Tongue weight musings

[redneck joe]

Doing some work on the trailer today and while endlessly turning the 11/16 nut at the stern i was thinking about the front of the boat, oddly.

I moved the bow stop about an inch rearward for the trip home a couple years ago and just left it. I only have a 50hp on a max rating of 115hp, about 100 lbs.

I dont recall ever seeing a mention to check the tongue weight after a motor swap or even in a restomod thread.

Is that something we should be mentioning?

 

[dingbat]

I guess it depends on how much you increased the weight and the draw bar rating of the tow vehicle.

In my case, the trailer mfg. wants 7-8% tongue weight which equates to #350 - #400 tongue weight.
The truck is rated for #500 tongue w/o equalizers.
Would need to increase the weight of the trailer by 25% before hitting my limit

 

[alldodge]

I moved the bow stop about an inch rearward for the trip home a couple years ago and just left it.

If there was an issue with not enough tongue weight it would have reared it's head by now with the sway factor. IMO your good

 

[redneck joe]

If there was an issue with not enough tongue weight it would have reared it's head by now with the sway factor. IMO your good

Yeah I'm good just thinking about others and yes i did talk about mine but I also left out the other 812 thoughts in-between those. I do try to cull my thoughts but they do make it past security occasionally...

 

[bruceb58]

My boat weighs around 6500#. I have 600# on the tongue(measured with a Sherline scale). That's a little over 9%.

 

[Pmt133]

I haven't scaled mine since the rebuild but I can still pickup and move the tongue, it's just quite heavy. With my weight it should be in the 2-300 lb range and thats about right.

Could always check it with a bathroom scale. You shouldn't max that out and thats how I used to do mine. Not 100% accurate but will be good enough to confirm if it's close enough.