Quote:
Originally Posted by bpage1124
Hello all and thank you in advance for any help you can give.
I'm new to the RV world and bought my first RV a 2011 Forest River XLR Toy Hauler last spring. My wife and I had a great time on the trips that we were able to take but noticed one very nerve raking thing.
The trailer seems to lurch forward while being towed at a steady pace. This only seems to occur on roads that have bumps or seams or cracks that run across the road.
Does anyone have any idea how to stop this?
Thanks
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You've received some great advice. What you describe is what I think is called chucking. I used to have a Durango fiver with a Reese slider hitch, and whenever we hit the concrete interstates with the expansion joints every 25 feet, the rapid and bone jarring "pushing-pulling" motion would become so bad, I became concerned that something was going to tear apart soon. I can only imagine the forces that are in play when this phenomenon starts. I have a mechanical engineering background, and I tried to calculate those forces based on weights and speeds, but without raw data, it became an educated guess. Another variable was the clearances between connected components. In other words, any residual "slack" in the different connections would be taken out at different rates depending on the weight and forward motion of the trailer vs truck. When you think about it, there is a small amount of clearance between the rails and hitch frame, between the hitch frame and the hitch head, and between the hitch head to the trailer pin. Those different clearance values are being taken up in both directions every time the truck and trailer are in motion and then encounter the bumps, dips, potholes, and expansion joints of highways.
Anyway, the numbers I was coming up with were a little scary. A tight "zero clearance" connection makes a huge difference. So when we traded up to the Silverback, I did some research and decided to go with the Goosebox hitch, and I'm happy to say that 97% of the chucking went away.
There are other great hitches out there like the pictures above show. I liked the Goosebox because I now have nothing to lift into or out of the truck bed. That old Reese was heavy enough for my 63 year old body, and I was tired of wrestling it. The rail pins were also aggravating at times.
I'm not saying the Goosebox is the only solution, but only one solution out of many offerings. You have to figure out which hitch setup is right for you and your application.
Either way, you are doing the right thing by asking the questions. You are getting some great suggestions. Good luck, but don't live with it. There are solutions.