Changing battery location to lower tongue weight.

[reeman]

The original single axle Winnie Drop trailer is a beast when it comes to achieving sensible balance. As are many teeter totter designed single axle travel trailers.

Like all single axle trailers getting the best weight distribution is a challenge to say the least.

Our tongue weight is too high because of the battery location. This unfortunately also limits us to only carrying one propane tank which is a disadvantage off grid.

Here is a pick of the original Winnie Drop 1780 floor plan and a possible safe and secure relocation space for the AGMs. The big question is can the trailer then be modified to vent the chosen space and how best to do it?

Anyone here with experience moving batteries other than lithiums on this type of trailer? and are there battery mounts available for the project that can be screwed to a wood floor or will I need to have them constructed out of metal or weld some up myself? OR go to a wrecker yard and grab them off a pair of old a size 24 battery mounts of old wrecked pickup trucks.

It seems that the original layout plan of the Winnie Drop trailers was to not have batteries on the hitch frame so just perhaps the placement was originally conceived to be behind the small bathroom on the 1780 floor plan.

The problem is venting any possible gas escape, today's sealed AGMs are not as much of an issue if properly secured and monitored. Other more advanced fiberglass designs have slide out battery mounts that go inside the trailer in a safe manner with some venting to the outside and even battery heating for the very best of the all season trailers. Bigfoot here in Canada does make trailers that are all season with the option of internal battery.

I see no reason why this model of the original Winnie Drop 1780 cannot also be redone to have the batteries in a more sensible location than overloading the A frame hitch. This modification would free up the extremely small space available to make two twenty pound propane tanks possible on the frame at least just one thirty pound, which for us would be a real bonus off grid to say the least.

The picture below shows where the batteries could easily be moved if the trailer wiring is reconfigured properly.

Putting the batteries under the dinette/bed just behind the front of the trailer seems to be a bad idea as that would not make much of a difference and put even more strain on the longest part of the trailer frame connection right behind the tow A frame while going over bumps.

ALSO and most importantly the trailer is stock 200 lbs heavier on the slide out side than it is on the door side so it seems that the original design only makes sense if the the majority of the cargo of batteries is on the door side closer to the real left wheel. This picture says it all as it was the one sent out to promote the trailer directly from Winnebago to the advertisers.

I marked up in red lines the possible relocation sites for a pair of size 24 AGMs that weigh in at appx. 150 lbs and will need at least 15 lbs of framing and extra wiring to relocate to a better location than sticking them on the small 3500 lb rated tow frame that the trailer is OEM spec.

This modification is next years upgrade to this unit and if the finances are good will be to lithium batteries and a new inverter electric system that is capable of lithium charging. OR somehow rewiring things to completely bypass the old FLA charging setup that came stock on the trailer when it was originally built.

 

[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.

 

[reeman]

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.

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.

 

[bigb56]

Can't help you with venting but for mounting can you just place the batteries in plastic battery boxes and strap them down to some Footman loops? If worried about them sliding you could drill some pieces of angle and screw them to the floor then set your battery boxes inside the angle and strap them down.

 

[reeman]

A pair of these marine mounts makes a great deal of sense IMO
https://www.stevestonmarine.com/Attwood-Group-24-Battery-Holder-90925?language=en&currency=CAD
Then there is the question of running new high amp leads to the front. It does not make sense to change the existing factory high amp as it is in good condition and well secured. The bonus of doing it this way is the possibility of creating a dedicated junction box on the front of the trailer using no room or weight to speak of. A front junction does make it possible to hook other 12 volt sources to the rig without changing the OEM high amp wiring design.
I will draw it up and post the process as we move the batteries this fall.
The utility of being able to carry around and plug in a lithium backup seems to be the cats meow type of setup for off roading. Install a simple polarized source switch and Bobs your uncle! Simply put a dipole off switch on the new leads to the AGMs in the trailer and plug in the portable lithium which will be light as a feather compared to the installed AGMs.
The portable pack can be of any type of battery even a pair of golf cart six volts at 400 amp hour if we use our truck instead of the car to off grid.

Changing over to a setup that can also take a portable battery pack is by far the best option and illiminate the nonsense of running a freaking generator if camped for more than a few days off grid, best of both worlds IMO when it comes to camping.

 

[BirchyBoy]

Have you weighed your tow vehicle without the trailer and then with it? If not, it’s a good place to start so you know where you’re starting from before you do too much. Making it too light will have an adverse affect on handling.

 

[reeman]

Have you weighed your tow vehicle without the trailer and then with it? If not, it’s a good place to start so you know where you’re starting from before you do too much. Making it too light will have an adverse affect on handling.

I have indeed. It is close enough to specs loaded and leaves at least 400 lbs for the added trailer hitch weight. It also has an air bag suspension with a factory trailer kit rated to 5000 lbs. We use LT tires on our SUV and keep them up at 40 psi so we are setup properly with the car to tow and have a good safety margin over a stock tow vehicle setup.

The trailer's hitch weight is the load problem especially with the teeter totter effect of having the batteries do a fulcrum effect so far from the point at which the trailer is on the single axle. Moving the batteries is the only way to sensibly reduce the dealer's forward heavy setup.

If we put anything much in the front cargo space then it becomes even more unbalanced. So we put no more than 75 lbs of cargo forward and back load under the bed which requires cargo ropes to keep stuff from moving forward during braking. My goal is to reduce the tongue weight to a more sane level and side to side balance the unit far better than stock.

The OEM lippert torsion axle bent due to internal rubber failure on the slide out side first which is really telling and the tires were cambered out on both sides but far worse on the slide out side.

The dive effect of having a 100 lbs over stock hitch weight does not lift the tires off the ground with the SUV. But with out a distribution hitch the setup is not good at all on rain because it definitely lifts the front tires of the tow vehicle going over swails and thus reduces traction too much hitch weight. The fact that this problem only increases when going over dips and swails is the major concern. Here on Vancouver Island roads with excess lumps and dips are everywhere to be found. Indeed Victoria has piles of rust free junkers parked everywhere with suspension and brake problems because of the roads on Vancouver Island. You can tell the affluent neighborhoods because there are at least 3 cars parked waiting to have suspension work done on them. Even BC transit loses more money here trying to fix bus suspensions, it is that bad. If a street gets paved it simply means that it will get dug up again in a few months especially in the up and coming communities like Langford, out to Sooke and where we live in south Saanich.

Funny but as soon as one leaves town it feels like a different world until one encounters another construction zone.

So changing the way this trailer pulls is a very good way to prolong the life of the trailer frame structure and the new spring axle we just installed last season. The rubber suspension that came stock was terrible and downright dangerous as is the way it was set up by the dealer who set it up.