I am in the middle of transforming a 18' boat trailer into a quad hauler. I was able to make the deck 14' long. At the moment I have the axle placed at 61" from the back of the deck. The tongue needs to be shortened yet. It is still like 4' long. Any ideas?

 

The axles should be behind 60% of the trailer. That way, when your loading the trailer, more than half the weight should be in front of the axles. That way, you have more weight to hold down the front of the trailer.

 

I'm assuming that this is single axle, not tandem?

Depending on how wide you have made your deck you will need most of that 4' of tongue so you can turn without jack knifing. Are you planning on moving the location of the axle or planning on shortening the tongue?

Boat trailers are set up with the axles further back to allow for the fact that most of a boats weight is carried in the rear. As your trailer sits right now, you are going to carry almost 3/4 of your load in front of the axles - provided that your load is centered on the axles. Even if you were able to cut all 4' of the tongue back, you'd still be running about a 20% tongue weight. If you keep the trailer full length, you should be able to move the axle forward as much as a foot from the back and still have a decent tongue weight. Even with the 4' tongue, you really need to figure your weight distribution based on where the axle is in relation to the 14' long deck. The axle will need to remain behind the centerline of the deck area.

Unless you are hauling two similar sized quads, I'd be tempted to keep things where they are. Since your sig shows a sport bike and a big utility, just put the lighter quad up front and the heavier one on the rear and it should balance out well. If you err on tongue wieght, it's better to have too much rather than too little, especially if your tow vehicle is up to it.

Try loading the bikes on the trailer as it is now. Figure the total weight of the trailer and the two quads - say 800 for the Pol, 400 for the sport bike and 600 for the trailer. You should have between 250 and 300 pounds of tongue weight. Tongue weight is usually figured at 15%.

Jaybee

 

I only have 1 axle. I built it so that I could carry 2 quads. I really don't carry the sport quad yet. Things could change on that though. I wanted to be able to carry 2 big 4x4's another like my 800. My brother and I might go on trips to ride. My wife has yet to learn the sport bike so she will be some time before we will go on trips with it. I currently don't have a deck on the trailer. However I laid some plywood down and pulled the 800 up on it. Sitting at the very back of the trailer. The 800's front tires are just past the center of the axle. It looks like a normal trailer almost. Just way stronger. It has absolutely no twist. As for the tongue. I think I only need to take a foot or so off. I'll have to play with that idea and see what kind of turning radious I have. Maybe I'll jack knife the trailer and see if the bed corner is close to the bumper and go from there.

Thanks for your help.

 

A 4' tongue on a 14' trailer just isn't that bad. Most are about 3.5' and that's a little short, if your turning radius is tight and trailer is of a decent width and your hitch doesn't stick out, you may hit the corner of your vehicle with the corner of the trailer just by turning while going forward and not backing up. If the 4' tongue is already there I probably wouldn't worry about it.

 

If you're going to do some math like this, I would recommend that you weigh the trailer before you assume anything, the 14 footers I used to sell weigh 1,400 pounds, well over twice that 600 pound estimate. Also, tongue weight percentage varies greatly, anywhere from 4% to 20%. It all depends on the tow vehicle. A Ford F-350 would not be set up the same as a Jeep Grand Cherokee where the back end is real plush. I would highly recommend that you base your balancing off of the amount of sag that your tow vehicle has.