B&W Continuum Weight Distribution System w/ Sway Control - Underslung - 16K GTW, 1.6K TW

Video Transcript for B&W Continuum Weight Distribution System Review

Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer. And today, we are taking a look at the B&W Continuum weight distribution system. Now, this is gonna be available in four different configurations. And really, it's gonna come down to your shank or the style of trailer you have. So, you can get it in a two-inch shank here or a 2 1/2-inch, depending on your truck. And you can also get it with or without a cylinder extension and that's gonna be for your standard trailers versus your underslung trailers.

Now, if you've seen the traditional weight distribution system, you're probably looking at this and saying, "That looks a little bit different." And it is. And it's really addressed some of the issues that you have with your traditional style of weight distribution and, I think, fixed a lot of them. And the main thing that you're gonna see that's different is the size. Normally, you have bars that extend to really get that tension and this one works a little bit differently by using a hydraulic cylinder and a pump. And that way, you can adjust exactly where you want it to be.

So, you do get a little bit of adjustability as well. Now, normally, when choosing a wheat distribution system, you have to match it to your tongue weight. And a lot of times, you're gonna be matching it to the gross trailer weight of whatever travel trailer you have, and that's not the case here. This one has a range of a tongue weight from 600 to 1,600, so it's gonna work with a bunch of different travel trailers and that's gonna be really nice. So, if you ever upgrade down the road, you can take this Continuum and put it on there.

Even if the tongue weight changes, you're still gonna be able to use it. Now, as far as your gross trailer weight rating on this, it's rated up to 16,000 pounds, which is really gonna open up the window for whatever size travel trailer you may have. Now, your traditional-style bars are gonna use a head that's very similar to this. This one attaches a little bit differently, but it's gonna give you kind of the same idea. It's going to tension here on our brackets.

And those are gonna need to either be bolted, clamped down or welded onto your trailer. And sometimes, that's where it can get a little bit tricky, as far as finding space to mount that up. This one, being a little bit shorter, mounts kinda right behind the jack and normally right in front of your propane tanks and you really only need 2 1/2 inches of clearance to be able to make that work. Now, one of those added benefits to the new design of this is gonna be storage. So, traditionally, when you're done towing, you're gonna have to store those bars, whereas this one lives on the jack. They give you a mount. And that way, when you separate this, you can place it here and that's gonna keep it from dragging or getting in the mud and just keep it nice and clean and in a nice spot. Whereas if you are at a campsite or at home and you're done using your traditional style, you're gonna have to store these somewhere, so you'll either find a spot in your truck or your RV. But again, these do have to go somewhere, they can't just live on there. Setting up a traditional style also requires adjusting the pitch. That way, the ball's gonna be at a nice spot when that's tensioned up. Well, you can see, our Continuum already has that pitch. So, when you hook up and use that hydraulic cylinder to add pressure, it's going to stabilize that out. So, that's one less thing that you have to worry about. To adjust height on a standard one, you are gonna have to take these bolts off and retorque them down, whereas we just have quick-release linchpins here that allows us to raise and lower as necessary to match the height of our truck and trailer combo. The traditional style, also, hooking up, you're gonna have to get your arms in place and then you're going to ratchet or pry the chain to get that tension in place, and this one just makes it a lot easier. One side here, I can just simply load this into place. We're gonna see that this clips in, you know that it's secure. And then all that's left to do, get the rest of your components set up, pump it to your required psi and you're good to go. Now, speaking of that pump, this is gonna mount onto your trailer and you have a little bit of customization, as far as where you can mount it, which is really nice. And the great part about this is it's gonna be no maintenance. And to get your pressure, pretty easy. You have a thumbscrew and you just close this up. You can also extend the arm. It's gonna make pumping that much easier. (pump clacking) (cylinder squeaking) And what that's doing is drawing that cylinder up and allowing that pressure to kind of offset to the head, bringing our truck to a nice level stance and also, just taking that pressure and allowing our truck to do a little bit more work with this trailer. Now, traditional styles, you're relying on tension and prying those chains over, where it's really hard to recreate hydraulic pressure, and that's where this one really shines because you can adjust that tongue weight. Now, for our application, 1,000 pounds seems to be pretty proper. So, I can go ahead and store my handle. And as I bump down one more time to get this in place, it is gonna bump that up. No my worries, you can get that dialed back in by just slowly releasing the thumbscrew and we can bring it right there. There's also a jam nut here so you can tighten this down and it's not gonna be moving if someone bumps it. So, another just added benefit of the Continuum is gonna be built-in sway control. Now, your typical system here, you can see this ear that's off of here, you're gonna be needing to pick up an additional sway control arm that's gonna just kind of act as a strut to kinda balance it out. And the best method of preventing this is obviously having your trailer loaded properly, but sometimes roads are not very forgiving. So, having built-in sway control, which means, with our single pivot, it's gonna want to keep it in line for you and keep the trailer straight. It's one less thing that you have to worry. You just set this up and go. No extra components to pick up to add on. Now, not only do you not have to pick up an extra component for that sway control, but it also means that you can back up no problem with this. Whereas some of your other styles, with that added sway control, means that if you jack knife the trailer, it's going to damage it. So, it's really not suggested. Sometimes, you can go in a straight line, but as far as turning, it's kinda off the books. You have to unhook your bars sometimes. And that's just a little bit more headache that you don't have to worry about with the Continuum. Now, with the arms, you are using friction on a traditional style to really get that weight off. And with that friction, you have metal on metal with those chains, you're gonna hear some noise. So, if you've ever heard a truck or driven a truck with weight distribution and you made that turn, you're gonna hear that (imitates metal squeaking) clunking and it's perfectly safe, but it is kind of concerning. This one doesn't have any noise, so it's just a little bit nicer of a towing experience overall. Now, what makes the Continuum be able to do what it can do in a small package and get the job done is the fact that these light flex technology bars are made from composites. So, that allows you for five times the flexibility of your standard steel but a similar strength. Another thing that's really great about this system is the overall setup's really easy. It's really gonna work with a lot of different travel trailers and you have a little bit of customization. But overall, you can have this knocked out pretty quickly all with a 9/16 wrench, so it makes it really easy. There's no drilling required, all the brackets will bolt up to your trailer, so you are able to get on the road quicker. But also, once it's all set up, everything is on our driver's side. So, the adjustment here is gonna be done pretty easily. And also, separating the head, you have a nice little latch to unlock that, but you don't have to go side to side, getting both bars set up, so you're gonna be able to hit the road quicker. I think, really, overall, you have a lot of things that make this stand out over your traditional that B&W's really done a good job to eliminate. But also, something that you really don't consider is if you buy this and you change travel trailers regularly, that's fine, this is gonna work with it and be able to adjust to that. And even if you go to a gooseneck or a fifth wheel later on and a different style, you can sell this Continuum to someone else that has a travel trailer and they're gonna be able to use it. It's not stuck to the trailer. So, that's something to think about long term as well. It goes also saying that this is made by B&W, which all of their products that we've handled here, I can speak highly of and mostly it's just the quality that you see right out the gate, everything is really nice. Fit and finish, the instructions, they've really done their homework to make sure that this is an awesome system that's gonna last a lifetime. So, going along with that, you do have a lifetime warranty and it's made in the USA so the quality really shows and you're gonna notice it out on the road. Now, speaking of that, we're gonna take this out on the road with Shane who's used a traditional style for a while and this is his camper, so we're gonna see what he thinks about it. We just got back from our test drive, we got to see a bunch of different bumps, highway driving and some back road driving all while pulling the Flagstaff, which is Shane's trailer. He's used to towing this regularly and has had a traditional style of weight distribution on it for many years. He's also been the test subjects and test driver for testing out all the different brands of weight distribution here. just for our own information here at etrailer. So, Shane, compared to all of the weight distribution systems you've used, what do you notice about this one What stands out I think what stands out the most is, one, how easy it is put on. Two, with being able to test this against all the other ones that we did the test on, you can definitely tell the difference of how it rides, the feeling you get in the truck, the difference between having spring bars on, to chains, to this system, the Continuum. So, as far as this system, I really like it. I think it's higher on the scale of weight distribution hitches I would put on my vehicle. How much noise did you have while turning Like Brad said, this is actually my camper. When I bought it, the weight distribution that came with it was the Equal-i-zer, which are spring bars that go on L-brackets on the frame rails. When you turn, those make a lot of noise because the friction in that is what is the sway prevention. With these, your sway prevention is actually the pressure on the bars that are already on there, so you don't get any noise. You don't have any loud banging or clanking around when you're turning corners or backing up or anything like that. So, that's another great thing about this system. Now, while out on our drive, we made a few stops and we we're able to adjust the pressure on the fly. So, it was interesting, we started at about 1,400 psi and it rode pretty well. It settled out quick. But some of the bumps, you can definitely feel it. It's a little bit more sturdy and especially, I was in the back seat, you're gonna feel that a little bit more. Now, bringing that pressure down is as easy as a turn of a knob and that really smoothed it out. Now, you do have a little bit of a ripple effect, but it's less jarring. So, you can really dial it in, while out on the road, at the turn of a knob or just the pump of the handle. So, that's a great part, too. It's not necessarily you're stuck with what's there. You can really dial it in to make sure you get the best, comfortable towing experience possible. To get everything set up, we are gonna need to have the trailer and the tow vehicle here on a nice, flat surface and we're gonna wanna make sure that we level out our trailer as perfectly as possible. So, I'm gonna get ours lowered down to where it's perfect based on our level. Now, if you don't have a level on your camper, you can always put a level on the coupler of the frame of the trailer or you can measure the front and back of the trailer and make sure it's nice and even. So, now we're gonna take our head unit and put it in your hitch and we're gonna make sure that we have everything aligned on this end because we do have some adjustment here. And what we're gonna do is measure from the ground to the top of the coupler, and then from from the ground to the top of the ball. Now, what you're looking for is them to be pretty close, but the ball should be about an inch to two higher than the coupler. And mostly that's just for when it attaches here, it's gonna kinda weigh that truck down and we'll be able to even that out. Now, to get your adjustments, you can always take these linchpins out. And then you can pull these pins, which these are nice stainless pins here, heavy-duty, nice grip on them and you can adjust accordingly. You do have a decent amount of adjustment here, so make sure that yours is set up properly. Now, based on our measurements, we can stand to go up one, so it's gonna be pretty easy to do. We'll just take our linchpins out. (metal clanks) And then we'll just slide this up and get our pins back in place, and then we'll remeasure. (metal clacks) (linchpin clicks) So, now that we're happy with our measurement, we can start installing the weight distribution on the trailer side. Now, we're gonna start by putting the pump in place. Now, before we get our pump installed, we do need to check for some clearances. And the reason is the pump is going to be attached to the hydraulic cylinder, which is gonna live right in this area. And you do wanna make sure that it's gonna be compatible, so double-check. You're gonna take a measurement here. You wanna have at least six to nine inches in this space. You do have some adjustability, but it does need to go in here. You also need to have at least 2 1/2 inches of space here to allow our bracket to mount up. So, if you need to move your tanks, by all means. You might have to move the tray that they sit in, but it's gonna be dependent on your trailer. And we also need to determine exactly where we wanna mount our pump. And this has a nice bracket here with our bolt that we're gonna be using. This is gonna sandwich around the frame of the trailer here. Now, when placing it, obviously you wanna make sure that you're gonna be able to tighten it. And you may be concerned about the handle being in the way, but not to worry. As long as you have enough clearance to slide this out, you're able to pump from this angle. So, kind of figure out what works best for you and then we'll just go ahead and get our clamp here. You'll see that this bottom one does have to go in the bottom hole and then we'll just press up and then figure out where we need to align this to tighten it around our frame. You can see, here's our breakaway switch. We shouldn't have any problems. I'm gonna just make sure that I'm not pinching these wires. And you can just start a couple threads here with that flange nut and that's gonna allow us to slide that up, and you'll see that this has just a groove portion here. So, if we kinda get this set up, we should be able to drop our pump in from the outside. (metal clanking) So, I'm just gonna push up from the bottom and determine the tightest spot that we can get this bolt to pass through to where it's going to hold this in place and sandwich on our frame nice and tight. So, with that in place, I'll go ahead, put our other flange nut and just hand tighten this in place for now. Now, the whole process is really making sure that you're happy exactly where it's mounted, so you may need to move some of your components. We went ahead and moved our battery box and just kinda centered it up to give us that room. But overall, you're gonna wanna try to stay away, obviously, from your propane. That way, you're not making interference when using the handle. And this one I like because it leaves us just a little bit of space here. And when we need to use it, we can extend this out, making it a lot easier. So, we're able to really gain access to our pump whenever we need to. Now, once you're happy with where you've decided to mount it, make sure that you have this nice and squared up with the frame, you wanna tighten this evenly, too. So, you may need to put a wrench on the other side, but 9/16 is gonna get this snug down. (driver tool roaring) And I'm just gonna kinda alternate side to side, just to make sure that we're evenly tightening this. And also, just double-checking to make sure everything's squared up. We don't want this crooked or this bracket to not be parallel with our other one. Now, that we're happy, I've gone ahead and just snug those down, alternating on each side. I'm gonna come back with my torque wrench and just make sure that these are properly torqued down. Now again, you may need to put a wrench on these inside ones here just to get that properly torqued. You can find the torque settings in the instruction manual, so just follow those. (torque wrench clacks) Now, your pump might not have already been attached to your bracket. Ours was, so I obviously didn't have too much issue getting this mounted up even with this, and I kinda like the fact of having it on here 'cause you know exactly where it's gonna be. But if you need to, you can go ahead and get your pump mounted up to your bracket. At this point, we're gonna be mounting up our cylinder to our top bracket here. So, we're gonna pass this up through where it's gonna mount. Just gotta make sure that all your cables are kind of in a nice, safe place, and you might have to modify a little bit. Your cylinder's gonna kinda sit there in an angle and you're gonna want this fitting on the back towards the trailer side. And then we're gonna have our breather tube here off to the right, or at least in this configuration, where I have it. So, we're gonna go ahead and get this bolted in. So, we have our large pin and a cotter pin, but we need to pass it up right here. So, let's do that now. And our clearance issues came from this plate. It kinda went all the way down. Your trailer may be different. But I just went ahead with an angle grinder, cut this out and filed it down. Now, you're gonna wanna make sure that you still have room for your lines to pass through. And also, if you are cutting, make sure you go back with a little bit of paint so that way it doesn't turn into rust long term. (metal clanks) So, we'll pass this up and then we'll get this aligned. It can get a little cumbersome here, but it should drop into this section. Grab your pin, pass this through. (metal clanking) And then once passed through, finish it up with that cotter pin. Now, if you do have an underslung trailer and you've picked up that kit, you do have an extension that you're gonna be attaching at this point. So, if you have that extension, make sure you put that in and cotter pin it up. Now, ours is just a standard trailer so we don't have to worry about that, so we'll move right along. We're gonna take our long bolts and our bracket here and this plate's gonna just slide over, and this is how we're gonna clamp up to the frame of our trailer. So, go ahead, you can put that in both sides. (metal clanks) And you'll see that this is slotted, that's gonna allow us to really get this cinched up nice and tight against the trailer, but make sure that your bracket is centered up, too. So, you can measure from each side and slide that over as you need to. And you're also gonna wanna have it a little bit further back if you can. If you don't have clearance issues, the further back is gonna be better. It's just gonna put that cylinder in a slightly better position. We have our brackets for the bottom here. And depending on your trailer coupler height, that's gonna determine the way that you put the bracket. So, ours here, if I was to slide this up, you can see, even once we tighten the nut, it may not cinch it down all the way. So, what you can do is you can go ahead and flip that over and that's gonna allow that nut to engage and tighten down. So, at this point, we're just gonna kinda put these on and hand thread and leave it loose for now. And you can do this on both sides of the trailer. If you had to remove your propane tank tray, you can go ahead and reinstall it at this time. I will recommend, though, getting this kind of aligned. Again, just double-checking your measurements side to side, and again, going far back as possible. Now, once you're happy with that, you can go ahead and snug it down. We're gonna be coming back with a torque wrench, so you don't have to get crazy here. And again, same as before, alternate, and I'm gonna try my best. Since this is elongated to where we can slide it, we're gonna put this against the frame on the outside here nice and taut. (driver tool roaring) And once you have everything lined up, your brackets are even with each other, the bolt's go in perfectly perpendicular with your bracket, you're gonna wanna go ahead and use the torque settings found in the instruction manual to get these torqued down. (torque wrench clacking) Now, we need to retract our cylinder, so we're just gonna turn this thumbscrew until it's tight and then get our handle and pump this up. We should have our airline not attached, so this will draw up. It's not gonna build pressure on the gauge. Just go until it bottoms out. (pump clacking) (cylinder squeaking) Now, you're gonna wanna make sure that your lines are run properly. We have our vent tube here. And when putting it into a push-connect fitting, if you've never done this before, you really want a nice, square cut. We sell tubing cutters and that's gonna make sure that it's not gonna pinch this down and create a rough edge and cause an air leak over time. So, get a nice, clean edge, all the burrs kind of taken off of there so it's smooth. And your push-connect, you just simply push in. You should kinda feel it snap in. Give it a quick tug just to make sure that it's gonna be locked in place, and you can go ahead and make sure that it's attached to the cylinder in the same way. Now, at this point, let's go ahead, we'll get our trailer raised up and we're gonna attach it to our tow vehicle and get it hooked up. (jack whirring) Now, once you're coupled, you're gonna wanna raise your jack up enough to get the rest of our assembly in place. (jack whirring continues) Now, this is our load bar assembly. We have this slid in place. You're gonna want the pin towards our hydraulic cylinder and we're gonna get that mounted up first. So, you can pull the linchpin out and then pull these pins out. Now, these little center sections here are gonna be some bushings that kinda tighten up, but we're gonna be feeding this through. So, you can leave this one on. (shoes squeaks) And we're gonna start off with the middle measurement here and slide this through. Make sure that bushing passes through the opening. (metal clanks) And then on the other side, we're gonna feed this from the outside and get our linchpin in place. And you'll know that you have it pushed in all the way when that hole's accessible to be able to put the pin in. If not, you may have to adjust that a little bit. But now that we have this attached, we can go ahead, slide this and get it into our head assembly. Now, there is this pin here and we're gonna be locking that into place. So, you can go ahead, take this, slide it back. So, with that attached, we're gonna go ahead, open up our thumbscrew on the pump and we're gonna look for about five inches of the shaft to show. So, open that, it should start dropping. If you need to, you can kinda help it along, too, and go for that five inches, give or take. It might not drop down as easy as you think, so you might have to kinda work at it to get this to drop down, but that should get easier with time. And once it's all assembled, it's not a big deal here. So, what we're gonna do is put our load bar assembly into our head. And you'll see that we have this pin here that's spring-loaded and that should drop into here. (metal clanks) We'll hear that click in. So, that's a nice visual and audible queue that you know that it's locked into place. Now, if you are struggling to get this in at any angle, you can go ahead and move the pin on the cylinder and that's gonna adjust the angle a little bit and make it a little bit easier to pop in. Now, we'll get ready to put our fork holder in place. And this is gonna go around the jack and pretty much just hold up our load bar assembly when we're not using it and make sure that it just doesn't drag on the ground because it's gonna be suspended by the cylinder. But this front portion here is gonna sit in the gravel or mud or pavement, it doesn't really matter, this is gonna allow it to hold it up in place, just to kinda keep it a little bit nicer. So, what we're gonna do is lower your jack down. You don't want to necessarily raise it up, but just get it to where it's flat on the ground. (jack whirring) And then what we're gonna do is uncouple the load bar assembly. Now, there is a tab here, you're just gonna push this up and that's gonna undo our spring-loaded lock in place here. And so, this is kinda what it would look like before. And pretty much all our fork holders gonna do is just create a little resting spot for this to sit up here. Now, we wanna determine a good spot for it to where it's still easily able to be moved to attach. So, what I'll do here is take our U-bolt and this is gonna work with two-inch jacks. If you have anything larger than that, unfortunately, there's nothing currently for it. But I'm gonna go ahead and just get my 9/16 nuts kinda just hand tighten on here to where it'll be snug. And that way, I can really kinda mock up exactly where I wanna mount it. So, at this point, you can kind of lift this up. You should have a gap in between the head assembly and the jack to be able to just slide this back and have a resting spot for it. Now again, you wanna kinda make sure that you're kinda playing around with it to where it's easy to hook up at a good height for you. And I'm pretty happy with this overall. So, I'll go ahead, I'll put this back up so there's no weight on that fork assembly. Just make sure this is nice and straight and squared up against it, and we're gonna go ahead with our torque wrench and use the torque settings found in the instruction manual to get this torqued down. Now, to make it a little bit easier to torque this down but also make sure that this is not gonna cause any clearance issues, I'm gonna raise my jack up. (jack whirring) (torque wrench clacks) Now, at this point, we're gonna want to kind of mimic getting ready to hit the road and tow. So, you can hook all of your accessories up like you would, your safety chains. And the main thing that you're looking for is that that you won't have any interference with the lines. Or just kinda pretend like you're using the system without hitting the road because you wanna make sure that you're able to live with it. But other than that, that's really gonna do it for the installation portion. Now, we do need to dial in the weight for our psi and we're gonna show you how to do that, too. Now, the main thing I look for is that our lines are tucked decently enough to where they're not gonna make contact with anything, but also you're gonna wanna make sure there's no chaffing that's going. So, as you're going down the road, you don't want this airline to burst or your hydraulic line. Now, these are super durable, but also, over time, that vibration can wear this out and minimalize the usability of your weight distribution if they become damaged. So, make sure they're nice and clean, zip tie them up as necessary. Now that we have everything hooked up, we're happy with the clearances, we're not seeing any issues, we're gonna go ahead and detach everything. And that way, we can start getting our measurements for our truck and we can dial that in on our pump. Now, to determine the amount of psi that we're gonna put on our pump, there's two different ways that you can kinda get that measurement. And depending on your vehicle, you may or may not have an FALR, which is your front axle load restoration, which is the amount of pressure that's put on the rear and transferred to the front in a percentage to determine that it's gonna be back to a normal towing capacity. I looked in our owner's manual of our 2017 Silverado 2500 HD and could not find anything. So, the other way that we've always done, airbags or any weight distribution style, is to measure the front wheel well with it uncoupled. So, we've separated it from our trailer, we're gonna measure from the ground to the top of the fender. Now, if you do have your FALR, you're able to use the chart that's included in the instructions to determine exactly kinda where you need to be or at least get you in a go or no go gauge. So, B&W does require a minimum of 50% and no more than 100%, so let's get this dialed in. We're gonna do, again, the old-school method. So, uncouple your trailer and make sure you're chocked and go ahead and measure your wheel wells. Now, to ensure that you're accurate on these measurements, make sure that your truck and trailer are loaded just as you would before hitting the road. So, from the ground to the top of our fender, we're looking at about 42 1/4. So, let's hook up our trailer. Now, once we put our trailer back on, and we can see the truck start to squat, and now our measurements at 43. So, we're gonna try to pump that psi back to restore it back to that original number. So, get everything coupled up on your trailer and then we can start pumping it up. Make sure your thumbscrew is closed all the way, and that way we can start building pressure. Then take your handle and this extends out, making it a lot easier. You just kinda, you can see this little notch, it clicks into place, just twist that, it extends it out and then we can put it to this part, and we have some mobility here, which is really nice. So, we're gonna just start pumping it up. (pump clacking) (cylinder squeaking) A couple of things to point out. Now, if you've gone ahead and pumped it up and you're still haven't restored that front wheel well measurement back to its original setting and you're maxed out on your cylinder, you can go ahead, release the pressure, drop this down, and then you're gonna move that pin to the lower one. It's gonna give it more travel to be able to adjust that load. And if you've put too much pressure in it, not to worry, just simply undo our thumbscrew, you can see it dropping nice and slow, to where you can really fine-tune exactly where you want it. Now, once you are perfectly happy with your setup, I recommend taking it out and driving and see if you want to adjust a little bit more to make some differences. And once you have it dialed in, you're ready to go. If you're using the same tow vehicle, you'll be able to use the log that's included in the instruction manual. That'll give you the date, the vehicle, the trailer. If you have your FALR percent, you can put that in there and also that psi rating. Now that our psi dialed in, I'm really excited to take this out and test it. So, I'm gonna go ahead and get my propane covers, my battery box back into place and tie up any loose ends that you might have, then start enjoying your new weight distribution system. And that was a look and setup of the B&W Continuum weight distribution system.