Tugging tow

Soooooo got the trailer and have never towed before. Tundra did its job great. Blue mule set up locked in. A new trailer, Tundra brakes set and worked with a bit. On the highway there was, on and off, a tugging sensation at various times. Usually with rougher patches of road. Is this a normal experience?

 

Sounds like the hitch ball might be too small, and is letting it move more than it should.
That, or the load on the trailer is shifting. Liquid loads and loose loads will do that, or if you have too much weight rear of the trailer axle you could be getting a seesaw effect.

 

During the tugging was the trailer swaying at all?

 

Nope no swaying ... also this is an off-road style trailer, meaning firm suspension and a couple of inches more of ground clearance. Wondering if a brand new suspension under these circumstances means a lengthy break-in period

 

I've never heard of a break in on a new trailer causing symptoms you are describing. Something is wrong. Do you have any pics of your set up?

 

Here ya go and I get that.... suspension is suspension or shocks. They do what they do

 

I'm drawing a bit of a blank on what else could cause the tugging. I'm tagging our towing expert. @ColoradoTJ what am I missing here?

 

Thank you

 

I would run over a scale if you could, just so we could see how everything is loaded. The only thing I see which it’s hard to tell, but it looks like you might be a little high in the front you could drop the hitch on your truck and see if that helps.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that "tugging" you are feeling is the trailer going over bumps in the road. Especially with the trailer having an off-road suspension on it. I've had similar issues before towing a Uhaul trailer that probably didn't have the weight evening distributed. You may try moving some weight around in the trailer if you can.

 

So my guess is not enough tongue weight. In the pic your truck looks ass up with the trailer attached, makes me wonder

perhaps the weight distribution bars are set too tight?
When i bought my trailer, i was given WD spring bars for a 800-1200lb tongue. My trailer isnt that heavy. I swapped them to 600lb bars and it completely fixed that tugging feeling

 

I assume you took the loaded rig to a vacant parking lot to set up the brake controller properly?

 

So it is only two days old to us. We have looped around 40 ish miles on the highways for practice. There is literally nothing but standard GVW in the trailer. So perhaps bring crapload her up a bit and prepare to bolt? In reality, we are headed out nxt week for a breakin trip. What do you sagacious lads think?

 

Grab 2-300lbs of stuff from garage and put it in that front storage compartment. I’ll bet that calms the feeling down on a test drive.

its a gorgeous trailer man! Glad you found one, inventory is really low all over. We looked for almost 2 months to find ours. So glad we did, just finished a trip to the sequoia’s

 

Brake control was set up at the dealership .... 9.5. Yet is that proper?

 

Brakes are fine and working for smooth take-offs and braking. Cab and trailer brakes good but at 9.5 its a very slow gradual slow down no stop w/o pedal

 

My thought was maybe firm ride is making the controller think the truck brakes are being applied, and the "tugging" is actually the trailer brakes being applied by the controller.

I ran across a good video of setting the trailer brakes in a vacant parking lot but I couldn't find it again. Basically the guy got up the 25 mph with the rig loaded as it would be towing (brakes differently unloaded to loaded). He increased the controller setting until the trailer brakes were locking up, then backed off the setting slightly until they weren't locking.

 

Appears my thinking about the controller was wrong, so scratch that.

I'm getting off your original question, but do you could have the Toyota integrated brake controller?

 

Yes I have the squeeze application and electronic brake assist to dial in prior to the "squeeze"

 

Not trying to give you more to worry about, but the Toyota IBC has given some owners problems with inadequate trailer braking. Here are some threads on the problem, which is apparently still affecting 2020 models.

https://www.tundras.com/search/3343152/?q=IBC&t=post&o=date

 

Gathering info in batches. Going to get this figured out. The support here has been great. Please keep it coming

 

Probably not your issue, but I just went through the same thing last week. It almost felt like there was a short in the brakes and was causing them to apply intermitently. Got to the campground and unhitched the trailer and it turned out my ball was loose. Not at risk of falling off, but was definitley moving around alot.

 

Hook a 4 - 5000lb trailer up to a 5500lb truck, and the trailer is going to affect the truck somewhat. When it goes over bumps, the trailer is going to make the truck 'shiver'. You have to get used to it, and learn what's normal, and what's not.

 

My Tacoma had this same issue pulling a utility trailer with a massive zero-turn mower on it (probably 3k lbs trailer and mower). I’ve hooked the same load to my tundra and it doesn’t do this “surging” or pulling. Same hitch and ball too. I feel like your load is probably approaching the limit for what the truck wants to pull easily, and when the trailer tires contact imperfections in the road, they want to slow down. Basically the truck doesn’t have enough ass to keep the momentum going. But I don’t know what I’m talking about.

 

I think you're on the right track. Every truck will have a point where it will start to 'feel' the trailer. My Tundra pulling my 2500lb pop-up, I can't feel it at all back there, but that's because the trailer doesn't have enough weight to affect the truck in any way.

But when I hook up the 5000lbs (empty) dump trailer to the Tundra, that I CAN feel. It tugs and surges when going over bumps and road imperfections. It's not dangerous, and is just the trailer having an effect on the the truck. I imagine a travel trailer of the same weight would have the same effect.

 

Ive towed 7k lbs with my tundra with zero bounce. The tugging feeling is not normal driving straight. It is from imbalance of weight, if the load is properly balanced it will stay smooth.

 

Going to the process of elimination on Wed. Hook the trailer up (BTW 4300 GVW) drive with a few hundred lbs in the front. The fresh water tank is empty so fill that up. See what happens. After that unplug the power to see if electric brakes are part of the issue.