Tongue--how long?

[sjacobso76]

My trailer builder got back to me and asked me if a 45" tongue would be long enough. I had no idea what would be long enough, so I'm going back to the people that know.

I'm planning on having a tongue box and mounting the spare (13") laying down on the tongue. I don't know if that makes too much difference, but how long a tongue should I be looking for for easier backing and side clearance (oh, by the way, my future TD is a 5X10)?

[planovet]

I was going to say something but then I would just get into trouble....

When I had my trailer built, I had 18" added to the tongue for more storage area. I'll measure it when I get home tonight to get the total length. A longer tongue will make it easier to back up. Just be careful on how much you store on your tongue, it will affect the tongue weight more than you think.

[Dale M.]

My personal thoughts are the tongue should be long enough that when you jack knife car around, the rear bumper of TV does not contact the body of teardrop (trailer) when you get close to having a 90 degree angle between TV and trailer..... In other words tongue should be a few inches longer than distance from hitch (ball) to outside edge of bumper....

But but once one adds on tongue boxes and spare tires and propane tanks on tongue it pretty well shoots down that idea.... OR tongue will be way to long ....

Dale

[TerryLawson]

This is what I was wanting to know. The trailer that I am starting with has a 42" tongue. But I was thinking of cheating into that area to strech my living area.
How short is too short? I did check the width of my TV from hitch to side and its 36". So if I steal 6" I should be fine right.
By the way the trailer is 10'6" overall. With 7' as a box right now. I want to add 6" to the front and 18" to the rear.
Terry

[Arne]

My trailer tongue is 28" long, to keep the trailer close to the van. I can still open the van hatch, and in my tightest forward turn, I have 6" of clearance between the van and the t/d, but the front walls on my t/d are curved in.

I don't consider backing up a problem. If you are backing up and you get to 45 degrees, you can't correct anyway, and have to pull forward to straighten out and start over.

My t/d affects my gas mileage by losing 1 mpg. The longer the tongue, the more turbulence you have between the tow and the t/d and the more it affects your mpg.

you can take a look in the link below, next to last page in index, near the bottom.

[Aaron Coffee]

Got the body on and now the tongue is only about 18 inschs longer then the furstest forward point of the body, so now it looks like a tongue rebuild is necessary, the current tongue is 36 long(from edege of trailer to tip of tongue). Is a 4.5 to 5 foot tongue too long?

[bobhenry]

Mine is 3'10" from the face of the barn. The problem is the barn is cantilevered 2' forward of the front of 5x8 trailer I used. The 2x2x1/4 was flexing almost 2" up and down. By adding the tension truss you can see in this picture we were able to eliminate it. I did run the square tube all the way from the rearmost crossmember to 5'10" forward of the front member of the trailer base and it works wonderfully. Tows like a dream and backs up gracefully. This is a single tube tongue. I feel if I were to vee it with the same square tube it would be bulletproof.

[caseydog]

My first TD had a long tongue, and my current one has a shorter tongue. Longer is definitely better for backing. I'm having to get used to backing my new TD.

Also, with a longer tongue, you have more options if you want to add a bike rack or something like that in the future.

So, I cast my vote for longer.

CD

[Aaron Coffee]

My hope is to get the tongue long enough(without going to long) to pull with the tailgate down, so I can haul my scooter camping.

[NathanL]

You can always make it longer than you think you need and chop it down to size if needed after you use it. Hitches bolt on and it wouldn't take 5 minutes to whack it off and move it back and take up the slack in the trailer wiring.

Sure beats adding a new hitch from scratch if it's too short.