Sagging rear - suspension or new hitch

[JExpedition07]

Deleted I was incorrect I have the tow package.

 

[Hayes Riviere]

I just took a look at the owner's manual, and it says to place the heaviest items over the trailer axles when towing. Could placing most of the weight in the front of the trailer result in the sagging rear of the Expedition?

Also, JExpedition07, I took a look at the maximum GCWR's - gross combined weight rating, or how much weight the combined mass (in this case the Expedition's and the trailer's weights), and it takes into account towing with vs. without the towing package. If you subtract the weight of the Expedition then you have the towing rating. Mine is 6078 lbs, and is 6 years older than yours is, but they have the same engines so Ford should have included the towing ratings on your manual. Pages 259 and 260 in a 2013 Expy manual.

 

[bobmbx]

Putting too much weight forward of the front axle on a trailer will load the rear axle of the tow vehicle, which lifts the front wheels reducing steering control. Heavy weight behind the rear axle on a trailer can result in the trailer acting like a pendulum, eventually causing you to jack-knife. An even load on the trailer is ideal. If not possible, put the weight right over the axle. Trailer brakes can help with the sway, but they won't prevent it from happening. If you need to hit the trailer brake to control it, pull over and re-distribute the weight in the trailer as best you can.

 

[JExpedition07]

Deleted I was incorrect. I do have the tow package.

 

[Charles Schlough]

I read all the posts and looked closely at your pictures. It appears to me that before you spend any more money on bigger better or anything else, you need to adjust the hitch for your new vehicle. Your problem looks to me as a misadjusted weight distributing hitch. The setup for your Dad's vehicle is not the same for yours. You will have to take apart the hitch head and reset everything for your truck. If you want to use it for your Dad's truck you will need to get a different hitch and set it up right for your Expy. I bet the other Receiver is several inches higher than your Expy. Look to see what hitch it is, then look up the install instructions online and reset the hitch for your truck. I bet it will be just fine after that. It can be a pain, because you will need to reset the head so it is correct. First check is level the trailer on a flat surface, with both ends of the trailer frame equal height from the ground at each end. Then measure from the ground to the top of the hitch itself, the round bit on the end where the ball goes. Then with the hitch head in the back of the Expy measure from the ground to the top of the ball. If the difference between these 2 measurements is more than about 1/2 inch either lower or higher, take the head apart and reset till the ball is equal to the height of the trailer hitch itself. The installation directions from the manufacturer will be a great help. If you need a different hitch look on Amazon. You will go stupid trying to decide which one to buy, I use a Fastway E2 600/6000 because I have a smaller trailer with less than 500 lbs tongue weight and trailer max GVW is 5,500 lbs. Don't buy a more heavily rated hitch than what your trailer calls for. a 10K WDH on a 5K TT will mean it rides hard. You will get all you ever wanted to know about hitches on U-tube. Lots of help for you for free. Adjusting a hitch is not rocket science, with the right tools and patience you can do it yourself. Most people have to adjust things several times to get it all dialed in. 1 last comment, Cardinal rule, hitch weight should be NO LESS than 10% total weigh and NO MORE than 15% of the total weight of the trailer itself. Don't GUESS, this is one time when a SWAG is not good enough.

 

[bobmbx]

Here's a video that shows what happens with properly loaded and improperly loaded trailers:

 

[DebbieC]

Has the OP abandoned this thread?

Sorry, no I have not abandoned this thread. My computer had to go in to the shop because I got put on lock down by ransomware. I just got it back this morning. Yay! So I've had a little progress but not much. So my dad wouldn't let me adjust his WD hitch mount so I had to order one online. It came in towards the end of last week and we tried it out. Once again, I told him we needed to take it to a level lot but he insisted that we do it on the gravel driveway because we had power for the power tongue jack. So the first time we did it, we did just like the instructions said and it was perfectly set in the middle of the 2 heights that I recorded (one before hitching up and one after hitching). We took it out and it was still too high. So we came back to the house and did it again. This time when we hitched it up with the WD bars, it was a little more towards the "before" measurement. We took it out and it felt better. Still feels a little too high in the front and has too much sag for me. We're going to have another person in the back seat and that means it will sag even more and makes me nervous. My dad drove it and said it was fine but has too much bounce. Which it definitely does. Feels like a rollercoaster when you hit bumps. I'm still not convinced that we have it right, so I'm not going to tell my dad that I'm going to get it this weekend and go to a parking lot and see if we need to redo the hitch mount. I tried to look at the coiloversprings.com site that someone suggested but it's not a valid site. I did see something on etrailer.com about a helper spring that sits in between 2 of the coils on the rear spring. It's called a coil sumospring. Has anyone tried these before? Or do you know of anything that would help better? Or should I get heavy duty shocks instead? I've heard that they work great for towing but are really really rough when you're doing normal driving. Thanks!

 

[bobmbx]

I would sneak off to an RV dealer, preferably the one the trailer came from, and simply ask them to check your rigging.

 

[Bedrck47]

You know that the tongue jack runs off of 12 Volts which means that as long as your connected to the expy and the expy's running you will have plenty of power to operate the jack

 

[DebbieC]

I would sneak off to an RV dealer, preferably the one the trailer came from, and simply ask them to check your rigging.

You know that the tongue jack runs off of 12 Volts which means that as long as your connected to the expy and the expy's running you will have plenty of power to operate the jack

The place we bought it from is about 2 hours away, but I did try and call a local rv place. They said they were booked through December. I ran out of time today but there is another one about an hour away, I will try them tomorrow.

No I did NOT know that if the trailer was hooked up to the car, the trailer connector would give it power. We thought if it wasn't plugged in to the outlet then it ran off battery. And that battery isn't worth a charge. We're also getting a new one of those this upcoming weekend too.

 

[Bedrck47]

As long as the connector is wired correctly
One way to test would be to have the expy connected to the trailer and the trailer battery disconnected. Provided the jack isn't wired directly to the trailer battery.

If the jack works then you know for sure

 

[Jon P]

Are you confident that the trailer is loaded properly? As Charles said the proper tongue weight is critical and should be between 10 to 15% of the loaded trailer weight.

 

[autoarcheologist]

You still need to dial in the hitch. You aren't transferring enough weight to the front wheels. Here is the process I used to dial in our 6000 lb trailer. The difference one link makes was amazing. http://www.canamrv.ca/blog/post/hitch-hints-setting-your-torsion-bars-441/

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[GAINMOB]

@GAIN-MOB That website doesn't seem to be a good one. It says it was listed for sale.

Coilsprings.com

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[DebbieC]

Are you confident that the trailer is loaded properly? As Charles said the proper tongue weight is critical and should be between 10 to 15% of the loaded trailer weight.

My dad took it to a flying j a few years ago and got on their cat scale with and without and somehow they put the tongue on a tiny stand and got the tongue weight figured out. I was fine. The only thing we've done since then was take the jack knife sofa out of the back bunkhouse. It wasn't that heavy so I wouldn't think it would make that much of a difference but maybe it did.

 

[Orville]

I've towed 8000 with my 16 with HD towing package. And with a receiver that was originally used on an f150. Go look at the hitch heights on an expedition vs any other pickup truck. Ford puts the hitch in the bumper on an expedition, and below the bumper on pickup trucks. That's 3-4 inches right there. TT receivers are designed to have 2-6 degrees of tilt so the equalizer springs have something to pivot against. If you're too high on the TT tongue side, you've added too many degrees of tilt to the ball and the equalizer springs can't work.

Adding heavy coil springs is a bad idea. Just get the hitch set up right and it will be fine. You'll need to add a brake controller. The regular tow package has the 7 pin but not the in dash controls for brakes. And of course all the coolers. The axle ratio is only doing to effect your off the line performance and top gear selection. The ecoboost does fine with any axle gear due to its torque curve.


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[GAINMOB]

My suggestion isn't to add coil springs... replace with springs that will handle more weight... that's what I did on my truck... they will support 2k more pounds over oem springs... same height... beefy yes but won't sag at all

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[DebbieC]

Well my dad has been a busy little bee while I have been at work yesterday and today. He took the new hitch mount to a tractor trailer repair store and had them torque the bolts in the new mount for my suv. He also went ahead and bought the sumosprings helper springs and put them on my car while I was at work. I was a little surprised to see that they were not a solid/hard insert. It was more rubbery. I was not expecting that. It ended up raising my rear by 1/2" I have no idea what that's going to do to the mount. So tomorrow we're going to go for round 3 of trying to get this right. He brought in the trailer so now I will FINALLY have level ground to get it all set up on. Fingers crossed.

 

[ExpeditionAndy]

Well my dad has been a busy little bee while I have been at work yesterday and today. He took the new hitch mount to a tractor trailer repair store and had them torque the bolts in the new mount for my suv. He also went ahead and bought the sumosprings helper springs and put them on my car while I was at work. I was a little surprised to see that they were not a solid/hard insert. It was more rubbery. I was not expecting that. It ended up raising my rear by 1/2" I have no idea what that's going to do to the mount. So tomorrow we're going to go for round 3 of trying to get this right. He brought in the trailer so now I will FINALLY have level ground to get it all set up on. Fingers crossed.

Good luck Debbie. I'll be curious to see how it handles and how you like it once you have it set up correctly.

 

[chuck s]

Trailer weight and balance is a constant topic in the camper/RV forums.

Towing capacity is determined by both the vehicle's drive train and the physical trailer hitch configuration. In the Expedition's case the 9000-9200 pound max towing capacity requires an aftermarket weight distribution hitch AND the factory HD towing package which retails for about $300 on a new truck. HD engine and transmission radiators are the primary components and these can be retrofitted by a good mechanic (but probably not for 300 bucks). The round Bargman RV connector is an other key to the HD tow package, not just the 4-pole "boat trailer" connection. The 3.73 limited slip axles were part of the 2007 package. I think the ECU handles this on my 2017 as the axles are open. Working well so far as I only tow once or twice a month, not daily.

An indicator the WDH is set up properly is both the truck and trailer are level. Parallel to the road. Both the front rear suspensions of the truck should depress equally. If the rear drops an inch the front should too. Just measure to the top of the wheel arch before and after. If the front does not depress no weight transfer is taking place. Self leveling suspension must be switched Off during this process. Towing level i an indicator, not the goal. Self leveling suspensions or helper springs can make the truck level but don't transfer an once to the front axle. Helper springs to not change the axle rating either. Use a proper WDH. My personal recommendation is the dirt simple Equalizer (brand) in the appropriate weight range. Includes trail sway control (a topic all its own). Trailer sway is a euphemism for fishtailing, a very dangerous occurrence (note the previous video).

My Photobucket photos are being held for ransom by them so I can't post them anymore but for my under 6000 pound Rockwood Roo 23SS travel travel trailer using the Equalizer (brand) WDH the top of the ball with no trailer on it is 22-1/2" off the pavement. This was established buy long experimentation with my 2007 Expedition and the same draw-bar and trailer connected to my new 2017 had needed no changes. That's a good starting point if you have an Expedition but plan on an afternoon of adjustments. RV dealer was little help.

Final notes: Conventional trailers need 10% to 15% of their total weight on the ball. For my 6000 pound camper that's 600 pounds near the limit of the weight carrying capacity of the truck receiver. Boat trailers due to their weight distribution (heavy engine at the rear) need 8% to 10%. I have a tongue weight scale used for initial setup and when renting trailers. Also keep in mind that any weight put on the ball comes off the truck's weight carrying capacity. You shouldn't expect to tow 9200 pounds and carry seven passengers at the same time.

-- Chuck