I had a strange series of events that led me to an "Ah-Ha!" moment today that I think needs sharing!
My first clue that something was up started when I opened the tongue box and the back of the lid caught on the trailer face while opening. It had never done that before and after giving it a good wiggle I determined that it was screwed down tight so I was mighty confused.
A bit later it was time to move the trailer. I went to lift the stabilizer legs and they would not budge! after a serious crank I got one leg to finally come up. It was way overextended (you are NOT supposed to do that) and I couldn't imagine what had changed to make that happen. Sure enough the OTHER stabilizer was in the same overextended condition.
Scratching my head it dawned on me. We had put the stabilizer legs down BEFORE we used the tongue jack to level the trailer! I had jacked up the front end and transferred a bunch of weight to the rear stabilizer legs. And guess what? Now that the stabilizer legs had been forcefully raised, the tongue box lid was all back to normal.
By having the front AND the back of the trailer fighting each other I was slightly bending the frame and pinching the tongue box lid!
So here is the lesson I learned. Level the trailer THEN lower the stabilizer legs. Trust me, cranking the tongue jack handle gave me NO feedback as to what I was doing, which was lifting both wheels off of the ground and transferring ALL the weight of the trailer onto the little teeny stabilizer legs!
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