Quote:
Originally Posted by Lv2Roam2
If you're using spring bars in your hitch assembly do you have the option of tightening them up a chain link or two to gain some more lift? Otherwise we make battery mounting frames from L-angle with holes manufactured in - easy to develop a tie-down frame. A DIY-friend used cabinet metal slide outs (you buy them pre-assembled in different sizes).
The lithiums are a neat option - mount almost anywhere - double the useable amperage at about half the weight - con is the cost and compatibility with your current charging system.
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Certainly going to lithiums eventually is a consideration. However today's AGMs are huge improvement safety wise over the cheap dealer installed FLA setups to say the least. Moving them should better balance the side to side wheel load on the single axle by compensating for the slide out excess on the drivers side. As it is it is a PITA getting things packed away to compensate for the weight difference side to side the best result we have achieved is by moving all the stuff in the trailer compartments to the door side and even that only reduced the slide side difference to 160 lbs but made packing the trailer a night mare for my spouse. So we try to unload the slide out side as much as possible but this makes for a bit of a gong show of shifting things around.
We are well under the trailer overall gvwr so that is not the problem. The problem is overloading of the hitch regardless of whether or not it is used with the WD hitch, which is never a good thing.
And yes we have an eq hitch but in reality this does not decrease the tongue weight it only redistributes the load to the front of the tow vehicle.
Our current situation overloads the suv that we use to pull the rig by about 400 lbs over the GM factory gvwr limit of the car. So taking weight of the hitch setup is a good idea as the tongue weight is over 440 lbs currently and the trailer spec is 350. Thus moving the appx 150 lbs of batteries is the best option available to us with the current setup IMO. The SUV with a WD hitch is rated to pull 5500 but as everyone knows getting over 3500 puts a little too much load on the GM stock drive train of the tow vehicle.
The GM/Chevy 4L60 E is a good piece of gear but putting more than a 3500 lb tow load on the gear is never a great idea. If we had the old 4L80 setup that would be a different story but that also means pulling with a 3/4 ton rated gas guzzler monster SUV or pickup truck.
My main concern is mounting the batteries in the trailer and whether or not Winnebago ever designed an interior battery mount for this particular trailer layout as a dealer installed option instead of cramming batteries in a place where they were never designed to go on the hitch.
The trailer was cobbled together by the original dealer to take two size 24 batteries on the A frame crammed against the aluminum rock shield and so close to the propane regulator that securing the cheap plastic battery boxes is a real amature gong show. Here is a pic of the current setup and as one can see it is absolutely a cludge by a dealer to get the trailer off the lot not a sane and well done job at all. Even a single battery does not fit the frame as designed unless one removes the propane tank which in this case is just plain stupid because the trailer certainly was never designed like a truck camper to have a side mounted propane tank(s).
So perhaps Winnebago in their haste to put a pod style trailer on the market just fudged the hitch length to shorten the trailer overall length. Either way a stupid design if one wants batteries on the front hitch. My guess is that the option of putting the batteries in the trailer was available but the dealers found that everyone wanted cheap fla setups. In this case all the dealer did was cut two pieces of cheap angle iron and flip them up to make a crappy battery mount outside the trailer.
As one can see in the photo adding on a WD hitch was a challenge because of the stupid battery mounts and the cramming of them into a space that they were never meant to occupy in the first place.
Nothing more fun than fixing the cheap crap that other people design like the axle replacement we needed to undertake with the dangerous lippert that failed after far too short a period of time on this rig.