A
Tips on towing boat on trailer
- Thread starter Andy Austin
- Start date
CreakyDecks
New member
Always check the indicators (individually, don't just switch the hazards on). Most drivers will give you space if they know what you want to do and if the indicators don't work, they won't know.
William_H
Well-known member
Trailers
Here in Oz a lot more people tow a lot bigger caravans boats etc with generally bigger cars. Yes 4X4 is more popular but I think this is a myth. Certainly towing vehicle mass does help.
Snaking is a problem of weight distribution of the trailer onto the tow ball. certainly for a 2 wheel trailer 7 to 10% of total trailer weight should be on the tow hitch. Indeed this need may be the limiting factor in setting a trailer weight limit. Hence vans and trucks have better towing capacity.
Certainly acceleration when snaking starts is an answer but in my experience it starts when going down a hill when you don't want to accelerate. When you come to an up hill the problem goes away. Definitely go slower and definitely move weight forward in trailer.
Strangely I have not seen anti snake devices in Oz. A common device is a load leveller which has 2 or 4 bars that fit into the towbar of the car (free to turn with the trailer) and when the aft end is lifted by attachment to the trailer draw bar it effectively levers the car back up and front down. This enables more weight on to the back of the car but with less lowering of the back of the car.
Anyway it was suggested and a good idea that you jump onto the tow ball with all your weight with trailer not attached. get someone to measure how far the back of the car drops. This will indicate what your weight will do. For a good sized boat get two people onto draw bar. The trailer should do similar or more load onto the car. At extremes don't drive at night at headlights will be too high. And be aware that front wheel braking may be reduced. One old car I had had leaf springs on the back. I bought a kit of additional leaves such that tightening a bolt on each spring raised the back of the car. Brilliant but not many cars have leaf springs anymore.
Now buying a trailer for a boat.... Most trailers here including mine have a bed of rollers. There is a post at the bow which has a vee for the bow to sit into and a winch to haul the boat on with. Many have a power winch for bigger boats. The post is often adjustable so that the position of the boat on the trailer is easily adjustable fore and aft so you set the tow ball weight. Mine has adjustable subframe for the springs so axle can move forward and back. A decent new trailer might cost half the value of the boat or more.
Many trailer builders will assume you have a huge outboard on the back so if you put a sail boat on the CofG will be further forward. In any case you will need to adjust cof g for your boat.
Other trailers are designed so the boat floats on and once in place is hard to move. A big disadvantage as you must sink the trailer very deep and can't move the hull for painting. Most fin/bilge keel boats will end up on this kind of trailer.
Yes tires are real concern. Some say put any old tires on but car tires are often taken to their max load limit or beyond and if they are old in years the rubber deteriorates. I finally bought new tires for my trailer for peace of mind as the old tires while having plenty of tread were 30+ years old and seen a lot of sun.
The new ones are light truck type and should see me out.
Brakes can be the over ride type where a coupling has a spring compression section in it so that if the trailer starts to push the car the spring compresses and the movement operates cables to wheel brakes or hydraulic master cylinder to hydraulic brakes. Brakes and wheel bearings will give more trouble and demand more maintenance than anything else. Other brakes are electrically controlled and far better. They allow the trailer to slow the car down rather than car trying to slow the trialer down.
The chassis of the trailer hopefully will be galvanised. Beware of box tubular section as this will rust from the inside out. My draw bar failed after 2 years from new because I could not see inside. I now put lots of old engine oil inside the box sections.
It is wonderful to be able to take your boat home. Needless to say drive slowly. After some experience you will be better at unrigging and loading the boat and it will become easier with practice. good luck olewill
Here in Oz a lot more people tow a lot bigger caravans boats etc with generally bigger cars. Yes 4X4 is more popular but I think this is a myth. Certainly towing vehicle mass does help.
Snaking is a problem of weight distribution of the trailer onto the tow ball. certainly for a 2 wheel trailer 7 to 10% of total trailer weight should be on the tow hitch. Indeed this need may be the limiting factor in setting a trailer weight limit. Hence vans and trucks have better towing capacity.
Certainly acceleration when snaking starts is an answer but in my experience it starts when going down a hill when you don't want to accelerate. When you come to an up hill the problem goes away. Definitely go slower and definitely move weight forward in trailer.
Strangely I have not seen anti snake devices in Oz. A common device is a load leveller which has 2 or 4 bars that fit into the towbar of the car (free to turn with the trailer) and when the aft end is lifted by attachment to the trailer draw bar it effectively levers the car back up and front down. This enables more weight on to the back of the car but with less lowering of the back of the car.
Anyway it was suggested and a good idea that you jump onto the tow ball with all your weight with trailer not attached. get someone to measure how far the back of the car drops. This will indicate what your weight will do. For a good sized boat get two people onto draw bar. The trailer should do similar or more load onto the car. At extremes don't drive at night at headlights will be too high. And be aware that front wheel braking may be reduced. One old car I had had leaf springs on the back. I bought a kit of additional leaves such that tightening a bolt on each spring raised the back of the car. Brilliant but not many cars have leaf springs anymore.
Now buying a trailer for a boat.... Most trailers here including mine have a bed of rollers. There is a post at the bow which has a vee for the bow to sit into and a winch to haul the boat on with. Many have a power winch for bigger boats. The post is often adjustable so that the position of the boat on the trailer is easily adjustable fore and aft so you set the tow ball weight. Mine has adjustable subframe for the springs so axle can move forward and back. A decent new trailer might cost half the value of the boat or more.
Many trailer builders will assume you have a huge outboard on the back so if you put a sail boat on the CofG will be further forward. In any case you will need to adjust cof g for your boat.
Other trailers are designed so the boat floats on and once in place is hard to move. A big disadvantage as you must sink the trailer very deep and can't move the hull for painting. Most fin/bilge keel boats will end up on this kind of trailer.
Yes tires are real concern. Some say put any old tires on but car tires are often taken to their max load limit or beyond and if they are old in years the rubber deteriorates. I finally bought new tires for my trailer for peace of mind as the old tires while having plenty of tread were 30+ years old and seen a lot of sun.
The new ones are light truck type and should see me out.
Brakes can be the over ride type where a coupling has a spring compression section in it so that if the trailer starts to push the car the spring compresses and the movement operates cables to wheel brakes or hydraulic master cylinder to hydraulic brakes. Brakes and wheel bearings will give more trouble and demand more maintenance than anything else. Other brakes are electrically controlled and far better. They allow the trailer to slow the car down rather than car trying to slow the trialer down.
The chassis of the trailer hopefully will be galvanised. Beware of box tubular section as this will rust from the inside out. My draw bar failed after 2 years from new because I could not see inside. I now put lots of old engine oil inside the box sections.
It is wonderful to be able to take your boat home. Needless to say drive slowly. After some experience you will be better at unrigging and loading the boat and it will become easier with practice. good luck olewill
Avocet
Well-known member
More nose weight doesn't always sort it though! (been there, done that)! I absolutely agree that it's generally true, and more nose weight would be the first thing I'd try, but our Evolution was a little pig (probably only about 1.5 tons inc trailer) and I could never get it completely snake-free.
I'm stil lstruggling to get my head round the concept of a load leveller though - sounds like one of those things where you're trying to "pick yourself up in a bucket". I can only see how it would press the hitch down harder on the ball, but if the back of the car goes up again, the only possible way I can see this happen is if weight comes OFF it?!
Most European cars will now have headlamp levelling controls (or even auto-levelling headlamps. It's been a legal requirement for quite a few years now. There are various places that sell "spring assisters" over here for towing. Some are bits of rubber than jam between the coils of a coil spring, others, (if the design of vehicle permits) are small "helper springs" that sit inside the existing coil spring. Posh ones are very expensive but involve replacing the dampers with self-levelling ones. The trouble with modern cars is that they're so complicated now, you need to be very careful about making alterations. I know of some that even detect when the trailer socket is plugged-in and modify their Electronic Stability Control programmes!
I'm stil lstruggling to get my head round the concept of a load leveller though - sounds like one of those things where you're trying to "pick yourself up in a bucket". I can only see how it would press the hitch down harder on the ball, but if the back of the car goes up again, the only possible way I can see this happen is if weight comes OFF it?!
Most European cars will now have headlamp levelling controls (or even auto-levelling headlamps. It's been a legal requirement for quite a few years now. There are various places that sell "spring assisters" over here for towing. Some are bits of rubber than jam between the coils of a coil spring, others, (if the design of vehicle permits) are small "helper springs" that sit inside the existing coil spring. Posh ones are very expensive but involve replacing the dampers with self-levelling ones. The trouble with modern cars is that they're so complicated now, you need to be very careful about making alterations. I know of some that even detect when the trailer socket is plugged-in and modify their Electronic Stability Control programmes!
Andy Austin
New member
Many thanks
This is all fantastic good stuff and I am most obliged to you all for taking so much trouble and providing so much good advice.
Many thanks
Andy
This is all fantastic good stuff and I am most obliged to you all for taking so much trouble and providing so much good advice.
Many thanks
Andy
maxi77
Active member
The load leveler seems to be aimed at allowing people to overload vehicles something which is not legal in the UK. Most cars specify the max nose weight of the trailer allowed, and technically you are breaking the law if you exceed this, and it can really screw the handling. The norm is between 50 and 100 kgs and most cars I have had have been around 60 to 75. You can get at a reasonable price special nose weight guages, though my last caravan had one built into the jockey wheel.
Lakesailor
New member
Called bathroom scales.
Lakesailor
New member
Great film.
I'm sure it's set up though. We had a discussion before about it.
I'd love to hear it wasn't.
gordmac
Well-known member
If you are using a commercial vehicle in particular be careful about the gross train weight, you may find you can't get to the vehicle maximum towing weight without exceeding the gtw. Speed limits are different for commercials too.
Lakesailor
New member
I just found this video.
It's what happened to me, but I managed to spin (by braking).
(I was a daft young lad at the time)
Eek!
This trailer is not a good design for carrying cars (too high)
It's what happened to me, but I managed to spin (by braking).
(I was a daft young lad at the time)
Eek!
This trailer is not a good design for carrying cars (too high)
ProDave
Well-known member
And you may find you need a tachograph as well.
When we hired a 7.5 ton truck for our house move (From England to Scotland) we had to have a graph in the tacho all the time, even though it was hired for private use.
maxi77
Active member
I started with batroon scales and a bit of 2x2, but to be truthful a proper guage is ten times better and a lot easier to carry and use, and in a caravan shop not expensive
aquaplane
Active member
I looked at buying/hireing a Transit or similar to tow my boat and was suprised at how little they could tow. A transit was way less than a Galaxy @ 2Te. I still say that if the boat is 2Te + trailer + stuff you will need a good Tug, a Defender, Discovery or Range Rover. A Land Cruiser or Patrol may be a posibility but it's not going to be an estate car.
William_H
Well-known member
Lakesailor
New member
A
angelsson
Guest
It has happened to most of us I think but with not such disastrous results, worst i had was a caravan going downhill which snaked badly, but braking did correct, ended up on the wrong side of the road lucky no one coming the other way.
The one i sent does look very genuine, but you never know.
bluemoongaffer
New member
Transits come in different specs. The 330 has a GTW (ie total vehicle plus trailer / cargo weight) of 5,300 kg, plenty high enough. However, a bog standard transit has a GTW of only 3,500 kg, which as Aquaplane says, is too low for you. The Toyota / Mitsubishi picks-up (sometimes available for hire with tow hitches) generally have pretty high towing capacity (Mitsubishi L200 is rated at 2,700 kg towing)
Avocet
Well-known member
I agree that such a device would put a lot more load on the towball (increasing friction). You don't need much extra friction to damp out the snaking oscillations - in fact most of the European anti-snake devices seem to be friction-based.
However, what you describe won't add any weight over the rear wheels of the tow vehicle - in fact, it reduces it. If I'm picturing what you describe corrrectly, you could actually modify it slightly so that the bar was swept downwards, and then you could get to a point where if you tensioned it up sufficiently, you could lift the tow vehicle's back wheels off the ground altogether and just have the whole ensemble resting on the tow vehicle's front wheels and the trailer wheels!
Philthy
New member
If you were only transporting your own goods ie, non commercial, you were misinformed.
That said, every vehicle of these weights available for rent will be fitted with one. If you have a digicard, you could use it (unlikely), or simply print off from the tacho at the end of the day and fill it in manually. VOSA/old bill would not bother you. There are less and less of the old manual paper chart tachographs around nowadays, but equally, you could just get a disc plus spare from the hire company. You wouldn't be subject to European working time directives, or drivers hours regulation, as you are not a commercial driver.
The youtube clip above, is classic towing imbalance. Trailer with car on it, being towed by vehicle of less mass, at speed = accident.
Nobody ever gets jacknifed by those small box trailers, because they are much lighter than the car.
William_H
Well-known member
I think the 4X4 concept is a myth. It just happens that most larger 4X4 have a decent towing rating.
I drive a Ford Territory an Australian Ford which is just a SUV bodied version of the common sedan.(you would call it an estate car) It is available in 4X4 but mine is just Rear wheel drive. It has a towing rating of 2.6 tonnes. (4l engine and auto transmission. olewill
