Temporary Hitch?

[Rob Culver]

Originally Posted by abcdgil

We have a 2015 Frontier 4X we pull our 2008 2720 with. We you just a hitch. When we pack our camper we make sure to load most of the weight to the front. We where super impressed the day we had a deer jump in front of us and we locked up the brakes. The truck and camper stayed straight as an arrow. I know the RM brake system had to make a differce as well but it was very inpressive to us. We did put on rear spring helpers for our truck. due to the weight we haul there some days not just for camper use.

Hi there,
Question for you fellow Frontier owner. When you say you put most of your weight to the front, that's the front of the Trailmanor? Or front of the bed of the Frontier? I presume the Trailer.

This gets a little confusing because the main advice is to put as much weight as possible towards the wheels of the trailer in order to keep weight off the rear axle of the truck and thus avoid having to use a Weight Distribution hitch to solve the various braking and stability problems.

[Bill]

You are thinking of two different things.

1. Any trailer must have at least 10% of its total weight on the hitch, in order to prevent sway. TM's go for 14-15%, and so are almost sway-proof. This means that when you put your "stuff" in the TM, you can put some of it towards the rear, as long as you also put some ahead of the wheels to maintain the 14-15% balance.

2. In your truck bed, you can put weight anywhere. It is reasonable to put it as far forward as possible, to reduce weight on the rear suspension. Realistically, though, truck beds are more or less centered over the rear axle, so your ability to change the weight on the rear axle, simply by moving cargo around, is quite limited.

Bill