Shadow Catcher wrote:...Our axle was too far back and has been replaced and moved forward.
* On mine, the axle started at 40r/60f, but I added 24" on the rear, and 12" onto the front, bringing it to around 45r/55f. Not inherently bad, until I crammed the rear "galley" with heavy items (water jug), Coleman equipment, A/C unit, and a generator, and only had a spare tire and a battery box on the tongue to balance it with.
* As it was, I only had around 40 lbs tongue upon weighing and first trip (kept controllable by using a Weight Distributing Hitch I modified, and by loading two Aquatainers and a large, filled, cooler inside the cabin, strapped to the front wall). At only 3.2% tongue weight/total weight, it made me wish I had added more length forward instead of rearward.
* After the first trip, I added a real tongue box, put the battery, extension cords, plugs, and misc. spares into it, but still carried the same front-loaded weight to compensate for the heavy rear load for several more years. During this time, I had a chance to correct the balance ratio, when installing a completely new suspension, but having welded the fenders so firmly in place, I didn't want to have to relocate them....
* In 2015, I finally added a rack over the tongue box, to carry canopies (100 lbs canopy weight, plus rack weight 20 lbs), which helped shift the balance forward enough to remove the water and cooler from inside the cabin for travel. I put my 100 lb food pantry box inside (no liquids to spill) for a couple of trips. and then decided to make a second rack under the first. That done, the balancing act was accomplished, and with nothing to remove from the cabin for quick set up at camp.
* Since then, I added about 25 lbs of fishing gear (rods, reels, storage tube) on the roof, removed some weight from the rear, and added some to the tongue; the 12% balance works so well, I can finally tow without worry, even using the ball coupler alone, w/o weight distributing hitch hooked up.