Spring bar selection
DW and I are looking to upgrade to a trailer with a published tongue weight of 1100lbs. GVWR 9500lbs. We currently have a Reese Straight line 1200lb/12000lb capacity. Are the 1200 lb. bars stout...
Forum Discussion
LarryJM wrote:
Well all I can say is regardless of all the number crunching and potential "smoke and mirrors" stuff I sure would never recommend or consider using a spring or WDH bar rated less than the expected TW and in fact am in the camp of using one even a couple of hundred lbs heavier than the actual tongue wt. If this causes issues then I think it's the trailer with the issue and not the spring bar size selection.
I'm pretty sure at least Equal-i-zer approves of this approach and I would put my money on their analysis and engineers over anything that might be posted here. I admit I haven't tried to read and understand every word in every post in this thread, but would be VERY SURPRISED if any of the like two or three MAJOR WDH Manufacturers (Reese, Equal-i-zer, EZ-Lift) would recommend using a spring or WDH bar of significantly less rating that what the actual TW is and certainly not approaching the 1/2 figure being talked about.
Larry
I agree. This is by far the most reasonable comment. The whole setup is rated for tongue weight and trailer weight. I will stay with the ratings from the manufacturer. I can't see any upside to using lighter bars - especially going to ones rated at 1/2 tongue weight. The downside could be a big mess. No thanks.
