, hard stop and this time the front tires really gripped the road with
no skidding.
Quote:
|
I think a sticky post on the WDH in the Towing section or an article under "Perspective Owners" area would be very helpful?
|
Good idea. My fellow moderator "Bill" already wrote up a
superb discussion of these same WDH issues which is to be found in the Everything You Wanted to Know forum. However, it's a sad but true fact of life that the newbies who are asking these questions seldomly go to those "How To" writeups but instead make a bee-line directly for this forum. So a sticky, no-nonsense writeup on
why a WDH is important at the top of this forum may indeed be helpful (even if somewhat redundant to Bill's writeup). And I'll get one done within the next day or so. Then we only have to get the newbies to read it...a major challenge in and of itself since newbies seldomly read anything before posting their questions.
