Weighed Rig At Scales Today... Now What?

[Oakstone]

The redistribution looks good. There is one more thing you could do to dial in your WDH if you wanted to but I caution you it’s a royal pain in the ass and definitely in the category of diminishing marginal returns. But, if you’re bored. . . .

Take your truck and trailer back to the scales fully loaded for camping. Unhitch your trailer, toss the spring bars in the bed and weigh just the truck. Note the weight on the front axle. Then hitch up the trailer but do not connect the spring bars. Reweigh and again note the front axle weight. The second weight will be smaller than the first. Calculate the midpoint between the two. Now put on the spring bars and tighten the chains to get about 2-3” of deflection (bow). Weigh a third time. Goal is to see a distributed front axle weight somewhere between the midpoint and the original front axle weight measured in the first pass. The closer to the original weight you are the better. If you’re below the midpoint, increase the tension. If you’re above the weight in the first pass (very bad), back it off. If you keep doing this, eventually you can estimate how much weight each link distributes.

As @Snakebitten said, deflection in the spring bars is a good thing. Your WDH sounds an awful lot like my Blue Ox. Blue Ox recommends 2-3” of deflection. Any less and the sway control doesn’t work well. Plus, the bowing provides some shock absorption so the front end of your trailer doesn’t take quite as much of a beating. If your spring bars are straight when the manufacturer says they should be bowed, they are either not properly adjusted or they are too strong for the amount of weight distribution you need.

Thanks!
Honestly I think my bars have never had enough tension on them until this trip haha. I’ve always been able to jack the truck up with the hitch connected and pretty easily pull up the WDH connections by hand. This time I had to use the little cheater bar. I would guess I have 1-2 inches of deflection but I’ll take a pic as I’m leaving the campground at the end of the week. I took one just before I unhitched but we pulled a tight angle into the spot so one side was pretty weird. I’ll take the new pic when the truck is in a better direct line to the trailer.

also thanks again for everyone’s input!

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