Well i've been needing a trailer for my samurai anyways and i've got an idea. I'll take a pop-up camper, take the axles out from under it and set it on the front of a long flat trailer sideways so the front door faces the rear. Then i'll have room in the rear to park my samurai. I think it'll work great and still be fairly easy to pull with my f150.

What do you think?

 

I'd be loading the Samurai on the front end of the trailer.

 

Your axle placement in your drawing is too far forward and your balance will be off. It is great placement to have your engine weight above the axles but the trailer will be prone to fish tailing at that location.

If you jump up to a 20' instead of a 17' you will have a little wiggle room in vehicle placement to get your balance right... also your nose/tongue is really short in the drawing.

To determine axle placement you want to determine your deck length and put the suspension equalizer at the 60/40% split point. 60% forward, 40% rearward.
The further forward you go the more chance of a fishy trailer, but less tongue weight. The further back the more stable it will be on the highway but it increases tongue weight. Most manufacturers use the 60/40 split.

 

since the samurai weighs almost twice what the camper weighs i figured it would be best to put it toward the back. plus i think the front end would try to come up if i unloaded the samurai and it was on the front.
yeah the drawing isn't exactly accurate. i think in most of the trailers i've seen the axles are a little farther forward than i drew. also the samurai will can be like a foot more toward the rear of the trailer to help even it.

i think with the axles a little more forward it'll be pretty evenly weighted.

 

here ya go!



bumper pull

 

That's the point Colorado was trying to make... You DON'T want the load 'evenly' loaded... You need more weight on the tongue so it'll tow straight. You want to have about 12% to 15% of the trailers total weight as tongue weight.

What you want to do is fine.. You just have to make sure you keep as much weight forward as you can. If anything, you want to move the trailer axles BACK more..

Good luck with the project!

Mitch

 

haha those are awesome but im not trying to spend near that much on this project. eventually i will have something like that though.
yeah i read that backwards. i know all about tongue weight but i'll just have to wait until i start building it to deal with these problems. eventually it'll come down to how far forward i load up the samurai so it'll be kind of adjustable.

 

You would want the axles a little farther back in order to stabilize the load, your camper is only 5ft long or are you mounting it sideways???

 

yeah i'll have to get everything set up before i can tell how far/if i have to move the axles back.

i plan on mounting it sideways if i can find an 8ft. one. if not i might get a 10ft. one and mount it long ways with a longer trailer.

the camper will be about 6ft. or so if mounted sideways.