Reese WD Hitch failure

Frozen001 wrote:

Campin LI wrote:

Frozen001 wrote:
after the got everything on, in order for the chains to reach the snap up bracket, this “dealer” had to have the truck/nose of the trailer so high the tires were barely touching the ground, and the jack was fully extended with about 3” of wooden blocking under the jack. This was the last link… This is when I stepped in a told them no way, the set up is wrong. The said all they had to do was remove two washers and tip the head up more. I said no way, the head was already level, and removing the washers would result in the head having forward tilt.

Not making excuses for the failure of the shank but I really think you got way too much upward force on that shank coupled with it being set at the outer hitch pin hole rather than the inner one.

Like I stated in your other post, the angle the head makes means nothing. The dealer had the right idea. The head should have been tilted toward the truck. You may have overloaded that shank.

With a 6200lbs trailer? and it was not on the outer hole, the inner hole I made them move it. And like I said before tilting the head toward the truck would result in it leaning toward the truck which I have no idea if this is a valid configuration.

Here sharing something I think I've learned from other threads about w/d systems- please someone correct me if I'm wrong:

There's a tremendous amount of force applied to the ballmount shank when using a w/d system. It's a measurable and predictable number depending on configuration etc. I wouldn't know where/how to begin calculating the force in pounds, but I believe it's considerably greater than that exerted by simple tongue weight.