Trailer death wobble

[chadbuckner]

Ok this is a small utility trailer maybe 4'x5'. more of a "haul stuff to the dump trailer" Once I had it loaded with rocks and was taking it to dump it and I felt my truck start to shake, I looked in the rear view mirror and the trailer was in what seemed like a very nasty death wobble...back and forth and no matter what I did I couldn't get it to stop until I stopped. what could cause it? I don't think I had more than a few hundred pounds in it. Oh and for what it's worth I was towing it with a toy pick-up.

 

[Hickey]

Not enough tongue weight. You need more weight on the front half of the trailer than on the rear.

 

[Badcop]

Not enough tongue weight. You need more weight on the front half of the trailer than on the rear.

x2 also a wheel bearing might be going bad

 

[cruiseroutfit]

I have the same problem with my trail trailer... as mentioned above it was all about the tonque weight... I had to reconfigure all my gear to get at least 75 lbs on the tongue.

 

[BCGPER]

10% of the total trailer weight needs to be on the tounge. Good rule of thumb is if you can lift it, it aint loaded right.

 

[1993yj]

Also, the type of tires you have on could cause fishtailing. You dont want to run standard car type radials on a trailer. I have seen some bad things happen there.

 

[TimB]

My trail trailer is prone to that too. The width of the trailer is almost the same as the length. I added about 2' to the length of the toungue and that helped a lot. It still does it a little though at higher speeds.

 

[chadbuckner]

yeah 've been rebuilding it now and I have added probably another 2-3 feet onto the tongue I think the bearings might be going bad too. The guy who gave me the trailer didn't take good care of it. I might have to get some new bearings. I was looking at getting some new or different tires for it and some new rims. I am not sure what the bolt pattern is, its 5 on something, I don't know if it is 4.5 or 5.5 any one know an easy way to tell.

 

[TimB]

http://www.rsracing.com/tech-wheel.html#patterns

 

[chadbuckner]

thanks alot that will help.

 

[lars3159]

I have a 7x14 electrical service trailer that has a tendency to do this when I don't keep an eye on the tire pressures. It doesn't happed (other than in a very strong wind) if I have equal pressure in all tires.

 

[Mr.Chevy]

One more thing that gets over looked is having the tires balanced and then even rotating them regularly. My bro-inlaw's boat trailer did the same thing. He took it in and had the tires balanced and rotated and it was as smooth as it could be.