telescoping tongue

[dwgriff1]

Studying Andrew's tongue data. I need to rebuild mine.

The original tears had a very short tongue, 26" comes to mind. I know from experience that the best economy pulling the trailer (with a smallish car) is with that very short tongue. But when it comes to parking and backing one of the little sweeties, 26 inches is really short (I know that one too, by experience).

How about a simple telescoping tongue?

I intend to use the single tongue design as my trailer weighs less than 600 pounds it should be more than adequate no matter where I pull it. The telescoping idea does not sound too complex, but what do I know?

dave

[Wolffarmer]

Dave. The trailer I am now building has a telescoping tongue. And for the purposes you state. Don't have pictures of it and I have put the frame up for a few months to do other projects. Literally I tilted it up against the wall and it now has other crap stacked against it. LOL

It can be done. Time will tell if I engineered it properly. I drilled holes every 2 inches on the inner tongue and two holes 4 inches apart on the outer that is a part of the frame. Did that so I could put other stuff in between those two holes. The holes are 1/2 inch and I am using 2 pins so that will take care of the tongue movement in the up and down and will stay parallel as it slides side to side on the pins. I could not find tight fitting stock but I really do not want to get to tight fitting as it may jam up. The 3/8 inch or so of side to side movement will be taken care of by a set screw that will not be cinched down but is there only to minimize movement. The only hard thing is to drill the holes so a long line of holes all line up with the 2 in the frame hunk. That is where you learn to use a transfer punch. the holes was drilled out to the next over sized bit I had over 1/2 If I remember right it is 1/32 over sized. maybe 1/64th, can remember. I only had one set of holes that would not work. A bit bigger drill bit fixed that. It will rattle a bit more on that one but I bet you will never know it.

Randy

[Wolffarmer]

On thing not to forget about is that the frame will have to have support of some sort for when you are changing the tongue. I doubt if it will be easy to build a telescoping tongue that can be done while still hitched. And remember, we are build a telescoping tongue, not a removable tongue. Related but different.

Randy

[angib]

I have a gut feel aversion to telescoping tongues as it's so easy to make one that isn't structurally sound. I think all this use of receivers (where both the receiver and the stinger are thick wall but short tubes) gives people bad ideas!

So if you're going to have a telescoping tongue, I would like to see:
- a long, long 'receiver' section - like a couple of feet long minimum;
- no holes in the tongue at the front end of the 'receiver' - so any holes for pins well behind the front end (yes, that will make it awkward to put the pins in and out and, yes, you will have to lie in the dirt to do so);

The problem with pin holes in a telescoping tongue is that you may want some extra holes in the tongue for the 'retracted' position. No problem, as long as these are in the front half of the exposed tongue length where the tongue strength isn't too critical.

The receiver will need to be supported at least as well as a single tongue would be - so for example, welding it just to the front cross-member won't be sufficient.

Here's a sketch:

telescopic-tongue.JPG (26.53 KiB) Viewed 1558 times

[Treeview]

Tele tongues can be designed with enough strength for light weight trailers. Brush chippers weighing #5-#6k pounds use them so it is possible.

http://www.woodchippers.info/morbarkblizzard12.shtml

If you do, it would be good to have a retainer cable/chain attaching the tele-tongue to the frame. It would be short enough to never allow the tongue to pull out in case the pins weren't reinstalled or they fell out. If you use chain you can weave bungie cord through the links to hold it up.

[dwgriff1]

Thanks guys.

My tear is frameless, and all wood. Rather than a frame it has a "pan" somewhat similar to a vintage VW, but only 1 1/4" thick. I built it in '05 and it has a LOT of hard successful miles on it. It has a wood tongue which works fine, except that there has to be more interruptions in the skin to attach everything and hence more possibilities of water damage. I think that a steel tongue bolted to the bottom of the pan would minimize water issues.

I have a 6" wide piece of Oak that runs the full distance in the center of the trailer. Side ribs are mortised into the Oak. A similar but narrower piece of oak is on each edge of the pan. My wood tongue is an extension of that strong back, with lots of wild bracing. The wood tongue works fine, except that there has to be more interruptions in the skin and hence more possibilities of water damage.

If I go with a single tongue, I would bolt it to that center oak strong back. In the front I'd make (or find) a bracket so I could bolt to both sides of the actual tongue giving me a pair of bolts. If bolting the single tongue to the pan is a bad idea, Andrew, I'd adapt your Ultralight Chassis (actually a triangle tongue), but I'd much prefer the single tongue.

It may well be that I will stay with a fixed length, relatively short tongue. Being old and lazy and all that stuff, but I like the idea of a 26" tongue to pull and a 36 or 40" for parking.

dave

[angib]

Here's a suggestion:

telescopic-tongue-2.JPG (50.62 KiB) Viewed 1516 times

The red crosses indicate where the hidden holes in the tongue are - I wouldn't be too worried about the forward hole being near the front of the 'receiver' tube, if it's only during camp site or parking use.

The pin at the back end of the tongue stops it pulling out and the block under the floor stops it going too far in, so manually pushing the trailer from one position to the other might be possible.

Your big central oak 'keel' seems a perfectly good mounting for the receiver tube. Weld a flange on the top of the tube and bolt through the oak to some flat bar washers. Welding the flange on the receiver tube while keeping it straight enough to allow telescoping might need a skilled welder!

The one area of doubt is that at the moment your forward 'tongue strut' (if I remember it correctly) will be taking quite a bit of the tongue load straight into the body. If you take that strut away, the load on the front end of the oak keel rises dramatically. You might need to add a 'knee' (like under a boat's deck beams) to connect the front of the keel to the front of the body, so as not to overload that joint.

[dwgriff1]

Thank you.

dave

[Miriam C.]

I think unbolting and bolting that thing would be a pain. You don't really need to go that far to get a trailer to back easily. The Green Lantern was too short to even turn sharp with the truck so I bought one of these.
http://www.etrailer.com/dept-pg-Hitch_A ... 7AodAy4AqQ

[Ron Dickey]

Isn't Andrew amazing ask and he has it there in a click.

I like the idea of doing that with a tung I have come close several time to tripping on it in the night.

Some vendors are required to have wing away tong and they use this thing


http://www.etrailer.com/dept.aspx?furl= ... QgodZDMA7Q

[pchast]

I'd just ask the metal supplier to drill the moving piece for me.
They have the big machine to do it instead of my portable
drill. Hitch pins are cheap and easily changed.....

A hitch receiver extension magnifies all movements backing
up. I tried to use one once. The results were not good.

[angib]

A hitch receiver extension magnifies all movements backing up.

It also reduces the capacity of the hitch quite substantially - no problem with a teardrop (or bike rack), but dangerous with bigger trailers.

[Wolffarmer]

I am not using the square iron like a receiver hitch but rectangle iron so there is more in the vertical movement. The tubing it goes into extends about 12 inches in front of the the cabin. All the pins and such is where a person can get to them. Ain't no way I am going to get down on my hands and knees with out some great encouragement. And a crane to get me back up.

Now the ultimate telescoping tongue I would make so it powers in and out. And hooked into the TV computer system. Low speeds would be extended all the way as you may be making sharp turns. As you speed up the tongue closes up until at about 50 mph the tongue would be about 18 inches long, manual override provided but can not be shortened at low speeds. You are not going to do sharp turns at that speed. At least on purpose and that is the rub. Could put in an emergency quick extend mode. But the bang and change of physics would probably scare the crap out of most people. And be to late anyway. No I am not going to do it.

I think

Randy

[jstrubberg]

It's been done on sailboat trailers for years, although the additional section is usually removed and stowed in the boat rather than sliding into the frame.

You just have to overbuild.

[TPMcGinty]

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