Equalization and an electrical issue

I was going to mention this topic in the previous post but I thought it warranted a separate one.  I don’t tow with a Hensley or ProPride hitch.  I have always used, as my father did, a standard load equalizing hitch.  The concept of these hitches is that they essentially pull the hitch assembly back up to try to ‘equalize’ the weight over both axles on the tow vehicle.  Without this all of the trailer tongue weight would go right on the hitch.  This may not be so bad for a small trailer but ours is not small.

When we first got our trailer the Equal-i-zer hitch was not setup properly.  It seemed like there was too much weight on the back of the truck which made the front end very light and loose feeling.  When the dealership readjusted it the next day it was much better but it still seemed a bit light in the front but MUCH better.  I have run with that ever since.

The old method of checking the hitch settings was to measure the 4 corners of your tow vehicle, normally the distance from the top of the wheel well to the ground (on a level surface).  Hookup your trailer and measure again.  You will see a drop in the distance to the ground but you should see a CONSISTENT drop.  The front should not drop more or less than the back does.  On our old 25′ this is what I did and it worked pretty good.

With the new trailer I thought I would try to weigh and test the equalization on an actual scale.  One time we were in Oregon I noticed that they leave their weigh station scales on all the time.  There may not be anyone on the side of the road at the weigh station but the scales still work.  This is where I found out our truck was almost 8500 lb in weight!  I was resigned to take the rig to a scale and drive one axle on at a time and calculate all the weights.  This would require at least 6 weighs.  In researching I found a better way.  CAT scales, we have one at the Love’s truck stop in Tulare.

CAT scales have their entire scale divided up in three parts.  The first is where you put your front axle of the tow vehicle.  Second part for the back axle and the third part is where your trailer axle(s) go.  This is marvelous.  I would only have to do about 3 passes on the scale to get my weights.  I wanted one with the trailer attached with the normal equalization, I wanted one with JUST the truck (no trailer) and another with the trailer simply on the ball with no equalization, just for kicks.  I was prepared to do a few more reweighs if I needed to do adjustments.

I pulled on the scale and lined up my axles.  I pushed the intercom button to ask for the ‘weighmaster’ to do their thing.  The funny thing was this button and speaker was about 7′ high to accommodate the big rigs.  Once the told me it was clear I pulled out and parked with the big rigs and dropped the trailer.  I was now ready to just weigh the truck, same procedure.

I went inside to get the results but it turned out they only gave me the total weight.  That is not what I wanted.  I discussed what I did want with them and they understood so I started over again.  This time just the truck, second was the trailer just on the ball and third was with full equalization.  I got the numbers, on the appropriate axles, and calculated the ratios.

My thought was I would take the ratio of the front to rear axle and ensure the equalization was as close as possible.  The truck weighed in at 7920lb.  The front axle weight was 4380 and the rear was 3540 to give a ratio of 55/45.  Now I had a baseline to compare the equalized weight.  Equalized the effective truck weight became 8540lb.  The axle weights were 4400 (F) and 4140 (R) to make the ratio 52/48!  That made me very happy since it was very close to what I wanted.  I decided to make NO adjustments as I don’t know how I could make it better.

I know from our trip to Marina a while back that our tongue weight is 750lb as a fellow Airstreamer had a weighing device.  In looking at the equalization the amount of weight transferred to the truck was 620 lbs, 130 less than the tongue.  That means the bars were taking 130 lbs of that tongue weight and transferring it back on the trailer axles.

To show you how much the equalization helps, look at the numbers without any.  Front 4060, rear 4640, 47/53 ratio.  A HUGE difference in my mind!  It made the overall truck weigh 8700 lbs or an additional 780 lbs.  There is the tongue weight and then some.  See the below table for the numbers.  I must have driven around that truck stop about 5 times.

Weight Table

Subject change now:

I mentioned an electrical issue in the subject line so I will explain that here.

In my blog entry on our Marina trip I signed off saying the rest of the trip was uneventful.  That is not entirely accurate.  There was one minor issue.  As we were heading home and going through Hollister and rounded a corner an odd thing happened with the truck.  The power cut out to the dash and stereo.  All the gauges went off and the music stopped.  A few seconds later the gauges did a full reset and the stereo came on.  However the truck continued to run.

If you know me then you know that I filed this away in my brain and Google’d it when I got home.  I didn’t find any real smoking gun.  It happened on and off in the next few weeks but I could not find a pattern.  Knowing this was going on it concerned me a bit for our trip to Princess campground.  The truck did will with only one episode without the trailer.

However, on the way home the fun started, nothing happened physically but it messed with me mentally.  As we were going to dump at RV Express the truck started doing its thing with a slight twist.  This time the battery light was flickering.  This means, to me, that means the battery is being discharged.  This concerned me and I was not sure I could get it home.  We did.

The next few days going to and from work the battery light was flickering again when the gauges would reset.  I went to talk to the guys at Gas and Diesel Performance.  I told him the symptoms and he thought that the diode in the alternator was bad.  I have replaced the alternator a few times and have a lifetime warranty on the one that was in there.  I started watching my voltage and it would go up over 14.5 volts!  Not good.  I took off the old alternator, went to AutoZone and got a new (rebuilt) one.  I installed it back in and watched things for a few weeks.  Problem solved.

Roxie has wanted me to get a new truck and I would love to but it might be more cost effective just keeping this going, if I can handle it mentally.

Memorial Day 2013

Since we are now on a more normal (read: more like the rest of the world) schedule for Roxie we have to take advantage of the 3 day weekends as they come along.  This was just such a weekend.  I had a hard time figuring out where we might go.  I know I wanted a reservation but didn’t want to be too far.  We wanted to be able to get there on Friday evening so we had a full Saturday of fun and adventure.

I called on an old, reliable friend.  Princess campground near Grants Grove of Kings Canyon National Park.  I checked reservations about 3 weeks prior and there were about 10.  The next day about 8.  Oh boy!  Better get one.  I did.  Now that we have a longer trailer the spots are a bit harder to find.  However they had one that claimed to be 45′ long.  I’ll take it!  However, I didn’t tell Roxie we were going until the week before.  I wanted to surprise her a bit.  There is a running joke that we never go camping on the major holidays.  This used to be true when she didn’t work and I could take of whatever time I wanted.  We would never go camping on Labor or Memorial day, we would go the weekend before or after.  This was very advantageous to us when we were able to get reservations at Yosemite one year when our 4 days STARTED on Labor Day.

Roxie worked until 4:30 on Friday afternoon but due to her diligence over the week and pre-packing, we were able to get away at about 4:50!  Fantastic!  Princess is 70 miles away from home but there is a grade of about 5% that goes for about 15 miles.  I had been having some electrical issues with the truck (discussed in the next blog post) so I started it with some trepidation.  The truck performed just great up the grade even though Roxie thought I was going too fast since she was on the downhill side of the road with no guardrail.  We made it to Princess just about 7pm.

The space at Princess (#7) was long as advertised.  It was an easy back in to get there and a quick setup, especially when you don’t have hookups!  We just made some sandwiches for dinner, watched a movie on the MBP and then settled in for a nice sleep.  Aaron and Paige were supposed to come visit the next day.

I don’t know what it is but sleeping in that cocoon is so much easier than at home.  Might be the closeness, the quiet or knowing you don’t have to work the next day but we slept so good that Aaron woke us up knocking on the door at 10am!  That was good though, we shouldn’t sleep the day away.

We took the loop road down through Hume Lake and back around to Grants Grove.  By that time it was time to eat and we had lunch in the restaurant there.  Next stop was a walk around the Grant tree loop.  It gave us a bit of time to spend with Aaron and Paige.

Here is the requisite shot of the General Grant tree:

Gen Grant Tree

A shot of grandma and granddaughter in the Gamlin cabin:

Paige and Grandma

Aaron and Paige by the fallen tree:

Paige and Dad

 

Paige and Aaron headed home after we got back to the trailer.  It was nice to have them come for a visit.  We will have to take Paige with us on one of these trips.  Maybe on Labor Day…

We rested a bit at the trailer and Diane Ganner (the Bird Lady) walked by, telling people about her amphitheater program about birds.  We had seen her before on our last visit to Princess but we always like to go to a program, especially if it is in our own campground.  Diane stated that this was her last season doing these presentations and that is a sad thing.  She truly enjoys what she is doing and does it very well.  Here is a shot of her and one of her rescue birds:

Diane The Bird Lady

We didn’t have time to get to the amphitheater program at Grants Grove that evening but that was OK.  We cooked some dinner and watched another movie.

Sunday we decided that we wanted to take a hike around Hume Lake.  We had been there many times before but had never done it.  We made up a lunch and headed off.  This Memorial Day was strange in the sense that things did not seem as busy as we think it should be.  I know that the Hume Lake campground was fully booked but Princess was not full.

We started the Hume Lake trail around 10:30.  It is 2.6 miles round trip.  The trail is very easy and flat except for a bit of up and down near the dam.  We walked around the lake counter-clockwise.  As we were walking I asked Roxie if it would be weird if we ran into someone we knew up here.  We walked a bit farther and ended up by the beach that is near the inlet from Ten Mile creek.  Luckily there was a restroom at the beach so we could take a little bathroom break.  We were walking up a hill to the bathroom and waited for some guys to bring down an inflatable kayak.  One of them said, “Come on up Roxie”.  I did not recognize the person initially but Roxie did.  Turns out it was some friends that we have not seen for a long time.  We spent about 30 minutes visiting before we continued our trek.

A lot of people fish in Hume Lake.  They are along the bank and out in boats (non-motorized).  Between the beach and the dam there were numerous fishermen.  Many of them had caught fish also.  As we approached the dam I did not know how we would get by it.  I guess I was expecting a HUGE dam like the ones I grew up around (Shasta, Whiskeytown, Claire Engle).  This was not huge since the valley below was not huge either although they did have a nice bridge across part of the valley.  Essentially we did some small switchbacks down, across the bridge, and some small switchbacks up.

The dam turns out to be the world’s first concrete reinforced multiple arch dam constructed in 1908 and still in use now.  The designer, John S. Eastwood, designed some 16-18 of these dams and none of them have failed.  Here is the Wiki on Hume Lake.  Here is a pic from below the dam and then looking across the top:

Hume Dam Face Hume Dam Top

And a view of Hume Lake from the dam (facing west):

Hume Lake

 

We were on the home stretch now!  Lunch was awaiting us back at the truck.  We got back, got our chairs and lunch and plopped down in a picnic area to enjoy a bit of a rest after all that exertion!  We returned to the trailer and partook in our favorite trailer activity.  A nap!  I said I wasn’t going to take one but I did anyway.  We really did nap too!  We slept until about 7pm!!  The amphitheater show was at 7:30!

Dinner had to wait as we drove the 7 miles to the Kings Canyon campground where the show was.  We didn’t know the subject but it doesn’t really matter.  We just like going, listening and learning.  Since the presenting ranger was first stationed at Mammoth Cave NP AND he was a geologist the subject was:  Caves!  We knew about Crystal Cave in Sequoia NP and Boyden Caverns in the National Forest nearby as we have been in each of them.  But we did NOT know that in the two NP’s there were more than 300 caves!  One of them is over 20 miles long and they are still discovering parts of it (Lilburn Cave).  Here is a pic of the ranger (with the required beard) and some of his Junior Ranger helpers, the boy was very outgoing:

RangerProgram

We had a very late dinner that PM and a late movie night and probably went to sleep about 1 or 1:30 AM(!).  But we knew what the morning brought.  Time to get ready to go home.

Here is a shot of our trailer in the spot (#7 is nice and long!):

ASPrincessSp7

Almost forgot one last shot.  Roxie always gets cold wherever we go, sometimes even in the summer.  She had to get this hat to keep her ears warm:

RoxieHat

Another enjoyable weekend.  Next post about some truck/trailer weighing and truck electrical issues.