Towing question

[awellis3]

Hey guys and gals, how y'all doin'? Well, I finally snagged a small teardrop-sorta trailer. It's just a bunkroom on wheels. I plan to take it boondocking in a few days and would like to haul it down to the river bank. This involves navigating a fairly steep bank, maybe as much as 20°. It has a 2" ball coupler for a hitch.
At what angle can damage occur? What's my limit? How can I tell?

Teach

[JohnB]

Originally Posted by awellis3

At what angle can damage occur? What's my limit? How can I tell?

Hi Teach,

Good to hear from you.

Each ball mount and trailer ball coupler style/brand may have a slightly different crash point. If you want to test it, do this.

With the camper unhooked and held up by the tongue jack.

1. Take the draw bar/ball mount out of the truck.
2. Unlock the ball coupler and stick the ball up in the coupler, lock it in.
3. Move the drawbar all around in any direction and see what angle in what direction it starts to bind up in. The binding area, is the start of the crash point.

Like this, this WD hitch head and trailer ball coupler will bind at 20 degrees, but I'm assuming your teardrop you will be using a non WD draw bar with a 2" ball on it. Do the same thing with your drawbar/ball mount and you will find out for yourself.





Hope this helps and have fun. Remember we like pics of your adventures!

John

[awellis3]

Originally Posted by JohnB

Remember we like pics of your adventures!

John

OK. Here are a few pics of my solo camper I named "Shorty." It is a Harbor Freight, Chinese-made trailer at heart. The PO bought it as a shell and customized it to suit himself, so it has a few quirks. Like the battery disconnect mounted next to the fuse panel. A radio set into a shelf (with sharp corners) right where I expect to sit up one dark night, sooner or later. The "second floor" at the foot will be great for suitcase, toiletries, night time beverage, etc. That funny-looking setup in the ceiling is a set of computer fans. The Fantastic Fan (2-way, 3-speed) was too noisy at night, hence the extra fans.
I'll be on my maiden voyage with Shorty the last week of June. I'll try to remember to snap a pic or two.

[awellis3]

OK, why'd they turn sideways?

[JohnB]

Originally Posted by awellis3

OK, why'd they turn sideways?

Hi Teach,

Shorty is a cute little camper! Thanks for sharing.

Now the rotate issue. I'm making an assumption you may have taken these on your phone? If so, we have had issues with this in the past rotating the pic.

If you rotate the phone from vertical, (meaning the phone is now horizontal for a more landscape longer view) the phone adds some type of command into the picture that when it posts here on the forum, it rotates the pic. The rotate command is in the pic from what I have been told and we cannot change that.

If you take the pic with the phone in the upright normal position, it should then not rotate the pic when you upload it.

Does this sound like what you did, took the pic with the phone rotated?

Hope this helps

John

[Tinstaafl]

Originally Posted by JohnB

If you rotate the phone from vertical, (meaning the phone is now horizontal for a more landscape longer view) the phone adds some type of command into the picture that when it posts here on the forum, it rotates the pic. The rotate command is in the pic from what I have been told and we cannot change that.

If you take the pic with the phone in the upright normal position, it should then not rotate the pic when you upload it

John, I moderate another forum where we have the same issue with the vBulletin software. It appears that the issue is much more prevalent with Iphones than Android phones--but we haven't determined whether the use of a phone vs desktop to upload the pic makes a difference.

At any rate, loading the image into Microsoft Paint, Irfanview (my favorite) or another image editor and doing a Save As will usually strip that rotation info and allow the image to display with the proper orientation.

[JohnB]

Thanks Tin, good to know.

And yes, I too like and use Irfanview and have for a long time. Simple, effective and good pixeles reduction for downsizing a pic

[awellis3]

I put the pics on my desktop to upload them. They went onto Facebook right-side up. I didn't run them through a photo editor first. I'll do that next time. What pixel width is ideal?

[Tinstaafl]

It's not critical, as long as it's not inordinately huge or small. I usually go with 1024 x 768 or thereabouts.