Twitchy trailer questions

[yj4trails]

Towed my m416 for the fist time fully loaded this weekend to go camping. Trailer has a ball coupler instead of the lunette. I am towing with a jeep wrangler and the trailer feels real twitchy. Very small steering input and trailer feels like it wants to sway back and forth. Would extending the tongue length help make the twitchy feeling go away??

 

[ripperj]

Do you have sufficient tongue weight?, if the tongue is light it won't track well.

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[OverlandKyle]

I had that issue with my Bantam in the middle of a 600 mile road trip..... Stopped at a Home Depot, bought a 80 pound bag of quikcrete for 3.99, put it in the tongue box and problem solved!

 

[yj4trails]

Ok will try to add more tongue weight next time. Thought I had enough. Had 6 gallons of water and a full cooler in the front of the trailer. Thanks

 

[BADDANDY]

Yes extended tongue helps, but if all of the heavy stuff is loaded at the rear of the trailer, adding 100lbs of weight on the tongue won't help. 6 gallons of water and a full cooler can possibly weigh that much.

 

[Martyn]

General guide lines are 10 -15% of the total trailer weight on the tongue. Less will result in the trailer swaying. You can also get the same feeling is the tires you are running on the trailer don't have stiff enough side walls.

 

[yj4trails]

I think it was a combination of all the above. I might have loaded wrong thinking water and cooler were enough... Tires are 30 inch class C So maybe a little there and the tongue is short in my opinion... Will do a little tweaking and shuffling around for next trip and hope that helps. Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[/dev/m416]

Tongue length is something you do for other reasons, like being able to jack-knife into a 90* parking situation or accommodate more stuff on the tongue, but has nothing to do with the ride of the trailer. There have been gazillions of these made for many decades and the tongue length was just fine.

Solve other issues first and report back.

Good luck!