towing in sand and mud

Hi nigel

That would depend on your tow vehicle, tyres, pressures, trailer and car total weight.

The polyairs won't help in the sand.

You need to balance your load per axle and drive to conditions with tyre pressures reduced to help with weight distribution on the foot print.

My own rig is 250 kg on the ball fully loaded and I decrease to 18 psi on soft sand.

Regards

Derek.

Ideally the ball-weight of your trailer should be around 10% of the gross trailer weight. That's an issue somewhat different to the style needed when towing in sand and/or mud.

In sand you need to reduce ALL tyre pressures.....Some people make the mistake of thinking they only need to reduce the pressure in the "drive" tyres; but trailer tyres are equally important as you need them to "float" over the sand to assist the vehicle's forward progress too.

Mud is different again; depending on the type of mud. In some mud, it is sometimes better to leave the tyres "UP" in pressure, so that they can find the bottom/hard surface. Other times you need to reduce the pressures, especially if you have aggressive mud tyres with "side-biters". IMHO there is no one, common solution for mud......each situation needs to be appraised and handled appropriately.

Back to the trailer and the use of Polyairs. If you can't get the ball weight of your trailer down to a respectable level and it is causing the @rse of your 4x4 to sag, then Polyairs will assist (to a certain extent). However, IMHO, you really should be looking at re-distributing some of the weight. Of course, all of this assumes that the camper trailer does not weigh 1400kg or so!!!?? Maybe it does??

Nigel, you don't say what your tow vehicle is and it's not in your rig profile. Assuming it is a 'real' 4WD and 140 KG ball weight is not too far above 10% of trailer weight, it should not be a problem. My ball weight varies between 10% and 15% (the recommended range) depending on how full water and fuel containers on the CT are and I manage sand OK. Regular visitor to Fraser Island. When we go to Fraser my ball weight would be around 185 KG (12.5%) on the way up and 150 KG (10%) on the way home.

I have Firestone airbags on rear springs in the Hilux, which work very well. But for towing in sand, these will only help to the extent they will keep the bum of vehicle a bit higher and stop it from draging on the ridge between tyre tracks in deep soft sand.

More important in soft sand are tyre pressure and driving technique. Get those things right and you will be fine. I'd be focusing on these things more that ball weight if your CT weighs 1100KG or more. If it's much less than 1100KG, you need to get ball weight down for all driving, not just sand.

Norm C

i would say the complete opposite, the more weight that a driven wheel can carry the better if you transfer weight from the tow bar to the trailer then the trailer wheel will have a greater tendency to drag rather than to roll in soft road surfaces as well as the effect of less weight on the tow vehicle hence less traction for the combined weight.
If u were to have a ton in the back of a 2wd ute it would have lots of traction and drive up steeper track than if u had the ton of weight in a trailer with no or very little weight on the tow bar(in fact it would not tow it up much of an incline at all).
U would also decrease tyre pressures(of all the tyres including the trailer) to increase the surface area of the tyre foot print which will aid traction as well as flotation.

MATTIE

Tx folks. I'll have to put my profile on. 2007 Mits paj T/D. Just bought a used jumbuck hardtop. Currently downweight of 140 k's loaded, with estimated rig weight of 800 or less. So I was looking to get down to 80 or so, which would involve shifting the water tank from front box to behind axle, shifting the spare wheel that is there to a rear swingaway etc.
So I'm wondering if I'm doing all that for no great value, if a set of polyairs would leave me with a well balanced rig anyway. If one respondent is right that I'm better with more weight forward in sand, then that would be an answer...
regards nigel

ps; I do get the tyre pressure (and momentum) issues. I'km a bit wary after getting stuck in some really soft sand on the beaches north of bundaberg. That showed me just how much harder giong sand is when towing a trailer. The max trax were very good, at least for moving a metre at a time (not a criticism, nothing else was moving us at all: i think there might be a case for 4 rather than 2 of these dooddahs).
So, trying to work out the optimum. If 10% is really the optimum, then i've got 60 kg to shift backwards.
nigel

Not that i have a camper trailor, but i have a nicely built offroad trailor for camping gear. Towing with the wrangler creates many more problems than most on here due to it's poor towing ability from the very short wheelbase. I have had to do many weight distribution changes to get it towing just right, even for the hwy. I have found that by placing my large full heavy esky and my Drifta DPOR kitchen, water & heavier camping equipment to the rear of the axle makes it tow much better. The general rules i have been told are:

1) that you need to be able to lift the drawbar by hand even if only just, if you can't do this then there's too much weight. Sure some people can lift more than others ;) but i found that once i re-arranged everything so i could lift it (80-90kg weight) it towed much better than when it was 100kg+. If you can't lift it by hand, then you're in trouble if you snap off the jockey wheel during a recovery ;)
2) trailor tyres should be 2-6psi lower than the towing vehicle for sand. Because most trailor tyres are carrying less weight than the towing vehicle the trailor tyres pressure need to be lowered more to get the same footprint. Apparently, with the same footprint, or slightly larger than the towing vehicles, you're less likely to 'feel' the trailor back there on the sand. Trailor tyres can be lowered very low without fear of rolling from the rim because they are not steering.

I've been bogged only once with a trailor, and i didn't lower pressures at all :)