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QLD Caravan owners don’t know what they are doing.
(www.abc.net.au)
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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My father had two different people independently tell him not to put too much weight at the back of the caravan.
He knew better. He put most of the big, heavy stuff at the back of the caravan. It was more convenient to load it that way because you could still get in the door.
He rolled the caravan. Yes, rolled. Some people hear "Don't touch the electric fence" and immediately poke it to check. Not a good listener, my dad.
Towing weight distribution
I shifted a van from Mount Isa to Mackay about 15 years ago. Wasn't a big van, an 18 or 20 footer, and I had an old EB Falcon to tow it with. It had a lot of stuff in it. Every little nook and cranny had something in it, I'd been living in it for a few years, as you kind of do in Mount Isa.
Got about 40ks out of town and after the third time I had to hit the electric brakes to straighten things up, I pulled off the road. I took everything out of the top cupboards and put it on the floor, and shifted a lot of stuff that was at the back of the van (like the heavy annexe canvas) right to the front of the van.
That turned a 80kmhr pushy swaying nightmare into a 100kmhr easy tow.
That's cool. OK, so 60/40 front to rear is the ideal weight distribution, and they show what happens if you have more weight in the rear, but what happens if you have too much weight in the front?
Edit: Found a longer video that goes over things in more detail. Got some good other videos like How to control trailer swaying. Cripes. You only have 3 seconds from the start of the sway before it will be out of control!
My father had the same attitude to standardised trailer wiring and came up with his own solution for adapting 5-pin and 7-pin ISO 1724 and AS 2513. He would jumper across pins 1-2 and 4-5.
He could not comprehend why the electric brakes would surge when indicating left and why the reverse lights would also light up when indicating right.