Towing at 100 MPH

I've got a little utility trailer that I use to tow my karts.

It rolls along on two 12" steel wheels with trailer tires. ST rated, 1000# load each, and good for 65 MPH.

That's fine if I never leave Michigan. I'm going to South Carolina later this week.

I thought I'd be able to use a pair of Jeep Grand Cherokee wheels, but even their 70+ mm hub bore isn't large enough to go over the wheel bearing, which measures out at 2.480" - right at the outer edge of the wheel is an undersize counterbore that stops it from going on. Can I just fly-cut that away and install the wheels?

What does everyone else use? I get passed all the time by people towing much bigger trailers than mine.

Cylinder hone it bigger.

I have it on good authority that HF tire trailer tires will hold together at 140 (on a closed course).  When I bought the same trailer 6 years later I hauled my tires around on it for 2 years without incident.  Didn't even have a spare......

The speed ratings are at maximum load. If you are under max load, it probably won't be a problems. 

I put 800 miles on my little trailer with 12" wheels last summer at interstate speeds without a problem. Most of that trip was at 75-80 and the tires held up just fine. Carry a spare and let it eat. 

Most of the time I tow my tire trailer with the 12" tires it is at 70-80 mph. I may have tested it for an extended period at 95-100 with no issues. 

Personally, I'm not convinced I'd want to tow anything at 100 mph.  Doesn't take much to make things go bad really fast at that speed.  With a good, stable trailer and plenty of tow rig for it I'd have no problem with 75 - 80, but I think I'd consider that about the max.  

Couldn't hurt to clean out and repack the bearings with high quality synthetic wheel bearing grease.  Watch out for potholes, which seem to be everywhere right now.  Have a spare and the appropriate lug wrench.  Check the air pressure.

Do those things and you'll be fine.

I've towed at 85+ with a 14,000lbs towpig and the 5500lbs trailer was almost unnoticeable behind. A small car towing a big trailer at that speed might be more scary but that bus absorbed everything.

there are larger trailer rims with wheels already mounted out there. 13" are common, I am certain you could probably find 14 or even 15" if you tried

I have towed a 6500lb trailer in Mexico at 85mph + with zero issues. Mind you it had new tire and recently serviced brakes and wheel bearings. 

Tyler H said:

Couldn't hurt to clean out and repack the bearings with high quality synthetic wheel bearing grease.  Watch out for potholes, which seem to be everywhere right now.  Have a spare and the appropriate lug wrench.  Check the air pressure.

 

This.  Many years ago two friends and I towed our motorcycles from Baltimore to LA on a little utility trailer.  While getting ready to come back, the smarter one among us wondered if we should repack the bearings.  The lazy one (me) talked him out of it.

Somewhere west of Nashville, we pulled off the highway for gas to a 'tink-tink-tink' sound.  Friend and I looked at each other.  "It's probably the chains dragging, right?"  It was, in fact, the tinfoil remains of the hub rattling around.  About 1/3 of the axle was just gone, though the resulting groove did a pretty good job of keeping the wheel in place.  My initial thought was that we could put another bike in the van, it wasn't snowing *that* badly, and I could probably ride my GSXR the final 6 or 700 miles without dying.  It would have to be me as Dyon had broken his collarbone at Willow Springs (it was quite a trip) and it was John's van so why should he have to ride?

Incredibly, in this one light town (there was exactly one stop light in the town), we found exactly the hub we needed hanging on the peg board at the local general store.  An hour or two with a file on the axle stub and we were off.

If 12" wheels are a concern, is there a 15" wheel with the same bolt pattern?

I came here expecting a discussion about drafting...

Years ago I was on Interstate 59 in Mississippi cruising along in my Honda CRX Si at 100 mph. 

Its a really rural area and I was just staying with traffic, which was fairly spread out.  

Two trucks each pulling 1/2 of a double wide trailer passed me up.    

Out of curiosity more than anything I sped up to see how fast they were going.   About 115.   

Those double wides do a lot of flexing at that speed.   Hardly any torsional rigidity. 

I was on 95 south of Jacksonville this month, got passed by a 370z pulling a tiny camping trailer. One of those retro looking teardrop shaped ones.  

He was weaving through traffic, going at least 90. 

Rough math.

  A 12" trailer wheel will turn 918 revs per mile.

A15' wheel will turn app 834 revs pe mile.

 SWAG at tire sizes.

I just don't see the rush.  I drive as fast as anyone, and have the tickets to prove it, but when I'm towing, I take it easy.  Maybe I'm just spooked by all the horror stories and by having a wheel bearing fail on a car hauler some years back.  Triple digit speeds while towing is a recipe for disaster, IMO.

iceracer said:

Rough math.

  A 12" trailer wheel will turn 918 revs per mile.

A15' wheel will turn app 834 revs pe mile.

 SWAG at tire sizes.

At 80, that's only about 1350 RPMs. Really not much for a tapered roller bearing. The G-forces at the tread surface are kind of impressive though at 500+. 

At 100, 1680 RPMs and 800 Gs. 

For those of us that like online calculators. Wheel and Tire Motion Calculator.

The wheel diameter is mostly irrelevant, it's the overall diameter you care about.

HF trailers sold with the 8" rims had about a 16" overall diameter, those with 12" had about a 20" diameter, and your typical open car hauler will have something like 205/70R15s, at about a 27" diameter.  Revs/mile scale linearly with the inverse of the diameter, so the bigger HF wheels are turning ~ 30% faster than the "normal" trailer tires, and the smaller HF wheels are almost double.

I've towed my open car hauler at 75+ through Nevada and Utah (behind a 3/4 ton diesel pickup).  It was uneventful, but the idea of a HF trailer at 100 is pretty scary, especially given that they have apparently recalled some huge number of them for tire problems.

16 "  1266 revs per mile

20"  1005 rpm

27"   746 rpm

chaparral said:

I've got a little utility trailer that I use to tow my karts.

It rolls along on two 12" steel wheels with trailer tires. ST rated, 1000# load each, and good for 65 MPH.

That's fine if I never leave Michigan.

I'm not SAYING that I tend to cruise some of the emptier parts of Route 23 at 90+mph with my Harbor Freight trailer, but I am also not going to deny the possibility of it happening a few times.

Toyman01 said:

The speed ratings are at maximum load. If you are under max load, it probably won't be a problems.

...Oh.

(The box had another automatic trans, a bunch of starters, struts, shocks... more or less I played Tetris with iron and aluminum until it had the highest ratio of metal to air I could get)

Trailer caught air at 75mph on a bridge gap, filled the whole back window with trailer, and bounced the back of the car up when it slammed back down.  Tore one of the big blue-gray straps halfway through.  At least it got the person behind me to stop tailgating.

In reply to iceracer :

I make it 2500 revs per mile. At 60 that is 2500 rpm. At 100 it would be over 4000 rpm which is singing for an unbalanced chinese tire and cheesy wheel bearings. 

bearmtnmartin said:

In reply to iceracer :

I make it 2500 revs per mile. At 60 that is 2500 rpm. At 100 it would be over 4000 rpm which is singing for an unbalanced chinese tire and cheesy wheel bearings.

No way.  2500 revs per mile is a shy bit over 2 feet circumference (5280 feet per mile, divided by 2500), which would very roughly translate to a 8" diameter TIRE.