Switching From Hensley To SwayPro

goducks10 wrote:

LVJJJ wrote:
Good grief, reading about all the hassles of Hensley etc., sure makes me appreciate my Equal-I-zer, a rather simple answer.

Make me appreciate my 5th wheel.

5'ers are not without their woes.
There are chucking and clearance issues to deal with. The height of the newer pick up truck beds are the source for constant clearance headaches

LVJJJ wrote:
Good grief, reading about all the hassles of Hensley etc., sure makes me appreciate my Equal-I-zer, a rather simple answer.

Make me appreciate my 5th wheel.

Roadtech wrote:

camperforlife wrote:
You also need to be pretty straight on the tongue or it does make it harder to latch the bars.

Couldn't you, before latching the bars, pull the trailer to a level, straight place, and then latch the bars? You couldn't do that with a Hensley design.

You probably could with a shorter, lighter trailer. I have a 35 footer with 1500lbs of tongue weight and I've been in a few spots that were just impossible to get square on.

The spots were also where the site was sloped so the tongue was nose down and the front of the truck was up on the road making it impossible to lift the back of the truck to remove or latch the bars properly. I ended up hitching without the bars resulting in dragging the tongue some getting up on the road.

I will add that this happened when I was pretty new to the hitch and I've learned a few things that have made these kinds of situations easier and safer.

I would not go from a Hensley to a BO sway pro.

https://www.etrailer.com/question-116001.html

We tow our 32.5' TT with an Equalizer 4 point 10k. Even with a little lube on the L brackets to keep it quiet and the required lube on the sockets, it's solid and straight.

Good grief, reading about all the hassles of Hensley etc., sure makes me appreciate my Equal-I-zer, a rather simple answer.

I can't compare the 2 hitches but I am very happy with the Blue Ox sway pro with a 35' overall trailer. It took a few time to get it right but I don't notice any sway, wind,trucks moves the truck and trailer together.

it is very quite unlike the Equalizer 4pt. Easy to hook and unhook, you do need to raise the tongue to connect and disconnect so I consider a power tongue jack a requirement. Easy to hook up and if you needed to move to straighten up I don't see an issue unless your tongue weight is way higher then you non WDH hitch rating.

IdaD wrote:
A 7500 lb Airstream behind a HD truck? While I don't know the specifics of OPs truck, if it was my truck I'd drop the trailer on a ball hitch and see how it did.

Hallelujah...............only in an RV forum do people claim you can't use a vehicle for what it was intended for, without over complicating it.

camperforlife wrote:
You also need to be pretty straight on the tongue or it does make it harder to latch the bars.

Couldn't you, before latching the bars, pull the trailer to a level, straight place, and then latch the bars? You couldn't do that with a Hensley design.

Roadtech I have the BO and I love it but I will tell you it does have some hitching idiosyncrasies you may want to weigh against hitching the Hensley.

The BO does require that you lift the tongue quite high to remove the pressure off the BO to easily engage the rotating latch. You have to do the same to SAFELY disengage the rotating latch. Failure to do so can flip the latch wrench out of your hand. You also need to be pretty straight on the tongue or it does make it harder to latch the bars.

Roadtech wrote:

gmw photos wrote:
Good morning Roadtech. Looking at your profile, you have an Airstream ? You might want to run this by the fellas over on Airforums, if you have not already. On Airforums you'll find a wide variety of comments from running with no WD hitch at all, up thru the HA/PP crowd, so you'll get a lot of opinions and experience.

I have read many of the threads on Air Forums on sway and hitches.

I wish there was a way to test out hitches with your rig before committing to one. Unfortunately, that's not possible. You have to commit, go through the installation, and then hope it works. If it doesn't, it gets expensive.

Yes it does. I witnessed this first hand. I'm hoping to recover some of my losses this spring when I list the BO on my local CL.

Regarding trailer length, there is definitely a positive relationship between increasing length and sway...as the sail has more area. I think most with trailers 26' and under have decent results with these hitches...as long as the trailer is loaded properly and is a proper match for the TV.