Re: Trailer Question
The actual weight on the ball (tongue weight) should be 10%-15% of the total weight of the package. So, if your boat, trailer, engine and misc. weighs 1500#, your tongue weight should be anywhere between 150#-225# .
As far as feeling it on your truck, what are you feeling? Is a bounce or does it want to steer the rear of your truck around?
If the tongue weight is lighter than 10% you run the chance of trailer sway and/or wrecking. That happens when the rear of the trailer starts moving around out of sinc with the truck. This is due to too much weight on the rear of the trailer. You do want some weight on your trailer hitch to keep the trailer towing straight.
Think of your trailer as a tripod. It is very stable when the majority of the weight is balanced between the three legs (2 tires and the tongue). If a majority of that weight goes outside of the triangle, the tripod becomes a lot less stable.
I will hazard a guess and say your hitch is a class III, which means it has a tongue weight limit of 500lbs. Overloading a tongue is just as bad as overloading the trailer. Folks with decent sized boats and tandem axle trailers sometimes can't even get 10% on their tongues without being overweight. The easiest way to check your tongue weight is take two relatively durable household scales placed next to each other with a couple blocks of wood (just something high enough to rest the tongue on so it's not all the way on the ground and you can use the jack to raise and lower it off the blocks) stacked up on them, laying equally across both scales. Now add the weights together with just the blocking on the scales and write it down. Now lower the tongue so it's centered between the two scales until the jack wheel is no longer supporting it and all the weight is on the two scales. Add the two weights and then subtract the weight of the blocking and you have your tongue weight (or really close anyways). Just figure up the percentage of your total weight (you can get this by using a weigh station at a dump or truck stop) and then you'll know where your at.
