Round Trip With A Prius And Trailer

[Angel And The Wolf]

I believe I've come up with a way to kill the gap for highway travel, and provide enough tongue for turns in town. Leave the tongue unattached to the trailer box frame, but run it through a sleeve that IS attached to the trailer, so that the trailer proper with it's axle, can slide forward and backward on the tongue. Do this with a reversible winch
( https://www.lowes.com/pd/Trakker-1-H...Winch/50332867 ) controlled with one on two push buttons inside the car, (one to draw the trailer box frame forward, and the other to draw it rearward.). When on the highway, where turns are gentle, push the "F" button to pull the frame box and carrier up to the rear of the car. Winch locks in either direction. Coming up on an exit? push the "R" button to extend the trailer to provide clearance for in-town turns.

[pete c]

i have also pondered the problem of a close following trailer and tight turns. Your idea is a good one, so long as trailer weight is low.
it becomes a problem with heavier loads or with absent minded drivers that forget to slide the trailer back.

I think the best solution is some sort of flexible shroud that fills the gap.

Another idea is to move the hitch forward. sorta like this.....

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/s...3&action=click

Many vehicles have roof racks these days making the 5th wheel hitch mount simple. I would think that a lightweight aerodynamic 5th wheel trailer would be practical and might even make highway mileage better.

[slowmover]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

Yet that's the world all nonprofessional drivers have to deal with: driving for the rest of us isn't our full time job, it's what we have to do to get to our jobs. I know how to get from home to work with minimum gas burned, but I don't start work at 4:00 am and other realities keep me from getting there that early and waiting. If our lives let us pick days, times and routes like "serious" drivers, most of us wouldn't be driving, period. Commuters don't get to pick start or end times in much of a meaningful way, but hypermilers apply the same attention to their part time job of commuting that they do to their full time jobs. They develop and apply those monkey skills into habits and reflexes that can easily reproduce efficiency deep inside the very traffic that you make it a requirement to avoid. Because we don't get to avoid it.

My commute was the same from 2003 to early 2018, and when I came here in 2011 my first tank testing these monkey skills brought me from a 20-22 mpg "normal" up to 28. Over more than 41,000 logged miles miles, those monkey skills took an EPA rated 19 mpg car to an average of 29.7 mpg- in conditions that your entire plan is built to avoid.

As to letting the drivetrain drive, in the rough conditions you can avoid but we can't, a drivetrain can't do the driving because it can't see conditions and predict needs. Building skills that can be applied anywhere isn't a stunt, it's a necessity.

You’ve entirely missed the point. Skill at the wheel is irrelevant. It’s in executing a plan that can be replicated over & over. The only way to chart what works is against an unchanging backdrop.

Thus, constant use of cruise control. Set travel speed.

Thus, planned breaks decided the night before.

Thus, a set destination.


No variance.

What time one departs, etc, is part of that plan. EARLIEST departure enables higher MPG as traffic, etc, is less. LATER departure is a penalty.

What’s to overcome from the sluggish habits of being a commuter is situational awareness. Use of mirrors. Learning how to stay away from other traffic. For our purposes here, minimizing any associated FE penalty for deceleration and eventual re-acceleration (use terrain; study method computer follows: my big truck is best to allow all re-accel by re-engaging cruise; my pickup isn’t).

This is what all truck drivers are taught: form and follow a plan. The single difference here is in maintaining those 1/10’s MPG.

If there is something striking about today’s traffuccversys forty years ago, it’s t the prevalence of pack behavior. Which is to be avoided at all costs. Risk, and mpg.

.

[Fat Charlie]

No, the point is that those plans only apply to full time professional drivers of big rigs. The rest of us live in that chaos that your plans painstakingly avoid. Our start times and end times are dictated to us, and the only things we have to deal with the chaos are awareness and driver skill.

Originally Posted by slowmover

What’s to overcome from the sluggish habits of being a commuter is situational awareness. Use of mirrors. Learning how to stay away from other traffic. For our purposes here, minimizing any associated FE penalty for deceleration and eventual re-acceleration (use terrain; study method computer follows: my big truck is best to allow all re-accel by re-engaging cruise; my pickup isn’t).

I'm sorry, but didn't you just say that skill at the wheel was irrelevant? It seems like what you just described. And for those of us not driving fully laden 18 wheelers, pack behavior helps. Your tips are great for training full time drivers of heavy trucks, but they don't transfer very well to lighter vehicles where driving isn't the end in itself.

[Angel And The Wolf]

I've pretty much settled on the "slide Forward" model. I'm looking for ideas for pulling the main box and axle fore and aft while under way. Any ideas? I'd like to stay with electric.

[Angel And The Wolf]

One idea is to mount a 12V DC gear-motor on the tongue just behind the coupler, and run a piece of 1" by 36" all thread with nuts welded to the main frame, and screw it fore and aft. Being a screw, attached to a gear-motor, there would be no slippage.

[Ecky]

Here was my solution to the air gap. It worked really well, and I could still achieve greater than 70mpg at the right speed with this trailer.

[Fat Charlie]

That is awesome.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

That is awesome.

Best part, I made it entirely out of scraps. The sides were corrugated plastic salvaged after an election won by a politician I didn't care for.

[redpoint5]

Brillant! I see it's a Harbor Freight trailer too, so I know you didn't spend too much on that part either. Took me forever to assemble mine, but happy with it so far with a few minor improvements to it (better castors, better wiring, creativity in making the sideboards)