Always enjoy seeing your photos, but I must ask. Most of the pics you post, I say to myself that I would have the load father back onto the trailer. Just curious, do you think the extra pin weight helps you seeing your a 3500 minus the bed? My back hurts just looking at your pics from my experience with my 25+5 Kaufman.
Speaking of which, the pictures I posted above with the small New Holland, that was the smoothest I ever had my trailer ride. Long story short, it was kind of a fluke finding out it rode smoother backwards. Truck felt solid, trailer towed straight as an arrow and it was like riding in a caddy?
Didn't know how much of a roll pin weight, vs truck configuration you found in your experience seeing you have had a lot of different loads on your trailer.
Every truck/trailer combination has a "sweet spot"
The sweet spot for the rear axle of my dually is the frame about ~31-32" from ground to top of frame over the axle.. On average Weight wise that's ~7-8000lb axle gross or 4-5000# pin load..pending load foot print in the trailer.. I have more weight and ride just fine I've had ~6500lb with 20,000lbs of hay spread out over the entire deck.
The other sweet spot is the trailer.. The problem with trailer is the weight wants to move up/down independent of trailer axle and rear axle of the truck.. Turns the trailer into a wave like a wet noddle. Place weight in wrong/right spot and you have two completely different ride qualities on same road.. Kauffman's lack of bridge options doesn't help much.. Hence I ended up taking 2x2" .25" wall square tube and making a bridge and tieing it into the front part of the neck's vertical beams.
I went from 6000lbs dead center between axles/pin with 1.5-2" negative bow to 8,000lb same spot and ~1/8" negative bow. Also noticed trailer started turning/pivoting between the tandems vs on the leading
axle
Also less tilt back from the neck while loaded
The crossman is 5' longer iirc tandems are 6' farther back then the Kauffman. I've put 8,000lbs dead center. To see the bow.. You have to look down the corner of the trailer to see it. And neck you can't see any noticeable flex.. I'm sure there is some I just haven't taken a square to it to find it..
The trailer had 12,000lb on her.. You can see little bow in the beam.. This is also.before I tied the neck into it
How I tied the bridge to the neck. Empty the clearance between the tube and C channel on the neck was 1/8" gap.. Loaded it would grow up to 1/2-3/4" gap pending weight
Another issue I had was slop in the coupler itself. Jam nut would work lose and result in ~1/8" F/R play in the coupler.. The bucking from that was enough to mess with the P2 braking which in turn compounds the problem.. Ripped a neck because of the severity of it..
Basically I bought some 5-6" long 5/8" grade 5 bolts. Loosened the jam nut, chocked the tires, idled forward agianst the chocks. Then drilled the holes. 1/4", 7/16" 5/8" steps. Problem fixed. Do it again I'd match the bolt holes with the holes in the male coupler.
