Move battery to rear bumper???

[tuckerdog1]

We have a 2012 X213

I'd like to take some weight off the tongue, so I can carry a generator there when needed. I was thinking moving the spare tire & the battery to the rear bumper would buy a good bit of weight. It would also free up the space on the tongue for the generator.

I am no electrical whiz. This seems like it would not be too difficult. However, I've learned to ask people who know, before I jump in with both feet.

What problems am I likely to run into?

Thanks,
Tuckerdog1

[djtho1]

On that small of a camper it has the potential to radically change how the camper handles. You would be talking removing at least 100 pounds from the tongue and placing it on the rear bumper. It could cause some sway and general handling issues, especially since you are towing with a fairly light vehicle. What type of generator are you thinking of? If you are talking about One smaller one, say a Honda 2000, could you have a bracket built that would place it above your battery? If you did that and moved the spare to the back you would have roughly the same distribution of weight. Just remember to factor it in to your GVWR calculations as well as your axle loading. Every change you make changes all of these numbers. When we had a travel trailer, I used to have a tray on the back of mine that I carried a Honda EU 3000 on, but it was built to tie into the frame and sat above the bumper. I also had two six volt batteries up front, so the load was still fairly evenly distributed.

[Tunce the traveler]

He's not towing with a light SUV, the Touareg weighs in at 5K and handles up to 7,700 lbs.
I'm also thinking of adding a Honda 2 or 3,000 but I don't know how I'm going to do it yet.

[Rustic Eagle]

Originally Posted by tuckerdog1

snip...... I was thinking moving the spare tire & the battery to the rear bumper would buy a good bit of weight......snip

The first thing I would do is confirm where your existing "loaded" weights fall with a CAT Scale visit (confirms existing tongue weight, etc.)...., and knowing the weight of the genny in advance would be helpful.

As far as the rear bumper, most are rated at 100lbs maximum, and that's under static conditions.

CAT scale how-to: http://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f3...v-tt-3871.html

Bob

[djtho1]

My apologies for being inaccurate. What I meant by that is that any SUV, in my opinion, is going to be more succeptable to changing the weight distribution, and thus the handling characteristics, of a trailer more so than if he was towing with a half ton or 3/4 ton truck. It has a short wheelbase, so if he were to have a light tongue weight by moving those items to the back without immediately putting a generator up front I feel he will have handling issues. It just needs to be carefully thought out.

[SilverEscape]

I think the max allowable tongue weight on the Touareg is 600 pounds? Or is it 660? Regardless, I know there isn't a chance we can keep our 2015 X213's tongue weight under that. We are high 700's. So you could be doing yourself a towing favour by lightening up the tongue. As mentioned above, I believe the manual says 100# max for weight on the bumper.

[tuckerdog1]

Touareg tongue weight is 770 lbs. I don't think the spare tire + battery will come to 100 lbs. Might be close, but I think it will be less. The generator is a Champion 2800, which specs say weighs 84 lbs. So I'm thinking it could be a pretty good swap weight wise.

Would there be any wiring issues for the battery?

Thanks again,
Tuckerdog1

[RedHorse1]

Originally Posted by Rustic Eagle

The first thing I would do is confirm where your existing "loaded" weights fall with a CAT Scale visit (confirms existing tongue weight, etc.)...., and knowing the weight of the genny in advance would be helpful.

As far as the rear bumper, most are rated at 100lbs maximum, and that's under static conditions.

CAT scale how-to: http://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f3...v-tt-3871.html

Bob

I'd say Rustic has a point. A visit to the scale would tell you a lot.
Moving 100# from the tongue to rear bumper could upset the tongue to TT weight ratio. Moving 100# from the tongue to rear bumper could lighten the tongue up to 200#.
The CAT Scale is your friend.

[tuckerdog1]

My apologies for being inaccurate. What I meant by that is that any SUV, in my opinion, is going to be more succeptable to changing the weight distribution, and thus the handling characteristics, of a trailer more so than if he was towing with a half ton or 3/4 ton truck. It has a short wheelbase, so if he were to have a light tongue weight by moving those items to the back without immediately putting a generator up front I feel he will have handling issues. It just needs to be carefully thought out.

Would have to agree with that. In situations when the generator was not used, I'm sure I could find enough "stuff" to load up front in the TT to bring the tongue weight up. Could even just keep a mount for the spare tire handy, but keep the tire up front unless the generator was needed.

Tuckerdog1

[octane]

I had a similar idea on my 154bh, tongue is around 420#, when I removed the battery it went down to 370#, put it on the back bumper it removed another 30#. so I will be putting in an AGM battery in the back storage compartement. I should be closer to 11-12% tongue weight. only problem I can see is the voltage drop from a longer wire run, so I will be using 6 gauge wire

[SilverEscape]

Originally Posted by tuckerdog1

Touareg tongue weight is 770 lbs.

Ok. We excluded the Touraeg specifically because the manual only allowed 600 (I'm recalling now maybe it was 616) tongue weight. I know some people were comfy going with 10% of Max allowable tongue weight. But I'm a manual follower. Ha ha.

[Tunce the traveler]

Originally Posted by SilverEscape

Ok. We excluded the Touraeg specifically because the manual only allowed 600 (I'm recalling now maybe it was 616) tongue weight. I know some people were comfy going with 10% of Max allowable tongue weight. But I'm a manual follower. Ha ha.

In Europe the Touareg tongue weight is 100 lbs. more than what the states use as the rating. The Europe rating is correct it's over 700 lbs. From what I was able to gather the insurance companies for the states lowered it.

[SilverEscape]

Originally Posted by Tunce the traveler

In Europe the Touareg tongue weight is 100 lbs. more than what the states use as the rating. The Europe rating is correct it's over 700 lbs. From what I was able to gather the insurance companies for the states lowered it.

That could be. I'm in Canada and we don't have the same sue rate as the USA, so why they would lower ours too, I have no idea. I had thought that the Euro tongue weight was also 600ish since they tow with lighter tongues than we do. But I could easily be remembering incorrectly since it was last summer I did the research and was researching a few SUVs at the time.

I was trying to find an SUV that could tow our X213 since what we had, couldn't. Good thing we went for a truck though as our tongue is over 770 anyway and we'd have been out of payload in a SUV of that size.

Sure like the look of the Touareg though.

[skylarkva]

So weight issues aside, it's fairly straightforward. I just finished moving a pair of golf cart batteries to the rear bumper of our 264BH. In our case I couldn't get the tongue weight down to a comfortable range without moving those 2 heavy parts to the rear. I had a shop fabricate a tray out of angle iron to fit the bases of the two boxes, used square d-rings to hold it in place, and strapped the batteries around the bumper. Ran new 2 gauge wires to frame ground and up the existing access holes to the spot under the fridge where the power goes. Added a 50 amp breaker similar to the one the factory mounted on the front frame to the rear frame.

Make sure you tie in the existing wiring to the front, the emergency brake and tongue Jack if you have one rely on that power. I also reinforced the bumper "just in case" with the brackets from mount-n-lock.

https://www.mount-n-lock.com/product...e-safetystruts

Worked out great, just finished a 1500 mile trip with the new setup and its rock solid.

[ctbailey]

Originally Posted by tuckerdog1

Touareg tongue weight is 770 lbs. I don't think the spare tire + battery will come to 100 lbs. Might be close, but I think it will be less. The generator is a Champion 2800, which specs say weighs 84 lbs. So I'm thinking it could be a pretty good swap weight wise.

Would there be any wiring issues for the battery?

Thanks again,
Tuckerdog1

Tucker: let the "weight guys" battle that fight out.

As for the electrics... just determine the gauge of the wire running to the battery right now. Buy the next size heavier gauge wire (cable) and use that heavy stuff to run to the tail of the camper. You can leave all your connections where they are, probably under the nose cap of the trailer, and just splice in and extend back to the rear of the camper. That would be the simplest and quickest, and you wouldn't need to be digging around in the coach and drilling additional water-inlet holes. Wrap the cables in some nice 1" split loom, cable tie the whole assembly to the trailer frame rails, and you're good to go. Just figure on something like $0.80 per foot, and you'll need a positive line, a negative line, and probably another hot line to feed the trailer A-Frame jack. (And maybe another smaller wire that the converter uses for voltage testing.)

Whatever weight changes, both the battery and the genny will need additional steel to hold them secure. I'm sure you can figure out how to over build to get the tongue weight back to where you have it now.

This stuff isn't rocket science, but you need to respect it.

[bono]

By any chance, please could you post some pics with the mod? I will need to do this on my future White Hawk.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by skylarkva

So weight issues aside, it's fairly straightforward. I just finished moving a pair of golf cart batteries to the rear bumper of our 264BH. In our case I couldn't get the tongue weight down to a comfortable range without moving those 2 heavy parts to the rear. I had a shop fabricate a tray out of angle iron to fit the bases of the two boxes, used square d-rings to hold it in place, and strapped the batteries around the bumper. Ran new 2 gauge wires to frame ground and up the existing access holes to the spot under the fridge where the power goes. Added a 50 amp breaker similar to the one the factory mounted on the front frame to the rear frame.

Make sure you tie in the existing wiring to the front, the emergency brake and tongue Jack if you have one rely on that power. I also reinforced the bumper "just in case" with the brackets from mount-n-lock.

https://www.mount-n-lock.com/product...e-safetystruts

Worked out great, just finished a 1500 mile trip with the new setup and its rock solid.

[tuckerdog1]

As for the electrics... just determine the gauge of the wire running to the battery right now. Buy the next size heavier gauge wire (cable) and use that heavy stuff to run to the tail of the camper. You can leave all your connections where they are, probably under the nose cap of the trailer, and just splice in and extend back to the rear of the camper. That would be the simplest and quickest, and you wouldn't need to be digging around in the coach and drilling additional water-inlet holes. Wrap the cables in some nice 1" split loom, cable tie the whole assembly to the trailer frame rails, and you're good to go. Just figure on something like $0.80 per foot, and you'll need a positive line, a negative line, and probably another hot line to feed the trailer A-Frame jack. (And maybe another smaller wire that the converter uses for voltage testing.)

Thanks CTBAILEY. This was what I was concerned about. I know next to zip about working with electrical dodads. I have heard about voltage drop, and was afraid that could be an issue here. Seems beefing up the wire guage is an easy fix.

I did just check my owner's manual for the Touareg. It has been in the shop for a week ( adios $3K ). The manual says 770 lbs tongue weight.

Tuckerdog1

[SilverEscape]

Originally Posted by tuckerdog1

I did just check my owner's manual for the Touareg. It has been in the shop for a week ( adios $3K ). The manual says 770 lbs tongue weight.

Tuckerdog1

That's awesome! I did some more research today as I thought I was going bonkers and it seems that there has been conflicting info and some people's manuals say 770 and others say 616. Some people had a new hitch sticker sent to them by VW. The one I read last summer said 616. I guess it's lucky for me it didn't say 770 anyway though as then I'd have a new Touraeg in the driveway and would be over the RAWR and over payload. LOL

[skylarkva]

Originally Posted by tuckerdog1

Thanks CTBAILEY. This was what I was concerned about. I know next to zip about working with electrical dodads. I have heard about voltage drop, and was afraid that could be an issue here. Seems beefing up the wire guage is an easy fix.

If you go this route and extend to the front, keep in mind that you only need to run the positive wire. Your ground goes directly to the frame, you want to bolt it on as close to the battery as practical.

[skylarkva]

Originally Posted by bono

By any chance, please could you post some pics with the mod? I will need to do this on my future White Hawk.



Thanks!

Yea, I'll try to remember to get a few pics tomorrow.