I meant to say this before-- I always load car in the direction going ie nose first . I reckon it is bad karma to tow it backwards!
I also load race truck the same way--nose forward.

 

Agreed. I haul a 3 horse gooseneck trailer with a F250 4x4 Turbodiesel... trailer weight is ~13k fully loaded. Even with that mass the whole package- weight into the bed of the truck forward of the rear axle- handles surprisingly well. With brakes dialed in you never feel 'pushed' by the load.

Having learned the hard way, with towing you want to go with massive 'overkill'. BIG truck, rated for well over what you are hauling.

 

BIG TRUCK is nice but if the trailer is not balanced or setup bad you can flip even a nice diesel 4door pickup that would pull a stump out of the ground.

a wildly acting trailer with a 3000lb car can get a 8000lb diesel pickup out of control ina hurry

 

I didn't read through all the posts, but another factor to trailer sway is if the tongue is not level with the ground due to the improper hitch setup.

 

I know that I am reiterating my earlier point, but there are only two posts in this thread that give proper advice - my earlier one and Mike Kelly's. Buy the Sherline device, measure the tongue weight and get it right. You might be able to get the right tongue weight by shifting stuff around, but you still should be measuring it.

Jon

 

Thanks for that dismissive post--fwiw my earlier post also reitterated the need to weigh -- and you need nothing more than a set of bathroom scales to get an idea.
Taking even greater offense at your post about "proper advice"you then miss what I consider some pretty good advice to try and analyse his problem-- yeah by me.
FWIW --if you want to do some comparisons on towing experience I will put money on it that I have many multiples of distance travelled towing a trailer -- I did learn something about it along the way!
Lastly-- you may disagree with some posts-fine - some are off track,some potentially dangerous -- the op can sought that out for himself or perhaps you could quote the specific " incorrect " advice here to give us all the benefit of your expertise.

 

Bizarre... every rear engined Porsche in UK is reversed on, even if you look at http://www.brianjames.co.uk/ one of the biggest trailer sellers around (Europe) their Catalogue pics have a 996 Turbo reversing on... Now what I have noticed is that some of the US trailers have their axles offset back from the load platform which would help with loading nose first... I have always reversed on, you get less tail happy and it's more balanced.... also some of the more modern trailers don't really start to feel balanced until they get to about 60mph, I purchased this http://www.brianjames.co.uk/pages/trailers/himax.html and tow it with either X5 or Merc Vito and it's just great, so good that I have looked at the speedo and once or twice noticed that I am heading towards 90mph mark (I do stick around 70-75mph). Also remember if you feel it starting to snake and get tail happy do not try to correct it by braking or steering, just drive through it but don't accelerate like some say, this is can also make matters worse, once trailer is back under control then start to slow.

 

My apologies. Must have woken up in a bad mood...

 

Beating a dead horse, but my reply- the first- was:

"How much tongue weight do you have when the car is loaded and lashed, and tools in place?

I am guessing 400 or so pounds is what you want. (Check the rating on your tow pkg- it will spec max trailer weight AND tongue weight)."

Wasn't that proper advice?

 

Yeah, it was. Sorry again, and to everyone else who gave good advice and is justifiably offended. Done.

 

+25

I use a trailex for my turbo and tow with a mid sized truck. no problem going 80 if I needed to. Balance is the key. The rear wheel axle of the car is about 6-8 inches behind the rear trailer axle and that seems to work well for me.

 

viprkilr...i just saw your aerial photo of your trailer. Tough to tell exactly without measuring but it looks like you may need to upgrade to a new trailer in the future as the trailer axles look to be about midway on the trailer. With the tool box in front, my guess is that you definitely have too much weight hanging off the rear and not enuf tongue weight. I guess you can try removing the tool box and seeing how far forward on the trailer you can go. I posted some pix of my car on my trailer FYI.

 

Would help if the OP can post more info-- there is some good advice here as to potential solutions. I am curious as to how it tows empty - if fundamentally flawed etc.

 

I put the car on the trailer today & moved as far forward as I dared. I disconnected the trailer from the hitch & estimate the tongue weight around 200 pounds. From the earlier posts, this is just too little weight. I am going to talk to a hitch establishment in town this weekend to see how to go about moving the axles farther back or extending the trailer forward a bit. I appreciate all of the advice. I won't use the trailer until I have it "dialed in" correctly. It scared the absolute pee pee out of me when the trailer felt like it was literally yanking my 7000 pound Yukon sideways.

 

So, you do realize this is gonna be a chunk of change, right? They're going to have to relocate the fenders, along with the axles, and if you have a "flex" spring setup, they're gonna have to relocate those mount points as well. Lot of welding you're talking about... And you don't have a good baseline for where the car needs to sit on the trailer. They'll be guessing, at best.

Do yourself a favor and remove that toolbox and then reload the car on it and bring it forward further. It'll overhang past the front lip on the front of the trailer. That tool box is the issue.

Mike