Swaying when towing icehouse

[CC Rocks]

I built a wheel house that works great. Only problem is occasional swaying when towing. Quite an adventure on icy roads. Any suggestions? More tongue weight, less tongue weight?

[mnfishman]

Usually that is from not enough tongue weight. Try adding more weight up front and see if that fixes it.

[Guest]

More tongue weight usually takes care of that.. Unless the axle is overloaded already. If its overloaded, you'll have to adress that in other ways.

Put some weight in the front and give it a test ride. If it is overloaded, your going to have to beef up the axle.

[HarryG]

From what I know about trailers, I would say you don't have enough tongue weight. Ideally, you want to move your axle back, but it may be kind of hard to do. I put a 100# tank on my tongue because it is convenient, but it tows very easily. You can experiment by putting weight in the front before you make any alterations to your trailer.

Good Luck!

[efgh]

ALL OF THE PEOPLE WHO POSTED ARE RIGHT. Weigh the tongue, 300 lbs on a 16 ft. fish house is about right. If you can lift the tongue yourself, there isn;t enough weigh on it. just my ex perence.

[R_B]

I had the same problem. I pack everything in the front of the shack to add more tongue weight and it takes care of the swaying. I also put full propane tanks on the holder on the front of the shack.

[boxcar46]

weigh your shack, you want 10% of it on the tongue. 2500lb shack = 250lbs on the tongue. hope this helps.

boxcar46

[CC Rocks]

thanks much, all good advise. Is there anywhere I can have it weighed in the Grand Rapids area? Always wanted to know how much it went.

[hoggs222]

The thing that cured it for me was to pound a shim into the receiver. It had some slack in there and caused it to start moving side to side. Also, I noticed when I move everything up to the front of the house (batteries, auger, etc) it helped.

[Cheeser]

Gary, try the local grain elevator or co-op. They usually have drive-on scales. Also, if you have a large truck stop in GR they may have a scale. Last, my local landfill has a drive-on, and if they are not busy they weigh me for free.

Hope this helps...

[jiffypop]

I can't think of the city, but about 20 miles east of Grand Rapids at the intersection of HWY 65 on HWY 2 I believe the truck stop there has a scale. I will be driving right by it on Friday, I will post definate answer then.