I bought a small trailer a few years ago that was home made and it swayed
all over the road what ever I did. I called the guy back and he had to buy
it back off me. Funny thing is he loved the trailer and regretted selling it
in the first place. I do not know how he even pulled it without swaying all
over the road.

I just bought a 3 horse slant trailer that was built one foot longer and one
foot wider. but they forgot to move the axle forward to off set the extra
weight on the tongue. The dry weight is about 3200 lb and the tongue weight
is 550 lb empty. When we hall one horse we put her in the center over the
axle. I even bought a weight dist head and bars 10,000 lb incase we ever
hall 3 horses.

My peeve with people towing trailers is that they do not have them anywhere
near level, Even the contractors. I have an adjustable receiver hitch
because I have 3 trailers at different heights and I also swap trucks that
has a different height and pull the same trailers. Great investment
(adjustable receiver hitch)



"JDH" wrote in message
ups.com...

Steve Hopper wrote:
For anyone out there who knows about trailers:

Trailer stability is a complex subject, and the subject of many
old-wives tales and outright misinformation. There are a number of SAE
papers on the subject if you're up to the math. There is also a pair
of excellent books about trailers by M J. Smith (I'm not certain of
those initials) that every trailer owner should buy and read. She does
a good job of translating the technical papers into English.
Basically, every tag trailer/tow vehicle combination has a speed at
which it will become unstable. Once this speed is reached, you become
a passenger. Fortunately, things start to feel a little squeamish
slightly before that. You want the stability limit to be comfortably
higher than your planned maximum. The two most critical factors a
distance from the tow vehicle's rear axle to the ball (smaller is
better) and the distance from the ball to the trailer axle (bigger is
better). Once the vehicles are designed, the only variables you have
are tongue weight and tire inflation. More tongue weight increases
stability through an indirect mechanism, but it's a poor substitute for
a good design. It is possible to have a trailer that is unstable even
with large tongue weights (I had one). Home built trailers seem
particularly prone to this. In such a case, the only choices are to
fabricate a tongue extension or cut it up for scrap (I did the latter),
although a really heavy tongue weight and a load-equalizing hitch might
get you by. Dual axles and their suspension (or lack of it) introduce
additional compexities as noted in this thread. I don't envy you your
choices here, but if your trailer is tossing around a long-wheelbase
pickup at 40 MPH, it's a bad one. Get rid of it before it kills you.
John