Help with swaying please! New TT need ideas

[tcsorenson]

We purchased a 2014 Puma 35ft with 3 slides and pulling with a 1999 Chev 2500 and are having some sway issues. We have had 2 other TT's and a 5th wheel and thinking we should have gone back to a 5th wheel but really liked the floor plan on the TT. we have 10 ply tires on the truck at 60 and 80 PSI, we have a sway bar control system (purchased by dealer of TT), and we bought a U bolt that goes on the hitch to the receiver for added sway control.

We are still feeling sway especially on curves and interstates,

Also notice alot of bounce in the truck (so much that our son asked for a puke bucket in the back seat LOL)

Any idea's?? my wife is scared to ride in the truck because of the sway!

Any help would be appreciated!

Todd Sorenson

[OldCoot]

Can you post a picture of your setup on the truck with trailer, wdh, etc.?

[tcsorenson]

I will do that in the morning, can't remember the name of hitch or sway bars either will get a picture in the morning, we are camping tonight Sure would be nice if it would stop raining though!

[BamaBob]

Originally Posted by tcsorenson

Any idea's?? my wife is scared to ride in the truck because of the sway!

Any help would be appreciated!

Todd Sorenson

Pictures and complete info on your TV and TT please (TV= Tow Vehicle, TT = Travel Trailer)

Also completer info on your hitch

Cheers

Bob

[TN_VA_CHRIS]

As OC said, pictures would help. But offhand,looking at the specs on puma website, hitch weight looks really low. This could help explain all these things. Try loading the front heavy. I had a fifthwheel that towed much better with the 40 gallon fresh water tank filled. tank was in the very front.

[asquared]

I think you might have a combination of issues here. I'm thinking you need to better adjust your wdh and load more weight on the tongue. You are saying sway and bouncing. So are you having porpoising like movement of truck and trailer? If so that is indicative of needing to better adjust your wdh. Now let's look at your sway, can you describe it better? Is it true sway meaning increasing oscillations side to side of the rear of the tt? Or is it different, maybe feeling light on the front end of the truck and the trailer feels like it is steering the truck? Is it excessive bow wave effect when passed by vehicles on the road? The differences in these feelings is generally related to the root cause of the problem.

I do suggest going to a scale and weighing your set up. This will answer several questions. Weigh everything fully loaded as you would for a camping trip (people, pets, gear etc) and a full tank of fuel. Make 3 passes (can be done in any order). First pass is truck only, no trailer. Put front axle on 1st scale pad and rear axle on second scale pad. Second pass, truck and trailer no wdh. Put both trailer axles on the 3rd pad leaving the truck front axle on pad 1 and truck rear axle on pad 2. For your 3rd pass have truck plus trailer with wdh hooked up.

Now let's look at what these tell you. TV (truck) + tt (trailer) without wdh gross weight minus TV only will tell you the weight of your tt. The change in TV weight in pass one and two will tell you your tongue weight. Ideal tongue weight is 13-15% of loaded tt weight (obtained in above calculation). The last pass will show you how well your wdh is set up. You want your front axle returned To as close to unloaded weight as possible without going heavier. If you see you are a couple hundred pounds lighter than your unloaded front axle weight then you need to make adjustments to your hitch.

This is also a good time to make sure you are within specs for your truck. Subtract the scaled tv weight from the tv gcwr to get your adjusted towing capacity. Take your scaled tv weight and subtract it from your TV gvwr to get your available payload. Subtract your rear axle weight from max RAWR to see where you stand on ability to put weight on it. Now, are all the numbers from weighing within spec ? This will tell you a lot.

Couple tips, bring something long to push the button when weighing. When asked for truck number tell them private vehicle. If they still want a number pick your favorite number. When asked , first weigh or Reweigh, you will need the ticket number from the bottom corner of the page when coming back for reweighs. This is because Cat scale typically charges $9-12 for first weigh and $1-2 for reweigh in a 24 hrs period. You will need to go inside to the truck fuel counter to pay and pick up your ticket. Last time we did this, we made our wdh adjustments in the parking lot and kept hitting the scale until our numbers were right. Towed well after that. good luck and I hope this helps you.

[thebrakeman]

A trailer that long, and likely quite heavy, I almost hate to ask:
Are you using a WDH?

Even without pics, please tell us:
-What WDH are you using?
-If sway control is the friction-bar type, are you using 1 or 2 of them?
-What is this "u-bolt" you speak of?
-What is the loaded weight of the trailer?
-What is the loaded tongue weight?

[BiigDaddy]

Originally Posted by thebrakeman

A trailer that long, and likely quite heavy, I almost hate to ask:
Are you using a WDH?

Even without pics, please tell us:
-What WDH are you using?
-If sway control is the friction-bar type, are you using 1 or 2 of them?
-What is this "u-bolt" you speak of?
-What is the loaded weight of the trailer?
-What is the loaded tongue weight?

Brakeman, the u - bolt is basically a hitch clamp. I use on on my front receiver to clamp the bike rack in the hitch. It stops the bike rack from wiggling back and forth and bunching. It's effectiveness on a loaded RV with Wdh I think is negligible.

[tcsorenson]

sorry this took so long to get back to everyone, wow lots to read and lots of idea's! I have pictures now wondering how to upload them here let me figure this out, and hoping we can fix our problem we were told by a fellow camper that we should use a parallel sway bar system instead of what we're using. would like some input on that as well, we had the parallel one in the past with no sway so really thinking on that one! Pictures soon as I figure this out

[tcsorenson]

Here are a few pictures I have alot let me know if these help at all

[tcsorenson]

more views of our truck, camper and hitch. Would love any idea's at all to stop the sway and bounce, we are in a rural Iowa area and not sure how far the nearest weigh station is and I'll ask my husband as soon as he gets home from work to be more specific on what he's feeling with sway, I just know from the passenger seat I can feel the camper move

[Terier]

Good job on figuring out how to post pictures. You got it faster than I was able to type.

PS
Did the pin that you are using for the hitch come with your system? My hitch pin is much bigger but then I have a different system.

[tcsorenson]

Everything that is on there came with when we bought the camper and hitch etc, except for that ubolt, someone told us about that so we got that but my husband said he isnt sure it does anything

[Terier]

On my TT setup I use a 5/8" locking hitch pin for the hitch receiver that I got from Wal-Mart. Due to the fit of the hitch pin there's no room for the receiver to shift around. However, I don't have much knowledge in this field so please wait for more experienced members to share.

[Broadway Joe]

From the pictures it appears to be an Equalizer Brand 4 point WDH. This is a very good hitch when adjusted correctly works very well to remove sway and bouncing. It appears that you have do not have it adjusted properly and have to much squat in the rear of your tv.
Try following the adjustments in the attached owners manual.

[tcsorenson]

thats what we were wondering if it was adjusted right and we took it up to the RV dealer in town here and he said everything looked correct not sure if we got a owner's manual with it I'll look otherwise should be something online,

[Broadway Joe]

Sorry the PDF didn't load. Try the website

http://www.equalizerhitch.com/pdf/EQOwnersManual.pdf

[OldCoot]

Looks like trailer is high in the front and the truck is squatting.

Lower the hitch head to lower the trailer and adjust the bars get more load on the front of the truck.

[Twisty]

Originally Posted by OldCoot

Looks like trailer is high in the front and the truck is squatting.

Lower the hitch head to lower the trailer and adjust the bars get more load on the front of the truck.

I agree.
You may need to start over.

[tcsorenson]

hoping we can get this figured out soon! Would love to pull camper on vacation this summer, are we stupid to pull from Iowa to Nashville TN?