Zaks wt. and all things slick even 50

[marilyn & arden sniffen]

Dear Group GMC: First question for Zak on tow weight. How much weight are
you pulling when fully loaded and what is the tongue weight? I plan to pull
18ft. lite 2 axel enclosed trailer with small four wheel desert dune craft
and need to know what is an ok tounge wt. to load my baby down with. I
don't want to adversly effect handeling or damage those expensive 25 year
old hot dogging air bags.
Next refficial Slick 50 refund. I sent in form from Sunday
Parade Mag. and recieved back another form which indicates I got to buy
more product to get a rebate. Basically buy the product before Aug.19, 1999
and it will be free because they will send me 15 bucks max back. Not quite
what I expected from the way they original form was worded it sounded as
though it was a distribution for those who had already bought and used the
product.

Thanks for being out there and I do mean out there. Long live
you and all your GMC's
Arden 73 Sequoia in Jamul Ca. east of San Diego where spring
has sprung and the gophers are eating it up!

 

[zachary zehnacker]

Arden,

The whole rig (23' GMC, 26' triple axle trailer, 2 race cars, etc) is about
22,000 lbs IIRC. The trailer is about 10,000 lbs. We weighed the rig on a
truck scale a while back. It was on the way back from the race, so the
water tank was probably pretty empty, the gas tank was full, holding tank
level unknown.

We have never measured the tongue weight. Probably because, if we knew, we
would worry all the time about it. I'd guess around 2,000 pounds since the
weight of the dragster is pretty much all on the front of the trailer since
it is backed in and raised in the front. I'm sure the triple axles help to
reduce the tongue weight a little.

We did have an interesting experience when we took the dragster out for a
trip to Florida. Without the tongue weight, the rig handled very poorly.
We had to move the Firebird up as much as we possibly could (not very far
because the trailer was setup for the Firebird to be back as far as
possible to hold the two cars). It handled ok then, but still not anywhere
near as well as it handles with the dragster's weight on the front. I
think I remember someone saying that one weight distributing hitch
manufacturer recommends that you should have at least 10% of the trailer
weight on the tongue. That is just from memory though, so you should check
into it yourself. You may have to play with moving stuff around to get a
proper balance for your situation.

We have found that the friction bars (attach between trailer and hitch to
provide resistance to turning) really help to cut down on the trailer
moving the GMC around. We have one on each side.

Can you at least use the Slick 50 rebate for other products instead of just
Slick 50? That wouldn't be so bad I guess.

Zak

>Dear Group GMC: First question for Zak on tow weight. How much weight are
>you pulling when fully loaded and what is the tongue weight? I plan to pull
>18ft. lite 2 axel enclosed trailer with small four wheel desert dune craft
>and need to know what is an ok tounge wt. to load my baby down with. I
>don't want to adversly effect handeling or damage those expensive 25 year
>old hot dogging air bags.
> Next refficial Slick 50 refund. I sent in form from Sunday
>Parade Mag. and recieved back another form which indicates I got to buy
>more product to get a rebate. Basically buy the product before Aug.19, 1999
>and it will be free because they will send me 15 bucks max back. Not quite
>what I expected from the way they original form was worded it sounded as
>though it was a distribution for those who had already bought and used the
>product.
>
> Thanks for being out there and I do mean out there. Long live
>you and all your GMC's
> Arden 73 Sequoia in Jamul Ca. east of San Diego where spring
>has sprung and the gophers are eating it up!
>