Reese WD Hitch failure
Hello, Today I went with my father to take delivery of his new 2014 Windjammer 2618W. When we arrived at his house we experienced a catastrophic failure of a Brand NEW Reese 1200/12000 Weight dist...
Forum Discussion
Campin LI wrote:
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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.
VintageRacer wrote:
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The angle of the head means very little or nothing in terms of the amount of force developed by the bars with the bars under the same amount of pre-load (ie, lifted the same distance by the brackets). The angle of the head is mostly used to simply set the height of the bars along side the trailer frame rails. I mostly set the angle to have the bars horizontal when snapped up into place.
Brian
These statements are almost 100% completely wrong. The angle of the hitch head is what determines how much lifting force is developed by drawing up the chains. If two hitch heads were set up using the same number of chain links under tension, and one had more tilt on the head, then that one would transfer more weight and and develop more lifting force.
I agree that the angle of the head is used to set the height of the bars along side the trailer frame rails but that is just a byproduct of the process. The more tilt you have on the head, the more WD force you develop with a given number of chain links. If you set yours up to have the bars horizontal when snapped up then you need to tilt the hitch head rearward or forward if you need or want to adjust the amount weight transfer.
So YES the angle of the hitch head does mean just about everything when determining how much lifting force is developed by by the bars with the bars under the same amount of pre-load (ie, lifted the same distance by the brackets).
Barney
