Alxe placement question

[Aaron Coffee]

Somewhere I read that the axle should be about 35-40 percent from the back, is that the back of the frame or back of the body? My axle is about 42 inchs from the back of the body (body total length of 107). I tested fitted my fender and it interferes with the opening of the door, so I am thinking about moving the axle 4-6 inchs further back, as that seems easier than moving the door 4-6 inchs forward. If I remember right I made the frame 6 foot or so. I also think visually the axle looks to far forward.


Thanks
Aaron

[madjack]

Aaron, the way I figure axle placement is to start at 36" from rear of BODY on an 8" body and then move it forward 3-4"s for each additional foot of BODY...that would place your axle at around 38-40''s from the rear of the BODY...what you are trying accomplish is to put between 10 -20% of weight on the tongue...being a bit heavy on the tongue is MUCH better than being too light..........
madjack

[dh]

+1

[Constrictor]

Im about to start welding up my trailer, and im wondering, can you just go by this 35-40% figure or would it be best to build the trailer frame and the whole camper and weight the toungue to determine where the axle should be?

[bobhenry]

Man there are a lot of "what if's" in that question.

If I had to give a hard fast answer 35% of the body length to the rear of the axle.

My first 5 x 10 I used the 40% to the rear and had handling problems above 62 MPH. I later extended and reinforced the tongue and the handling problem ( side to side sway)went away. So was my axel placed wrong or was the problem in the towing geometry ? I weighed "Chubby" a month ago fully loaded ready to camp 1830 # Tongue weight is 280 # that's a little over 15%. If you are towing with a small vehicle, building first might help you tune in on the tongue weight but with a larger tow vehicle it is not so critical. It would be a shame to get done and then place the axle only to find it interferes with the doors or you now have an ill placed window or other feature. I feel the frame dictates how the build should progress.

[Shadow Catcher]

The alternate is to wait until you are complete before fixing the axle. This implies bolting rather than welding. this allows you to compensate for say the tongue box and contents or...
I am running into a problem with ours because the tongue is too heavy and there is no way to compensate other than air shocks in the TV.