Questions About Trailering  Tongue Weight, Tilting, Wheel Size, Bearing Buddies .  Do I lessen the tongue weight?  Postedby: GeorgeHaycraft  aybe yes, maybe no. You've probably got close to 800 lbs. of boat, trailer, and gear back there. The rule of thumb is  about 10% as tongue weight, or about 80 lbs. If the tongue weight is too light, the boat trailers "squirrelly". You can  check the tongue weight pretty close by putting a bathroom scale under your tongue jack wheel. If you're in the ball park,  leave it. My boat is far enough forward to keep the tilt joint closed. Oh, be sure to pull out the spring loaded locking pin  from the joint before attempting to use it. As for pushing the boat backward, that doesn't depend as much on tongue  weight as it does on how the weight is distributed between the bunks and the rollers. If almost all your hull weight is on  the bunks, you might not be able to push it at all. You want quite a bit of hull weight on the rollers. The bunks are there to  support some, but mostly to keep the boat from tipping sideways. You want to make sure you have the right rollers. You  don't want the "shoulders" on the rollers pushing into the hull. You may need to change them for very shallow "V" rollers,  or flat rollers. I like to just barely loosen the roller brackets, and tap them upward with a hammer some, and retighten. If  I can just barely rotate the roller with both hands, I call it about right. You may also consider adding a roller or two, if you  have any vacant trailer cross members available in the midline. With enough rollers, and this weight balance between the  rollers and the bunks, I can, with some effort, push my hull backward.  M  I leave the bow strap attached to control the descent of the boat. I first loosen the strap about two feet and relock the  winch. Push the boat back until the strap is tight. Then loosen another foot or so, then relock, and push the boat back.  Continue in this fashion until the boat is headed back on its own and the trailer is beginning to tilt. Control the process  with the winch handle. Nice and smooth is the ticket here.  To reload the boat, you need to "pretilt" the trailer. I lift the tilt joint and wedge a plastic wheel chock (~6" wide) into the  gap. This pretilt needs to be enough to get the rear most roller contacting the bow below the "brake" of the bow curve. That  way, as you start to crank the boat back on, the bow will continue to push the rear of the trailer down. As soon as you see  this happening, time to remove the chock.  For lawn launching, have the wheels chocked, or have the trailer attached to your tow vehicle. For lawn recovery, I do  neither. The winch sort of pulls the trailer under the boat. This also works well at a public ramp when your boat has slid  off the side of the trailer in the driving lane. (Wet round bottom boat without side guide bunks or a tie down strap) DON"T  ASK. At least it was a Boston Whaler. PC wouldn't have survived.  I tow trips of a thousand miles one way, in addition to forty to sixty mile trips one way to local lakes. I changed to 12"  wheels. Fewer RPM's on the hubs and bearings.  Here's what I do with my trailer bearings. I have a good local trailer and hitch shop, and I also have a good local trailer  supply store. Both are run by solid grease-under-the-finger-nails types. After reading a few good internet articles, I  decided to do my bearings myself, and have done so for a number of years now. Even my good local shop once failed to do  the final set up on the lug nuts on one wheel. Fortunately, I checked. Anyway, here's what I do, based on what I learned  from these people.  I replace bearings, races, and grease every 2000 miles. Every 4000 miles, the hubs get replaced too. I always carry a spare  new greased hub with new bearings and races when I trailer. I use the clear lexan type of "bearing buddies". I don't add  grease, though. I feel my hubs at every rest stop to see if ones temperature has gone up significantly. I always  launch/recover with my hubs dry, utilizing the Performance trailer's tilting tongue.  The clear lexan "bearing buddies" allow me to see the color of the grease inside my hubs. As long as it's the original color,  it's fine. If it turns cloudy gray, it's contaminated with water and time for a bearing job. My trailer and hitch shop say they  love customers with bearing buddies. Those customers are responsible for a lot of their business. They add grease, blow  the rear seals, and have to come in for another bearing job. As they told me, the rear seals blow at about 5 lbs. pressure.  The spring loaded disc in the bearing buddy is supposed to pressure the grease to about 3 lbs. A good stiff squeeze on a  long grease gun handle can easily cause a pressure spike within the hub of more than 5 lbs. There goes the rear seal. Also,  the disc in the bearing buddy almost never sits square across the chamber. It's usually at some angle, which causes the  98 Do I add bearing buddies, grease, and replace hubs?  Do I put larger wheels on? 