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Downsides to a long trailer tongue?
On 10 Dec 2003 09:00:31 -0800, (basskisser) wrote:
K Smith wrote in message ...
Snafu wrote:
Gary, I'm not understanding the part about "the longer the tongue, the
furthur back we can put the wheels." To maintain the ~10% of the weight on
the hitch rule, increasing the tongue length works the opposite way.
Absolutely the longer the tongue (drawbar?) the further "forward" the
wheels will by to keep the balance right.
Once again, you've proven you stick your nose where it doesn't belong.
You certainly don't understand simple physics. If you make the tongue
longer, you will need to move the wheels BACK to keep the balance the
same. Say you have the tongue 10' from the wheels, and the tongue
weight is 100 pounds, to say, at that 10', you need to resist 100
pounds to lift the tongue. Now, we extend the tongue, to 15'. Now you
have a longer lever, thereby LESS tongue weight. To compensate, you
need to move the wheels BACK.
It really pains me to see the lack of understanding of basic physics by
a lot of people that this thread has exposed. For example, take the
argument above. Both of you may be right, both of you may be wrong, you
can't tell from the information given. In the specific example above of
a tongue weight of 100lbs with a tongue length of 10' from axle to
hitch, if you extend the tongue another 5' you may have to move the axle
forward, backward, or not at all to keep that 100lb hitch weight.
That's because in addition to changing the lever length, the weight on
the hitch also depends on what the weight of the additional 5' of tongue
did to the balance point. Since that hasn't been specified, the answer
is unknown.
Steve
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