When they ain't hauling hay, iron or whatever it's time for the CTD & PJ to play

 

Good use of an equipment trailer. Although I have a travel trailer, as well as an enclosed toy hauler-RV, I've contemplated putting a 20' container on my 25' or 45' equipment trailer as the occasion requires - more flexibility and use. The problem with the enclosed trailer is it is fine for cars, but not for other toys, and since I can only tow one trailer at a time, the choice between taking a big toy, or taking the Airstream constantly comes up ! As long as one has a safe way to load and unload the living quarters....

 

I'm building one of those now.... Started with a '95 Starlite 20' GN lowboy and I'm mounting an ~'90 SunLite Eagle truck camper on the front. I'm in the process of stretching the trailer now to make more room for my "toy" on the back. I'm adding 4' to deck and repositioning the axles. The "standard" positioning of axles on GN's seems to be about 65/35, but after weighing everything, I'll be putting the axles further back. Looks like somewhere between 70/30 and 75/25 will give me a pin weight in an acceptable range with the camper on the front and my toy on the back as well as an acceptable pin weight with just the camper.

 

I'm building one of those now.... Started with a '95 Starlite 20' GN lowboy and I'm mounting an ~'90 SunLite Eagle truck camper on the front. I'm in the process of stretching the trailer now to make more room for my "toy" on the back. I'm adding 4' to deck and repositioning the axles. The "standard" positioning of axles on GN's seems to be about 65/35, but after weighing everything, I'll be putting the axles further back. Looks like somewhere between 70/30 and 75/25 will give me a pin weight in an acceptable range with the camper on the front and my toy on the back as well as an acceptable pin weight with just the camper.

 

Out of curiousity.... how do you load the camper on the trailer since the camper jacks won't clear the trailer fenders. I'm planning on using a coupe of stout sawhorses with a timbers across them to hold the camper up while I back the trailer under it. Just wondering if you did something similar or if you had forks on a front end loader and just used that.

 

Yeah, right now I'm just putting a cable around the front of the pallets that the camper sits on and pulling it back past the wheel wells then I put the camper jacks back on and pull the trailer out from under it BUT I'm thinking about a different setup kind of like what you're talking about. I'll post a pic when I get her done.

 

I weighed this setup and the slip reads as follows:
Front axle = 4,520 lbs.
Rear Axle = 4,420 lbs.
Trailer (both axles) = 8,040 lbs.
Total = 16,980 lbs.

This was with the camper basically empty (no water, etc.). The truck alone weighs right at 7,500 so take that from the combined weight of the truck axles @ 8940 and you get 1440 for the pin weight. Without the tractor the pin weight goes up by a considerable amount and I'll get those figures when I re-weigh.

 

mj007 is that a 24 ft?

 

I started by weighing evertying and calculating it's horizontal CG. Then estimated the weight of the mods to the trailer, factored in the axle relocation, and recalculated the new CG for the trailer. Then I added in the loads of the camper and the weights of the front and rear axles of my trail rig at the locations I want them on the trailer (I want to be able to open the door on the camper with the rig loaded and strapped down). I'm sure that actual weight distribution will differ some from my mathmatical model, based on the model, distributed load on the pin will be about 30% with just the camper. When I add the rig to the equation, the distributed load on the pin drops to about 19%. I varied the weights of the camper from dry weight to dw +1000lbs and varied the axle weights of the trail rig +/- about 1000lbs in all sorts of different combinations and the pin weight stays within a 1600 to 2300lbs. range, which seems acceptable.

So, if all my calcs and whatnot (and all those years in school) pan out, it looks like the ideal axle placement for my setup is a 73/27 split which basically means my axles will be about 1.5' further back than the standard axle placement for a 24' GN.

 

Yeah, 24' overall with 2' of dove.

 

Here's what I came up with using 2x2 x 3/16" sq. tubing (20'), 1/4" wall receiver hitch tubing (3') and 2x2 x 3/16" angle iron (12') --

BEFORE



AFTER



As you can see from the rear view I can't open the door until the camper is sitting down and the cross-tube removed BUT I will probably put a 'drop' in the rear tube to clear the bottom of the door or just set it on sawhorses once it's off the trailer.