Looking for some advice to remove sway

Hello everyone. I'm a motorcycle racer who's been towing bikes to the track for a long time, but I consider myself a beginner when it comes to towing a big trailer. I upgraded from a small box trailer to a 22ft toy hauler a year ago and it came with a WD hitch and sway bar. The trailer weights around 6500 lbs empty, and upwards of 9500 fully loaded and full of water. The WD hitch is an old Reese system with 750lb trunnion bars that slide on friction pads, and there's also a small friction sway bar that attaches on the small ball on the side of the hitch. I have a 2014 Tundra with the smaller 4.7 V8. The trailer is front heavy for a bumper tow and has a lot of weight on the hitch, plus occasionally I have another bike in the back of my truck (though most of that weight is in front of the axle).

I've been towing this for awhile now learning and doing what I can. At first, the handling was terrible. I played around with weight loading in the trailer a bit, and finally added airbags to the truck, then readjusted the weight distribution hitch to level out the truck and add some weight to the front wheels. This helped a lot, but at this time, I noticed that the spring bars were only 750 lb rated. I weight the truck and trailer loaded and I would guess that on average I have 1200-1500 lbs on the hitch, plus sometimes the bike in the back of the truck, but sometimes the hitch weight is probably higher than 1500 if I can't dump the Grey tank and it's full. My hitch weight could be as high as 2000 lbs. The truck pulls the weight fine, but since it's the smaller V8, it may not be setup as well for towing from the factory.

After adding the airbags and readjusting, the truck pulls much better and straighter, but still sways pretty bad if I pass a semi, even at 55-65 mph. I want to fix this, hopefully without getting a new truck. I'm assuming the really undersized spring bars are hurting the effectiveness of this system, especially with a Tundra which is pretty light in the front compared to a big diesel. This style WD system seems to be pretty highly rated, however, I can only get 1200 lb bars for this setup. So I guess my question is do you think 1200 lb spring bars with this setup will correct the issue? Or should I look at a different distribution system that goes higher in weight, like the Reese Dual Cam 1700, or even something else? It doesn't seem like there are a lot of systems designed to handle this kind of tongue weight.

Or is there something else entirely that I'm missing? I've been reading a bit, and it seems like maybe I should add rear sway bars to the truck? What do you guys think?

Any input is appreciated. Thank you for your time!
Jesse

 

add a Toyota rear sway bar. that will help a lot.

 

Now that I write all this down and think about it a little more, I didn't realize I had the weight that far forward until I just weighed everything loaded and put the pieces together. There's some of this weight in the trailer that I can move behind the rear axles of the trailer to lower the tongue weight a little. I can probably get it down to 1200 lbs or less. I used to intentionally put a few things up front to make sure my center of mass was in front of the trailer axles but now I realize its way too far forward. So if I move a little weight back and get the tongue weight down to 1200 go upgrade to the 1200 lb bars, do you think that will solve my sway? Should I still add the Toyota rear sway bar?

thanks!

 

@ColoradoTJ our towing expert

 

I think a swaybar would help as well as proportioning the load in the trailer properly. Also setting up your weight distribution hitch properly. But it sounds like you’re overloaded no matter what way you look at it. Especially since you put the bike in the back of the truck. ColoradoTJ can give you the proper advice.

 

OP, you have the 4.6 engine not the 4.7 FYI

 

Its interesting how sometimes you just have to write things down to realize what you're doing hehe. Right after posting this, my little brain put the pieces together and realized that now that I have the hitch installed correctly to match the airbags, I never checked my tongue weight until yesterday. And now that I see it's so high, I realize I probably just need to move some weight in the trailer back to lower the tongue weight. I did that today and will take another trip over to the scales to check if I'm more evenly distributed with a lower tongue weight. I'm hoping that's all it takes. As for the bike in the truck, that isn't part of my normal load. Usually I won't have it. So mainly just trying to sort out the sway problem with my normal load. And by sway, I mean, the truck pulls fine in a straight line. But when I drive past a semi, I get pulled toward it bad enough that I usually can see the semi swerve a little in my mirror. And gusts of wind push me around more than I would like. Also going downhill or decelerating, I can feel the front of the truck get light and I lose some stability. I'm hoping that's mainly due to the extra tongue weight and will now go away.

Anything else? Is the rear truck sway bar important here? Or does that solve a different problem?

 

Thank you,
When I say move weight back, I mean because I have too much weight in the front of the trailer and the trailer isn't balanced like it should be. So I'm going to try to move weight behind the rear axle of the trailer so the trailer is better balanced, closer to neutral, with 600-1200 lbs over the tongue, around 6-12%. That should be better correct? From what I've read, more weight forward makes it more stable, but it seems I went too far, so I'm thinking I have to find the happy medium between stability, and not overloading the truck, axle, and hitch. Does that make sense?

I weighed my truck and trailer yesterday, fully loaded, water still in the tanks, some in the grey tank, motorcycle in the bed. My truck weighs 5400 with me and a full tank of gas, the loaded truck and trailer was 15200, the trailer wheels were 8000. So that tells me with that load, with the motorcycle in the truck, I had 7200 lbs on the truck, minus the truck weight 5400, cargo in the truck 200, and motorcycle in the back 350 (sport bike), that I had about 1250 on the tongue, plus some of the weight in the truck. So I estimated on the high end saying around 1200-1500. If my grey water tank was full instead of half full, and I'm adding a second grey water tank, I figure worst case I'd have another 400 lbs on the tongue. So maybe the 1200 lb spring bars would be fine if I didn't have the bike in the truck and I move a little weight to the rear of the trailer. And maybe the 750 lb spring bars would be fine if I didn't have the bike in the truck and I move a lot of the weight back in the trailer. Does that all make sense?

 

I used to also be affected terribly by the bow wave from semis with my TH. I have 1200 lb spring bars. I already had E rated tires so I pumped them up to 55-60 PSI and added Road Master Active Suspension. The RMAS was not adjustable as my front black water tanks filled, so I just switched to airbags. I no longer get the sway with the bags or the RMAS. My TH is 5800# dry but I do not have toys. Just everything my wife can stick in it.

 

Looks about right. I reloaded the trailer with weight as far back as possible for my load, and emptied the truck, put the bars back on, and weighed it again. Dropped the weight of the truck+tongue to 6340, so about 1000 extra pounds on the truck. However, the truck wasn't as stable driving like this. It rode more level through accelerating and braking, but was more prone to sway. I ordered the 1200 lb bars. I think a combination of the properly sizes bars, and readjusting them again (which will be able to send a little more weight back to the trailer and forward to the front of the truck, and somewhere in the middle of my rear loading and front loading, and I'll find a happy medium. But yeah, I realize I'm pretty much maxed out for this truck, that's why I'm trying to do what I can to keep it safe and properly loaded until I can get another truck.
Thanks for all the help.
Jesse

 

Do all TRD sway bars come in red? the other option is Helwig 7692 which are gray but cost more. as you can see my tundra is bronze and i think red would not look good

 

I thought helwig was cheaper. But if you don’t like the red why not just hit it with a few coats from the rattle can? Even more awesome would be to paint it bronze!

 

The issue with painting is I drive or rocky roads and it afraid it would chip pretty easily. the best price I have found in Helwig 7692 is over 400.00

 

You can get a Hellwig for $300 to your door. I just bought one from Summit. Should deliver tommorow

 

Not bad better than $400. Still the TRD version is cheaper to your door. It may not be quite as thick and it also comes in red but it’s still the better deal in my opinion.
I had a hellwig on my last truck and I did love it!

 

You got a great deal at Summit, I just priced them at 411.26 from summit. I'm no engineer but I would think thicker is stronger. Right?

 

Stronger? I guess so but you don’t really need strength in the sway bar as I doubt they will break. Thicker will just be a stiffer cornering experience.

 

The Hellwig is adjustable also. I didn't want the red also

 

I assume that you have some sort of discount coupon or are talking about a different vehicle, possibly the front sway bar. The Helwig 7692 or the rear of my 2016 crewmax is 411.26, not including taxes..that is a Summit price per their website and I also talked to their sales rep via telecom..any other ideas?