This Old Trailer: Installation of a Weight Distribution System

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Installation of a Weight Distribution System Episode of This Old Trailer

All right today we are going to install part number 66154 from Reese. This is our weight distribution assembly their SC series. All right what this weight distribution does is actually picks up the ton weight of the trailer and shoves the weight over the axle of the trailer and also on to the front axles of the towing vehicle. All right, to begin our install what we are going to have to do is get our truck and trailer on level ground. It is really important that you have the trailer as level as possible. We got on the concrete here so it is not too hard. However if you are in doubt or on gravel or some uneven surface to install this basically you want to run your trailer up maybe 1/ 4 inch to 1/ 2 inch higher up front just to give you a little bit of leeway to make sure. All right the next steps involved is going to find the shank. :45

The weight distribution does not come with a shank assembly so you are going to have to purchase that separate. We are going to have to find out how much of a we need or rise. As you can see here the bottom of the coupler is higher than the hitch itself so that means we are going to need a measurement for the rise position. So we are going to measure from the top of the hitch itself here. We can go out to here with the shank and we are going to measure up. If we do that we get about two inches right there. What that is going to tell us is we are going to need a shank that needs a minimum of a two inch rise. Now one other thing is when you set up the weight distribution they actually have you set the trailer up about 1 inch to 1/ 2 inch higher than the ball starting off. So actually you probably want to go ahead and add a couple of inches just to make sure on our rise so we will say we will go for a four inch rise just to cover that aspect of it too. 1:38

In this case we are actually going to use part number 3210 and we will go ahead and just install it on the vehicle now and we will attach the ball to the head assembly and then we will start piecing it together. Okay we got our shank, lets go ahead and install it to the hitch. Okay install our pin and clip. All right we got that set. Lets go ahead and install the ball on to the head assembly itself and then we will start working on the trailer. We will go ahead and install our ball on our head assembly. All right lets go ahead and install this. Now this is going to be a preliminary set up. Now on our set up we are going to need to go about 26 1/ 2 inches. This will get us in the ball park so go ahead and put our bolts in. One thing to make sure of is that the balls are two different lengths so you want to use the shorter one on the bottom. Okay and then we will put our washers here with the teeth to actually mesh in here and kind of adjust our head assembly. Go ahead and put our bolt in. Okay it is 26 1/ 2. 3:28

Okay now we have got to adjust the head to make sure that the teeth are fully engaged. Now what we are going to do is just snug this up just to keep everything from moving around. Okay we are going to turn our attention now to the trailer and install our spring bar pads next. Okay we are going to install our frame brackets. What is going to happen is there has to be a certain dimension from the center of the ball to the outside here. Different weight capacities of springs have different lengths. In our case it is going to be anywhere between 20 inches and 27 inches. 27 inches is going to be just inside of the old propane tanks here okay. All right we will put our bracket on, putting the heavier part to the outside and the thinner part is going to go to the inside. All right get our wiring out of the way and you have to right up to the edge of it. All right next what is going to happen is our spring pad is going to go into place and it is going to go as close to the bottom of the frame as possible just like this. So the bolt that holds it in place is going to be double duty. It is going to go through the pad here, through the brackets, and out the other side just like so. That is how the assembly is going to look when it is all said and done. All you have got to do now is just tighten these two bolts down. All right what we are going to do next is go ahead and loosen up these right here so we can move this head assembly as we need. Okay so we are going to start in a down position and then we are going to put in our spring bar bottom first, then push into the top. We are going to swing it towards the trailer and then we are going to bring the bar up to about within three to five inches of the top of the pad here. We will start the five inch mark and then we will go ahead lock our head in position.6:24

We will double check the other side. Okay once we have got the adjusting done for our spring bars we can go ahead and tighten down these bolts as specified in the instructions. What we are going to do next is take a couple of measurements. We are going to the front wheel here down to the ground to the fender well. We have got 33 inches. We are going to jot that down and when it is all said and done this measurement should be closer to 32 or stay the same. We are going to do the same to the back wheel which is about 35 1/ 2. What we are going to do is go ahead and hook the trailer to the hitch and we are going to raise it up. Okay we backed our truck up to the coupler and we are going to go ahead and lower it back down, we are going latch it, and then what is going to happen is we are going to go back up where the truck and trailer are using the jack, that way it will make it easier to put the spring bars in to place. Lock it in place before we are going to raise everything back up, truck and trailer with the jack, so it makes it easier to put the bars into place. All right, put the bar in label up. Put it in, bring it around and then we will use our leverage bar here. It will fall into place. And just pick it up. Okay we will go over to the other side and do the same thing. Then we will go ahead and lower it and then check our height at the wheel wells. Okay we are measuring about 34 1/ 2 so we lost about 1/ 2 inch which is within reason. Go to the front. We are at 33 inches so that is about as good as we are going to get I think. Okay we will put the caps on. Slide them in like this, up and over. The little clip holds everything in place. All right all that remains is go hook up our electrical and our safety chains and our break away cable and we are set to hit the road. There you have it for part number 66154 from Reese.

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