How long to make the tongue?

[sedanman67]

I am going to be welding up my trailer in the next week or two and need advice on the length of the tongue. The trialer will be a 5' wide cub/modernistic with an a/c unit in the tongue box. Trialer steel is 2"x2" 1/8 square.

[madjack]

...powder has it...take the depth of the tongue box plus any thing else mounted on the tongue, add half the length of your bumper, plus the length of the coupler, now add a couple of inches, just because...and you have a tongue that will alow you to NOT jacknife into the TD body.
...2 more cents for ya and JMHO 1/8", 2"tubing is not heavy enough for the tongue unless you make a triple rib "Y" type tongue(or something similar)...the 1/8" is fine to overkill for the frame but could leave you as an unhappy camper somewhere down the road...JMHO and as always YMMV
madjack

[sedanman67]

I was going to make a "Y" type tongue for ease of mounting the tongue box.

[mikeschn]

I am going to be welding up my trailer in the next week or two and need advice on the length of the tongue. The trialer will be a 5' wide cub/modernistic with an a/c unit in the tongue box. Trialer steel is 2"x2" 1/8 square.

My trailer tongues tend to be a foot shorter than they are wide. So a 5' trailer would have a 4' tongue. I made a drawing of this a while back. I'll have to look for it after lunch!

Mike...

P.S. Okay, here is the tongue length drawing...
http://tnttt.com/viewto ... =1942#1942

[angib]

Hey, guys, it's a free world, so you can make the tongue as long as you like.

But:
- Check out just how short tongues are on most vintage teardrops. On the Mechanix Illustrated plans the tongue is 24" to the hitch center.
- The longer you make the tongue, the stronger it has to be made.
- A longer tongue makes a bigger storage problem, if you're tight on space.

Andrew

[mikeschn]

Hey, guys, it's a free world, so you can make the tongue as long as you like.

But:
- Check out just how short tongues are on most vintage teardrops. On the Mechanix Illustrated plans the tongue is 24" to the hitch center.
- The longer you make the tongue, the stronger it has to be made.
- A longer tongue makes a bigger storage problem, if you're tight on space.

Andrew

Well of course. I really should make a new drawing, one that shows how long the tongue would be if you used a 50* coupling, and welded the tongue to the chassis like I did on this one...



Naturally, if you're using a straight tongue it can be as long or short as you desire. In that case one should optimize it for their storage requirements and turning requirements.

Mike...

P.S. Does that suggest a spreadsheet to you Andrew?

[angib]

Does that suggest a spreadsheet to you Andrew?

Neah..... I was thinking of a telepathic control virtual reality sorta thing - as you think of what you want, a model appears before you on your screen.

I've got just a couple of little bugs to fix - it should be up and running in 10 minutes.

Andrew

[Chris C]

Alright Andrew, we're waiting................

[Arne]

I went with a 4 foot tongue. It happened to be the length I had in the scrap heap, and the longer the tongue, the less the chance of trailer wiggle.

[mikeschn]

Does that suggest a spreadsheet to you Andrew?

Neah..... I was thinking of a telepathic control virtual reality sorta thing - as you think of what you want, a model appears before you on your screen.

I've got just a couple of little bugs to fix - it should be up and running in 10 minutes.

Andrew

That's a long 10 minutes...

And TC does have a constraint manager which will let you do the telepathic control virtual reality thingie you are talking about!

Mike...

[doug hodder]

Hey, guys, it's a free world, so you can make the tongue as long as you like.

But:
- Check out just how short tongues are on most vintage teardrops. On the Mechanix Illustrated plans the tongue is 24" to the hitch center.
- The longer you make the tongue, the stronger it has to be made.
- A longer tongue makes a bigger storage problem, if you're tight on space.

Andrew

I found that a longer tongue backs easier and you won't get your butt beat if you are a 9 year old kid and grab the fishing pole out of the back of the truck and go down to the creek while dad backs the trailer into the site and punches a hole in the front of the trailer cuz you left the tail gate down....Sorry dad, wherever you are....Doug

[cracker39]

Having used quite a few trailers of different sizes, I agree with making the tongue a little longer rather than shorter for (1) ease of backing up, (2) better tracking of the trailer behind the tow vehicle, and (3) no chance of the vehicle hitting the traler cabin or utility box in a jackknife situation should occur (Heaven Forbid it does). Keeping in mind that, yes, the longer the tongue, the more stress will be on it, so make it strong enough.

My boat trailer has the longest distance from hitch to axle of any I have owned and tows and back up better than the others. My 4'x6' utility with a 30" tongue was the worst. My Squidget trailer tongue will be 4' 8" from front of the coupler to the chassis, but the cabin sticks out about 17"-18" in front of the chassis, so the distance from coupler to cabin is about 3 feet (vehicle width/2 plus about 3"-4"). I've estimated that the distance from hitch to the centerline of the wheels will be around 11'. On my boat trailer, it's about 14 1/2'. That's why it tows and backs up so easy.