Robert Bills
Explorer
While reviewing a previous thread concerning offroad trailering techniques, I found a comment by Martyn Davies that has me thinking about the length of the tongue on my '46 Bantam T3-C:
When I designed my coupler, I didn't give much thought to the length of the tongue other than it needed to be long enough for my trailer tub to clear the rear corners of my CJ-7 at 90 degrees. It never dawned on me to determine how the distance between coupler and trailer axle would affect trailer tracking.
The axle width on the Bantam T3-C (also WWII MBT, T3 and later M100) is the same as the MB, GPW and early CJ jeeps. Tire size was the same on jeep and trailer, and these "short coupled" trailers followed the track of the early jeeps quite closely. However, I tow with an '83 CJ-7 with a wider track than my Bantam, and run 35x12.50/15 tires on the jeep and 700/16 military NDCC tires on the trailer (31"). The trailer tracks with a slightly tighter radius in turns, which hasn't been an issue thus far, but may well be in the future.
As you can see from the photo below, I set up my Bantam to interchange couplers and can easily change the distance from coupler to axle by using different length square tube. So my question is, what is the math I need to use to calculate the appropriate distance from coupler to trailer axle so that my Bantam will most closely track my CJ-7?
Thanks in advance for any help, and hopefully the formula won't require the calculus that I haven't used for the last 39 years. :yikes:
As far as tracking goes the AT tracks very close to the vehicles path, it has a lot to do with the distance from the coupler to the axle. . . .
When I designed my coupler, I didn't give much thought to the length of the tongue other than it needed to be long enough for my trailer tub to clear the rear corners of my CJ-7 at 90 degrees. It never dawned on me to determine how the distance between coupler and trailer axle would affect trailer tracking.
The axle width on the Bantam T3-C (also WWII MBT, T3 and later M100) is the same as the MB, GPW and early CJ jeeps. Tire size was the same on jeep and trailer, and these "short coupled" trailers followed the track of the early jeeps quite closely. However, I tow with an '83 CJ-7 with a wider track than my Bantam, and run 35x12.50/15 tires on the jeep and 700/16 military NDCC tires on the trailer (31"). The trailer tracks with a slightly tighter radius in turns, which hasn't been an issue thus far, but may well be in the future.
As you can see from the photo below, I set up my Bantam to interchange couplers and can easily change the distance from coupler to axle by using different length square tube. So my question is, what is the math I need to use to calculate the appropriate distance from coupler to trailer axle so that my Bantam will most closely track my CJ-7?
Thanks in advance for any help, and hopefully the formula won't require the calculus that I haven't used for the last 39 years. :yikes:
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