How not to tow a heaver load!

Mac · Jul 5, 2011

Make sure the towing vechical is capable and heavy enough, think maybe electric brakes might have helped a bit. Maybe an equalizing hitch, always used them on the horse trailers.
Dave

85_Ranger4x4 · Jul 5, 2011

That homemade looking deckover trailer sure didn't help either. The wider stance and lower CG of a normal car trailer would have helped a lot.

For as hard as it looks like it wanted to go right I wonder if he blew out a spring or tire and overcompensated for it.

Electric brakes would have helped, but I think his taste in trailers and tow rigs had him just about screwed from the start.

My all time favorite towing fail:

adsm08 · Jul 5, 2011

I think a little bit of driver competence might have helped there too.

I've had trailers get wobbly on me before. Ones as big as my truck too. Never lost one like that though.

Then again, I know that when the trailer starts getting wonky you need to slow down and get her under control again.

88_Eddie · Jul 5, 2011

i think the larger mistake was using a car to tow something that needed to be towed by a truck

the last video was just funny. do something stupid, dont be surprised when bad shit happens

Captain Ledd · Jul 5, 2011

Yeah, it looks like he was going along at a pretty good clip, definitely too much trailer for that tiny truck. Would have been fine if he kept to the side roads. He should have slowed way down at the first sign of wobble instead of trying to steer out of it.

However, I'm guilty of towing home my dad's Ion on a flatbed trailer with my '97. I never went past 45 though, and it did have the wheels on the side for a lower CoG.

Heh, In Soviet Russia, trailer steers YOU.

.

Will · Jul 7, 2011

That is too small of a car with too much trailer, but it's because they couldn't put enough tongue weight on the tow vehicle. That is exactly what happens when you don't have the weight far enough forward. I've had to stop and adjust loads before because of that motion. He shift the load forward a couple feet and there isn't enough mass behyind the trailer axles to get that deadly oscillation going. Driver skill had nothing to do with that--except that he didn't have enough experience to know not to do it. It probably seemed okay at low speeds, but when he pulled onto the freeway it quickly kicked his asteriks.

CaseyVR6 · Jul 10, 2011

/\ Agreed. Inexperience lead to a bad call on load placement, but that's called a "death wobble" for a reason...

AllanD · Aug 2, 2011

When a trailer starts to sway the USUAL cause is insufficient tongue weight.

To damp out the sway two courses of action work reliably,
1)applying the trailer brakes
Or
2)adding power in the tow vehicle

the obvious issue with going throttle up is that you now have to slow down from an even higher speed.

What the first jackass did was trying to "Damp out the sway" with steering corrections.

Somewhere less than 3% of drivers can do it correctly out of phase to damp out the sway
instead of reinforcing the sway.

Generally speaking if you feel it swaying stop and adjust the load on the trailer.

What you see is epic fail on multiple issues.

AD

Will · Aug 2, 2011

Good to see you around Allan.

strvger · Aug 3, 2011

gonna have to defer to my quote below for that second vid.

shane96ranger · Aug 3, 2011

Poor M3. That's one of the very few foreign cars I don't mind.

hondaxr650 · Aug 4, 2011

I worked at an equipment rental yard in high school. One of our delivery guys lost a small excavator that way. Flopped it over on top of an oncoming car and killed a lady. Scary stuff.

p38fln · Sep 7, 2011

From my experience with trailer sway with a severely underpowered vehicle and no way to manually activate the trailer brakes (U-Haul trailer) -
Best and simplest way to stop it is to FIRMLY grip the steering wheel and keep it from turning at all. The swaying motion stops in a few seconds.

How not to tow a heaver load!

Well-Known Member

Forum Staff Member

Senior Master Grease Monkey

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Forum Staff Member

New Member

TRS Technical Staff

Forum Staff Member

New Member

Well-Known Member

New Member

New Member

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Member & Vendor Upgrades

Truck of The Month

Recently Featured

Follow TRS On Instagram

TRS Events

25th Anniversary Sponsors

Check Out The TRS Store

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Sponsored Ad

Amazon Deals