Where is the balance spot of a Vega? (C of G?)

[John Denney]

Hi all, I will shortly be lifting my Vega onto its refurbed trailer and I was wondering if anyone has any advice regarding how to get the correct nose wheel weight. The towing guide says no more than 100Kg on the nose wheel so I guess the fore / aft position of the keel on the trailer is fairly critical.

I have been tapping the keel and it seems like most of the weight is in the solid front section and the rear section sounds hollow - just wondering if anyone has found a "good" position for it to sit nicely on the trailer? ie directly over the axles or just in front..... or relative to the drain plug....

I am told it weighs 2.3 tons (empty) is that correct?

ps if your trailer bangs like mad when towing, its because the damper needs replacement - I did not know they had a damper and nearly replaced the whole coupling at great expense!

Thanks in advance.

John

 

[pjacobs55]

Hi John,
In the Yahoo files section, in a folder called "Vega Lines Plans" is a file called "Stowage_Plan.jpg. It has a center of gravity point indicated that I believe is correct. On my trailer I placed this point over the forward axle of the two axles and it towed well enough. Not sure what the hitch weight was, but there's a sneaky way to do that with a bathroom scale here:

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www.curtmfg.com

Peter
#1331 'Sin Tacha'

 

[johnadenney]

Hi Peter, many thanks... just what I needed.

 

[n4lbl]

First let me say that I have absolutely no towing experience. None. I
have read though that the tongue weight should be about 10% of the gross
trailer weight. So,,, for example if the boat's weight with "stuff" aboard
is ~6,000 pounds and the trailer's weight is ~2,000 pounds then the tongue
weight should be about 800 pounds.

I do hope I haven't taken something simple and well understood and made a
mess of it.

Alan
Minke #2505