2720 sd or 3023 for a family of 4

You have the perfect tow vehicle already. How much gas money are you thinking you can save vs what you'll have to kick in to buy the pilot?

Originally Posted by PopBeavers

FWIW, my 2720 (not SD) weighs about 4,200 pounds when fully loaded. Just make sure your tow vehicle can handle the total combind weight of:

tow vehicle
passengers
gas
trailer
water
propane
dishes
food
all the other stuff

I carry about 1400 pounds above the base weight of the trailer. This is for 2 people.

Hi, I am new at this so I hope you don't mind if I ask you a question. You said you load the TM to 1400 pounds above the base weight (I assume this is the same as the dry weight used in the brochures). Anyway, doesn't a load like this go beyond the axle weight which is about 3700 pounds? Is that okay to do this? Or is it based on how you distribute the load? I am trying to learn what all these numbers mean. I plan on using a Honda Pilot with 4WD and a towing rating of 4500 pounds. Thanks for your time.

K. Paris

Originally Posted by KParis

doesn't a load like this go beyond the axle weight which is about 3700 pounds?

The axle doesn't carry the load of the wheels, tires, or tongue. According to my weighings, those three terms are good for at least 700 pounds. YMMV.

The 3500lb axle is designed to carry a tailer of that weight. In other words the spring rate is calibrated for that. Luckily dexter builds them pretty well. The tires seem to be the weak point. Underinflate them by 5 lbs and you have likely lost the load margin as i found out. TM was very responsive by going to 15" tires.

[Mr. Adventure]

Recent discussions have pointed out that a limiting factor is the gross weight of the tow vehicle in many cases, and the axle loads on the 2720's have become problematic as cranking up the weight distributing hitch to work on this (the WDH offloads the rear axle of the tow vehicle by shifting load forward to the tow vehicle front axle and aft to the trailer axle).

The 3023 helps a lot with both of these. It has a much higher load rating on the trailer axle and taking the 80# battery off the tongue and replacing it with a sealed 50# battery in the rear compartment would drop the tongue weight by more than 100#.

If camping means going off into the desert for a week at a time, you need to take a lot more stuff than you need if you're going somewhere where you'll have electric and water hookups. Pop Beavers, for example, does a lot of boondocking and told us he adds 1400 pounds to his TM, of which 360 pounds is fresh water and 80 pounds is an extra battery. We rarely camp without hookups, but even when we do, we're not going so far from civilization and we don't take along as much stuff. I believe we are on the road under 3500# most of the time, but I do not actually weigh very often.

Bill got me reading the Virginia motor vehicle code the other day as we discussed these things on another thread. It turns out that there is such a thing as an overweight vehicle in Virginia: It weighs more than 20,000# on a single axle or more than 80,000# overall. We're not in danger of breaking these laws in TrailManors anytime soon, even if I could balance the whole thing on a unicycle (caution: this comment was for illustration only -- I do not actually recommend towing a TrailManor with a unicycle). I'd be interested in the actual words they use for these things in other states on the issues we spend so much energy on in this forum: Gross vehicle weight, axle weights, Gross combined weights, etc.