Tongue Weight / How to balance the boat & Trailer

[dorelse]

Any good ways to find out how much weight is currently on the trailer tongue?  I have a suspicion that my boat is too far forward.

[Rich_V174SS]

If you have a trailer jack on the front you can sit it on a bathroom scale.

[bambam]

or drive up to any company that has a large shipping department with a $5 bill and they can do it for you with their equipment.

If you really have a tough time finding someone PM me and I'll contact one of my clients in West Des Moines, he would take care of you.

[Terry_Curran]

i took mine to a truck stop with the cat public scales.  there are several sections on the scale to weigh every axle if you want.  after 1st weight, drive around? or back up and drop trailer on single sacale with truck on another scale. or drop trailer in lot and go back and weigh truck do some math to get tongue weight.  make sense? lol  call me if you need better explanation.

Terry

[dorelse]

Yeah, I just know that on all my other boats, I could (in a pinch), man up and lift the tongue.  Bluebell never weighed down the Avalanche like Goldie does, so I suspect its too heavy.  Being that the Avalanche can handle the weight...never really concerned me all that much, but things might change on the tow vehicle front, so I need to make sure its correct.

I'll figure something out...I'm worried its too heavy for the bathroom scale honestly.

[CVX Fever]

Single axle trailer your going to want around 7-10% of the towed weight on the hitch. I figure my my CVX18 is at least 2800 lbs and your boat should be similar.  So I'm thinking you should have at least 200 lbs. of tongue weight.

Lots of landscaping places have scales around here so maybe you could try that. 

[bambam]

At least 7-10%? mine is way less then that.  I've felt that it was actually set too far back.  If I am standing in the back of the trailer and it isn't hooked up it falls back words.  

I've toyed with adjusting the trailer, but thought I'd see if it was an issue.

I just found this link that goes over everything pretty well

http://www.sherline.com/lmbook.htm#refrn1

[dorelse]

Yeah, I can stand on mine at the stern and it doesn't move at all.

[Jason]

About 200lbs is where it should be. If you can't lift it, it's too heavy.

[CVX Fever]

Doran - Looking at a picture from last weekend of your boat on the trailer it looks like your axle sits about where I moved mine to on the trailer that was originally under my CVX18. If you look close at the trailer frame you can see the marks where the axle was set when I got it. It did not tow very well which is why I moved it.

[Eric_Michael]

I weighed my boat shortly after buying it in Washington and coming home to Oregon.  This is one of the many state weigh stations which purposely leave their scales turned on when the station is not manned.





State law is any fully loaded trailer 1800 lbs or over needs plates & tags.  I took these pictures to the DMV and they sent me home to remove the Washington plate from my trailer.  No plate, tags, or annual registration fee required!   

[dorelse]

Kip - I think my trailer is setup ok, I was just planning to move the front mount back 4" to shift the boat rearward and see how the weight changed.


Eric - Yeah, if I was back home in MN, I'd just run it over the farm scale and be done with it in 30 seconds.

[dorelse]

Bathroom scale says 260 lbs.   Guess it's good as is!