Tongue weight questions

Pam · December 2018

New T@G owner ( 2018 XL Boondock)!
Have been reading tons of stuff on the forum and have so many questions... the more I read, the more confused I end up!
So first...
My first additions will be:
UP- N - Front raised bike mount - weight 31 lbs
Swagman Bike Rack - 62 lbs
Will carry a bike weighing approx 25 lbs, occ 2 bikes
Total weight: 118 - 143 lbs

Plan on eventually changing from one 12 V battery to 2 6 volt battery... weight difference ?
Not sure yet what I will do about the propane tank - leaning towards a bigger box to hold all, but moving to a smaller tank might be a solution too... will two 6 V and a smaller tank fit in the standard box?
I have no idea how much a bigger box would weigh

So, given all of my unknowns... what do i need to consider in figuring out if this is doable without getting into trouble with my tongue weight?

Is this TV dependent?
Or is it just the weight on the tongue/ T@G dependent?

My TV is an FJ cruiser

Was set to purchase the bike rack system, but wanted to make sure I would eventually be able to make all of these changes without getting into trouble

This Tongue weight stuff is simply a language I don't speak, so I appreciate any and all comments and help!

Pam

Chaverim · December 2018

I have a regular T@G not XL, but I went from stock box to aluminum rectangle box and dropped weight considerably, then added generator and lockdown plates which added weight, got rid of the big propane for a refillable 1lb from Manchester Tanks which dropped weight and am adding weight by going from stock group24 combo marine/deep cycle battery (75ah) to a full deep cycle 100ah group 24 battery which doubles battery weight. It's so hard to figure out what all's going on up there, but remember if you store water and maybe gas in the galley for travel and move your suitcase to the back of the bed, it helps offset tongue weight as well.

Pam · December 2018

Thanks Chaverim. I can't decide how much I should worry about this... Good to know you got a bigger box for less weight though!

Chaverim · December 2018

The T@G had a steel frame with plastic and all aluminum diamond plate is lighter weight.

Chaverim · December 2018

Tongue weight matters but you can offset some of your additions in a few ways.

tagurit · December 2018

Proper tongue weight is based on the weight of the trailer, though obviously the hitch has to be rated to handle it. In order to combat trailer sway and optimize overall performance, manufacturers usually recommend that tongue weight should be between 9 and 14% of the total trailer weight. We have a T@G 5 wide and on a typical weekend might be towing 1500 to 1600 pounds of trailer, gear and supplies. I did some similar mods to our trailer as Chaverim and am able to meet my target tongue weight of 150 to 160 pounds. I use an analog bathroom scale I keep in the garage just for that. In case you are wondering I did a one-time weight on all our gear so I can make a fair estimate of the camper's weight before we take off.

WilliamA · December 2018

"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum to place it on, and I shall move the world"
Archimedes

Pam,
If you are confused about trailer weight, there's plenty of room in the boat most of us are in so climb aboard! lol Actually, you only think it's hard to visualize. It's actually much worse than that! I'm going to go through 3 of the main components of what makes a trailer go down the road either very well or very badly. Trailer tongue weight, Friction coefficient, and Drag. First, trailer tongue weight:

Trailer weight and tongue weight are one of those things that seems like they should be simple, but understanding what's going on ends up being a bit confusing.
Most folks don't get it right away because they don't understand that trailer weight is always a combination of the two; axle weight AND tongue weight. If you weighed the axle, you'd not get the full trailer weight. You must weigh (and add) the tongue weight AND axle weight to get the trailer weight. I've done a few drawings to illustrate.

Let's start with a simple, cargo trailer with a flat bed:

Spend a couple of minutes looking at what gets weighed and where. Pay no attention to my floating battery and propane tank. They weigh nothing right now! So if you look at the axle weight you'll see it's 1,000 lbs. The tongue weight is 100 lbs, so if you add the two, you'll get the actual trailer weight of 1,100 lbs. Let's say the trailer is 10 feet between the axle and the hitch. That makes it easy. If we put weight anywhere between the hitch and the axle, the weight transfers between those two points at 10% per foot. For example, if I put my propane tank directly over the axle:

you'll see that the axle weight has gone up by 50 lbs and the tongue weight has stayed the same. Add the two again and you'll see that the trailer weight is now 1,150 lbs but the "Tongue" weight has stayed the same.
Now move our propane tank to the very front:

Now the trailer weight is 1,150 lbs, the axle weight is 1,000 lbs and the "Tongue" weight is 150 lbs.
Now let's move the propane tank to the center between the axle and the hitch. It starts to get a bit more esoteric at this point:

Again, you can see that the trailer weight has stayed the same at 1,150 lbs, but the weight of the propane tank is now shared equally between the hitch and the axle. Wait for it...Now it gets "really" weird;

This is the point where folks begin to scratch their heads.
The total trailer weight is 1,150 lbs, so that's not changed. The axle weight has gone up MORE than the total weight of the propane cylinder! How can you add 50 lbs and see the axle weight go up by 60 lbs? Take a look at the trailer "Tongue" weight. You can see that it's gone DOWN by 10 lbs. By placing the weight past the axle center, we are turning the trailer into a lever. We transfer the 10 lbs of weight from the tongue and put it on the axle. The trailer weight is still the same and hasn't gone up or down. The weight is transferring between our axle and hitch. Once you get that, the light starts to shine and things start to make a lot more sense.

WilliamA

Fourman110 · December 2018

@WilliamA said:
"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum to place it on, and I shall move the world"
Archimedes

Pam,
If you are confused about trailer weight, there's plenty of room in the boat most of us are in so climb aboard! lol Actually, you only think it's hard to visualize. It's actually much worse than that! I'm going to go through 3 of the main components of what makes a trailer go down the road either very well or very badly. Trailer tongue weight, Friction coefficient, and Drag. First, trailer tongue weight:

WilliamA

WilliamA, any response that starts with a pertinent Greek quote from antiquity and includes legible diagrams is phenomenal. Well written and easily understood as always sir!

BBsGarage · December 2018

All of this info is necessary to know but........
You need to know what your TV's tongue weight capacity is.
That's the number your shooting for to be under.

tagurit · December 2018

Here's a link to a good reference on towing capacities.
https://www.curtmfg.com/understanding-towing/towing-capacity

Pam · December 2018

@WilliamA said:
"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum to place it on, and I shall move the world"
Archimedes

Thank you for this, makes complete sense!

@BBsGarage said:
All of this info is necessary to know but........
You need to know what your TV's tongue weight capacity is.
That's the number your shooting for to be under.

Sooo...

My FJ has a towing capacity of 5000lbs and a tongue weight capacity of 500 lbs.
So...
I need to weigh the tongue as is, add the weight of the bike rack, bikes, additional battery. Add anything I store in the box or on the side platforms, Adjust for lesser weight of a new box if change made, ditto to propane tank, AND if I am less than 500. I am okay ?

Is there a "known" tongue weight for the "standard" T@G as purchased?

Thank you everyone for your responses and help, I am sure I will have more questions to come...

Do any of you know if two batteries and a smaller refillable propane tank will fit in the standard tongue box?

Pam

WilliamA · December 2018

Part II has us switching from the principle's of Archimedes to Newton.
The 1st of our mystery forces that make trailers behave, (or not) is weight. That's, for all practical purposes, a "static" force. That's to say, all of the calculations can be performed while it's all sitting still in the driveway. There's no "dynamic" force that needs to be applied. The weight of the tongue and axle will essentially be the same whatever the speed. What I mean is the relation between the two numbers will stay the same whatever "dynamic" force is applied.
Now that we have the trailers' tongue weight sorted out, we can go down the road and see how it works. At speed, if we've done our weight distribution properly, everything is great and it tracks well. Like the ridiculously overused saying goes: "I don't even know it's there". Now we come to a curve in the road. Where does all of that weight act on the trailers' manners now?
Let's have a look:

Let's not make this more complex than it needs to be. The mathematical formula's for this sort of thing are extraordinarily complex and there's no need to understand more than the basic principles. I am not going to include them here. Let's just create a simple, hypothetical world where we can see the basics of the forces applied.
In the top of the following drawing, the trailer is moving down the road in a straight line. The points A,B,C are the relative "weight" from inertia. As we go straight, the relative "weight at A,B,C are the same as a trailer sitting in the driveway. So we can say that there is 0 additional weight being applied to the side of the trailer, pushing it off from its direction of travel.
In the bottom half, centrifugal force is being applied to the trailer. As Newton said so eloquently, the trailer wants to go straight. By making it turn, that induces a side load that effectively makes the trailer heavier. Our fictional example has determined that the tires have a "friction coefficient" of 1,500 lbs. That tells us that the trailer will stay in its arc of travel until the inertia of the turning trailer exceeds that amount. Once it goes past that point, the tires will lose traction and the trailer will slide to the outside of the turn. Put some snow or ice on the road and the tires' friction coefficient goes way down very quickly. I suspect that most folks here understand all of the basics of that.

What is less understood it the relationship between the trailers' weight and where that weight is. In the following example, you can see that moving the weight to the rear will have a negative effect on the relationship between total trailer weight and the friction coefficient of the tires. The same amount of weight that could be easily handled up front can multiply to cause the trailer tires to lose traction. Given the same road conditions and overall trailer weight, the front-biased trailer load has much higher stability because the static weight is the same but the dynamic weight bias toward the rear of the trailer is much higher, so therefore less of the total trailer weight is applied to the tow vehicle. Additionally, weight applied through inertia is exponential, meaning it goes up in a square relationship to the weight and speed, given the same radius. The further the load is from the hitch, the more it acts on the friction coefficient of the tires. Additionally, weight placed behind the axle gets even more complex because the radius through which it passes is larger, thereby increasing the amount that mass must travel relative to the weight. Granted, that force is a tiny amount higher because the radius is only a tiny amount greater, but all of these inertial forces are exponential. The hip bone is really connected to the.....

It's important to understand here that you don't need to be able to do the calculus necessary to chart your trailer loading. It' important only to understand that these things are going on with your rig whether you aware of them or not. For application of the principles, it's good enough to know what the tongue weight, overall weight and where the weight within the trailer is in order to be safe.

WilliamA

Pam · December 2018

@tagurit said:
Here's a link to a good reference on towing capacities.
https://www.curtmfg.com/understanding-towing/towing-capacity

Excellent, thank you!

I will read through this

WilliamA · December 2018

Now for part III. You only thought up to this point that it was complicated gobbledygook.
Just keep reading....

It's been discussed elsewhere on the forum fairly recently, but wind resistance has a huge effect on tongue weight. This part refers to "dynamic" forces since a trailer sitting in a parking place only has wind resistance as the air moves across it, not as it moves through the air. To be sure, the same principles apply, but rarely does a sitting trailer get into trouble from fish-tailing.

This part of the discussion falls ever so messily into two distinct categories:
Laminar flow
Turbulent flow

Both exert drag on your trailer as you haul it through the air, but they need to be calculated quite differently. First, Why do you need to know this? Well, as your speed goes up, drag acts on your trailer in such a way that tongue weight goes down! The faster you go, the less your tongue weight will be. Yes. That's a fact. Air pressure pushing against the top of your trailer will want to lift the tongue. The greater the resistance, the less the relative tongue weight will be. The less the tongue weight, the more likely it will be to start to fish-tail. (This principle applies more the shorter the trailer. In a 45 foot 5th wheel, it has almost no effect at all because of the relative length to height. Short, stubby trailers suffer the most because the height to length is the most dramatic.) That begs the question: What causes a trailer to fish-tail? Well, everything does.
We've talked about tongue weight and its importance but haven't really spent any time understanding "why" it can cause fishtailing. Here's a very basic list of the components that go into the equation:
Hitch tightness
Axle play
Wheel bearing preload
Wind shear
Hitch to ball slop
Tire sidewall strength
and......on
and.....on.

What happens is that all of those things have a certain amount of slop in them. Starting with your receiver hitch insert. It's got a tiny bit of slop. Next, the ball has a bit of play in the hitch. Next, the wheel bearings have a tiny bit of play. Next, the tires themselves are not solid, but have lots of side to side play designed into the sidewalls.
All of that play added up can be a large number. And the the "Catalyst" happens:
You are going down the road and hit a pothole with one trailer wheel. The trailer "pulls" quickly in that direction, then goes back to center. But because you have all of that total slop in the system, it actually goes back "through" center until it gets to a point in the opposite direction when all the slop is removed and it stops, then settles back to "center". Your trailer has just swayed through a full arc of its movement as defined by the components. The rubber-band tires have re-centered the trailer behind the tow vehicle and it all quiets down. With all of this going back and forth, taking up the tiny bits of slack in all the assorted pieces, your trailer has just "oscillated" through an arc defined in its movement by the relative tightness of the parts and its weight. The tires have been pushed a bit side to side and "stretched" off of their centers, so they will snap back as soon as they can.
Let's say that you have too little positive tongue weight, or worse yet, negative tongue weight, that meaning your tongue has to be pushed down in order to hook up. All of the gyrations in loose bits now have free reign to move about at will. Your trailer has negative forward bias, meaning the trailer is heavier behind the axle than in front of it. The inertia of the weight behind the axle is much higher, so when a tiny oscillation occurs; a bump in the road, an off-camber road crown that pushes the trailer to one side, a gust of wind pushes the trailer off its center etc. The trailer wants to recover to its center, but the added pendulum of weight behind the axle only serves to drive the trailer through center to the extreme opposite of the first sway. Due to the weight of the pendulum, each oscillation gets larger and larger. The tires deform more and more, causing the swing to get bigger. That's a fish-tail.
There are a number of things you can't really fix. You could, in an extremely dumb move, weld all of the slip-fit components of your hitch solid. You could adjust the tension on the hitch ball until it's dangerously tight. You could put on tires with much stiffer sidewall strength etc, etc. Or, you could make sure you have enough tongue weight. Adding the correct amount of tongue weight has the relative effect of removing all of the slop from the bits. It's still there, but minimized by the fact that it's loaded down where it can't move about much and very quickly settles back to center when it does move about. Most importantly, you've moved the devil-inertial weight forward of the axle where it can't exert as much influence, preventing oscillations from growing. Your trailer still oscillates. That's normal and necessary. If your tires were solid rubber, they would skid around all the time because you'd have removed that rubber-band effect of give and take.
Here's a flatbed trailer with very little wind resistance. Its axle weight and tongue weight are virtually unaffected by wind pressure.

Now, for some strange reason, you've decided to carry a piece of plywood standing up on the trailer. Let's say the total area of the plywood is 30 square feet, or 5' X 6'. Curiously, that's close to the same frontal area of a T@G XL, (give or take). The amount of pressure acting upon this frontal area is enormous. The plywood mounted on the trailer has giant wind pressure on the front side and negative pressure on the back side.

To get a better idea of what's going on, let's take the trailer and hang it vertically by its tongue, and add a weight to simulate wind pressure acting upon it at some speed:

Now, the wind pressure (simulated here with the weight) wants to push the trailer around a fixed pivot, represented by the hitch. In the real world, what happens is the "weight" of the air pressure forces more weight on the trailer axle. The tongue can't move significantly because it is a fixed point attached to the tow vehicle. If one were to take this analogy to its extreme, the resulting wind resistance would eventually start to lift or unload weight from the tow vehicles' rear axle while adding it to the trailer axle.

The teardrop trailer, as opposed to my virtual trailer with plywood sticking up, has a much better airflow shape. It has a good rounded entry shape with the exit flow off the back moving in a relatively gentle arc.

There are things that don't work well in the wind. My T@G has a Yakima roof rack. That is just about the most terrible aerodynamic shape possible in its given size because it has a huge relative amount of turbulence. A sideways bicycle is another example of "muddy" airflow. It's hard to make something with more frontal turbulence than a bicycle hanging sideways in the airflow. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some engineer told me that the bicycle, going sideways through the air, has more drag than the trailer. Unfortunately, I have the triad: Trailer, Yakima rack AND often put my bicycle sideways on the front of the trailer. I've done myself no favors with aerodynamics.

There's a reason why airplanes are shaped like pencils and trucks are shaped like bricks. The enormous drag a truck has is a compromise between mileage and carrying capacity. For trucks, carrying capacity can more than offset the mileage reduction. If a truck, on the other hand, tried to go the speed of an airplane, it would need hundreds of thousands of horsepower to do it.

There's no need to panic. There's no test at the end of the lesson. This is all fodder to help work out where to put things, and just as importantly, what to bring in the first place. Bringing stuff needn't be an exercise requiring a calculator, but neither should it be done by standing back and throwing stuff in.

There's a lot more that I haven't covered to my satisfaction, but I hope that for those who have gotten this far it's given you some food for thought to ruminate on for these winter days....

WilliamA

BBsGarage · December 2018

@Pam said:

@WilliamA said:
"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum to place it on, and I shall move the world"
Archimedes

Thank you for this, makes complete sense!

@BBsGarage said:
All of this info is necessary to know but........
You need to know what your TV's tongue weight capacity is.
That's the number your shooting for to be under.

Sooo...

My FJ has a towing capacity of 5000lbs and a tongue weight capacity of 500 lbs.
So...
I need to weigh the tongue as is, add the weight of the bike rack, bikes, additional battery. Add anything I store in the box or on the side platforms, Adjust for lesser weight of a new box if change made, ditto to propane tank, AND if I am less than 500. I am okay ?

Is there a "known" tongue weight for the "standard" T@G as purchased?

Thank you everyone for your responses and help, I am sure I will have more questions to come...

Do any of you know if two batteries and a smaller refillable propane tank will fit in the standard tongue box?

Pam

As listed on the NuCamp website the tongue weight for a boondock XL is 160lbs with battery and propane tank.

WilliamA · December 2018

@BBsGarage said:
All of this info is necessary to know but........
You need to know what your TV's tongue weight capacity is.
That's the number your shooting for to be under.

Well put. As you say, there are other factors including TV capacity, frontal area (now posted in most owners' manuals) and hitch maximum weight. Also, there's the maximum engineered trailer tongue weight that needs to be worried about. (That's probably just for me though.... ) But the butt of the argument starts and ends with logical trailer tongue weight. Without an accurate weight of that, none of the other stuff is useful. It has to start with tongue weight. I didn't cover TV maximum weights because I'd run out of ink in my computer.....

WilliamA

Joabmc · December 2018

The T@G appears to be heavily loaded in the rear or behind the axle. At least it looks like most of the framing, cabinets, fridge, etc etc are all behind the axle. A little tongue weight as long as not beyond capacity is probably a good thing.
@Pam I believe that with a little bit of reorganizing that a dual battery setup is achievable. My plan is to go with 2-6V as well.
I have noticed that it’s difficult to get the barn door open due to the height of the tongue jack and trying to find a work around for that. Only mentioning it as you have a FJ. Just traded mine this past spring for the GX. They both share the big obnoxious rear doors only the GX opens the wrong way!

WilliamA · December 2018

@Pam said:

My FJ has a towing capacity of 5000lbs and a tongue weight capacity of 500 lbs.
So...
I need to weigh the tongue as is, add the weight of the bike rack, bikes, additional battery. Add anything I store in the box or on the side platforms, Adjust for lesser weight of a new box if change made, ditto to propane tank, AND if I am less than 500. I am okay ?
Is there a "known" tongue weight for the "standard" T@G as purchased?
Thank you everyone for your responses and help, I am sure I will have more questions to come...
Do any of you know if two batteries and a smaller refillable propane tank will fit in the standard tongue box?
Pam

Pam,
No. Your highest tongue weight must be the lowest one. If your FJ has a 500 lbs max and your trailer has a 160lbs max, then you must go by the lower one. In this case, the recommended tongue weight for the T@G. As I've said elsewhere on the forum, I don't feel that the 160lbs is a realistic number. If an empty trailer already reaches that, then any equipment or gear must necessarily move that number up. For example, the standard minimum for tongue weight should be 10-15% of the total trailer weight. At 160 lbs, the empty trailer weight for a T@G is already at 10%. I am of the camp that for smaller trailers, going closer to 15% is a better, safer bet.
Using only myself as an example, I started with a target of 200lbs for my trailer and worked hard to get down to anything close to that. I think my current tongue weight is right at 220lbs. To answer your question directly, you should be at or under 200lbs tongue weight regardless of your TV's capacity. The reason is the T@G frame would never safely support 500lbs of tongue weight.

I had the same experience Chaverim had with my tongue box. By removing my factory aluminum (T@G XL Boondock) box and rack, then adding a full-width aluminum tool box, I actually had a net loss of over 6lbs.

I don't have any experience trying to fit 2 batteries in, but for my use, I think getting rid of the 20lbs propane cylinder and using a 5lbs refillable cylinder is one of the best, easiest ways to shave off 30lbs of tongue weight. It also takes up a lot less room. Keep in mind that I only use propane for my stove but I can (have) run for months on a 5lbs'er. I don't really know how long it would last to empty because I take it in every 6 months or so and have it refilled.

As to the bicycle dilemma, I struggle with that myself. I carry mine sideways on top of my tool box with the front wheel off. I've got some posts about that elsewhere on the forum. It works fantastically and probably (probably!) could be squeezed enough so you could get two on top of the right tool box. I just throw (sic) the front tire either in the trailer or in my Jeep. I've also strapped it (my front bike tire) occasionally into the Yakima rack on top. If I carried 2 bikes, I'd most certainly put them (the front bike tires) up there on the roofrack somehow ala, Bungie cords as an artform....

Hope that helps.
WilliamA

WilliamA · December 2018

Pam,
Here's my system for bike hauling. Actually, this thread has 2 variations...
WilliamA

http://teardrop-trailers.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/73/bike-rack#latest

BBsGarage · December 2018

@WilliamA The 160lbs is not a max number, it is what they say it weighs at delivery.

WilliamA · December 2018

@BBsGarage said:
@WilliamA The 160lbs is not a max number, it is what they say it weighs at delivery.

Yeah, that's been the ongoing debate. I know they give the 160 dry weight but not any max tongue weight I'm aware of. Just the 10-15% number.
WilliamA

TomD · December 2018

Video relative to what William said...https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i2fkOVHAC8Q

mgreen2 · December 2018

If your FJ has 5000 Lb towing capacity then it has 500 lb tongue weight limit and you are fine with the XL and bikes. Sometimes the simple answer is the best.

160+143= 303 < 500

tagurit · December 2018

Comment removed by poster

Pam · December 2018

Pam,
No. Your highest tongue weight must be the lowest one. If your FJ has a 500 lbs max and your trailer has a 160lbs max, then you must go by the lower one. In this case, the recommended tongue weight for the T@G. As I've said elsewhere on the forum, I don't feel that the 160lbs is a realistic number. If an empty trailer already reaches that, then any equipment or gear must necessarily move that number up. For example, the standard minimum for tongue weight should be 10-15% of the total trailer weight. At 160 lbs, the empty trailer weight for a T@G is already at 10%. I am of the camp that for smaller trailers, going closer to 15% is a better, safer bet.
Using only myself as an example, I started with a target of 200lbs for my trailer and worked hard to get down to anything close to that. I think my current tongue weight is right at 220lbs. To answer your question directly, you should be at or under 200lbs tongue weight regardless of your TV's capacity. The reason is the T@G frame would never safely support 500lbs of tongue weight.

I had the same experience Chaverim had with my tongue box. By removing my factory aluminum (T@G XL Boondock) box and rack, then adding a full-width aluminum tool box, I actually had a net loss of over 6lbs.

I don't have any experience trying to fit 2 batteries in, but for my use, I think getting rid of the 20lbs propane cylinder and using a 5lbs refillable cylinder is one of the best, easiest ways to shave off 30lbs of tongue weight. It also takes up a lot less room. Keep in mind that I only use propane for my stove but I can (have) run for months on a 5lbs'er. I don't really know how long it would last to empty because I take it in every 6 months or so and have it refilled.

As to the bicycle dilemma, I struggle with that myself. I carry mine sideways on top of my tool box with the front wheel off. I've got some posts about that elsewhere on the forum. It works fantastically and probably (probably!) could be squeezed enough so you could get two on top of the right tool box. I just throw (sic) the front tire either in the trailer or in my Jeep. I've also strapped it (my front bike tire) occasionally into the Yakima rack on top. If I carried 2 bikes, I'd most certainly put them (the front bike tires) up there on the roofrack somehow ala, Bungie cords as an artform....

Hope that helps.
WilliamA

This all helps so much.

Yes, I knew It could not go up to 500... I work at night so was typing while I was getting ready to go to sleep, and somewhere between being 1/2 awake and 1/2 asleep remembered the 10 - 15 % bit!

Thank you for all your work throughs - I have a lot of figuring to do, but your 200 lb goal is also very helpful.

I have been having trouble finding the specs for my trailer, I think I will call Nu camp when I have the chance to see what they have to say.

@WilliamA said:
Pam,
Here's my system for bike hauling. Actually, this thread has 2 variations...
WilliamA

http://teardrop-trailers.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/73/bike-rack#latest

I like the idea of the bike on the box. How did you attach the thru axel to the box ? ... It looks a little scary to have that being the only attachment.

I'm going to see if the Up N Front guys can point me toward a lighter, no contact, RV approved bike rack to put on their hitch... or consider just putting one tray on the rack I've been looking at.

Pam

Pam · December 2018

@Joabmc said:
The T@G appears to be heavily loaded in the rear or behind the axle. At least it looks like most of the framing, cabinets, fridge, etc etc are all behind the axle. A little tongue weight as long as not beyond capacity is probably a good thing.
@Pam I believe that with a little bit of reorganizing that a dual battery setup is achievable. My plan is to go with 2-6V as well.
I have noticed that it’s difficult to get the barn door open due to the height of the tongue jack and trying to find a work around for that. Only mentioning it as you have a FJ. Just traded mine this past spring for the GX. They both share the big obnoxious rear doors only the GX opens the wrong way!

I have a love/hate relationship with that door!
I've heard of the Jack E Up (? or something similar) and was planning on looking into that at some point too...

I have so many things I want to investigate - I've had to slow down a little and prioritize - decided that bikes were first up!

WilliamA · December 2018

Pam,
My bike has ridden thousands of miles up on there with no problems. First, for the fork mount I used a generic, bolt-on mount similar to this one:
https://www.ebay.com/p/Sunlite-Bike-Block-QR-Aloy-Fork-Mount-Pickup-Truck-Bed-Rack-Carrier-Holder/21003303948?iid=321823289498&chn=ps
There are many available. Just measure the fork width of your bike and make sure you get one that has that distance. Some are adjustable, meaning they usually come with a selection of spacers. I got mine without a through-bolt for the axle.
I just pull the axle out of my front tire and use that. If I weren't so cheap, I'd just buy another axle for a few bucks and leave it in the mount. For mounting, it's just a couple of bolts through the box lid and it's on! Easy as it gets. For the back wheel, I use a flat strap with plastic buckle that's easy to find at any hardware store. I screwed two flat loops to the trailer lid and ran the strap through them, then set the bike on and buckle the strap through the tire. Easy.
As you said, that's a lot of stress on the fork mount but I don't depend on that. I made a stiffener out of a metal paint roller handle. I screwed a broom hanger bracket to the end and screwed a bracket to the plastic side of my roof vent. The broom handle goes from the bracket on the roof vent and snaps onto the seat post. It's atomically strong and super easy to do.
For two bikes, it is probably do-able but you might have to put them head to tail and take off the pedal for the bike closest to the front window so the pedal doesn't hit the window. If you look closely at my bike mount thread, there are some photos of my broom-handle stiffener. If you want more info, let me know and I'll dig up some more photos. I can remove my bike and put it on there in under a minute or two. It's really easy and super strong.

WilliamA

Pam · December 2018

@WilliamA said:
Pam,
My bike has ridden thousands of miles up on there with no problems. First, for the fork mount I used a generic, bolt-on mount similar to this one:

Back in my days of tents and 26 inch wheels, I was able to carry my bike like this INSIDE my FJ. I just bolted it onto a small piece of wood and stood the bike up in the cargo area of the FJ. I'm short, so I didn't even need to lower the seat! Talk about easy. Added bonus was it never was exposed to weather this way! Now with 27.5 and 29 " wheels and fat tires - I can't make it work without consuming all of my space :(

mgreen2 · December 2018

The specs show T@G tongue weights.

https://nucamprv.com/tag-trailer/tag-teardrop-trailer-models/

Willi · December 2018

I like to keep my tongue weight around 80-100 lbs. I mounted my spare tire under the propane/ battery box. To offset the additional weight I removed my propane tank and now I only use 1lb bottles. I try to load all the other stuff either above or slightly behind the campers axel. I’m towing my T@G with a Chevy Malibu. I’ve never had any problem such as fishtailing or weaving. I think that it is imperative that you have some weight on your hitch as WilliamA has so intelligently tried to convey. I know that I’ve gotten enough weight on the tongue when I can just lift it up myself.

WilliamA · December 2018

Willi,
80lbs tongue weight is getting dangerously light. I'd be a bit skittish of it at that weight. Lots of factors to consider, but going below 9-10% is begging for a random riverdance between TV and trailer.
For me, I won't be comfortable below 15%.

WilliamA

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