2013 Suburban 2500 Hitch

Here is an image by John of the GMT900 receiver to frame

Note the 'notches' and that it is welded to the frame rail...plus notice
that they are NOT little notches either

Look at the red line from the 'frame tie' bubble...there is more air
than metal at the notches

rcarpe06 wrote:
I have a 2012 3/4 ton (2500) Suburban. I tow with a TW of 1050 pounds without any problem. According to the owner's manual and GM, the 2500 series Suburban is capable of weight carrying TW - 1000 lbs. and weight distributing TW - 1500 lbs.

IT's not going to break instantly, but it will sooner when over the specification

Issue is that, since the marketing folks insisted on not seeing the torque tube
the designers hid it behind the bumper as the main support for said bumper

In doing so, it now has both towing duties and bumper duties...AKA crash duties
which means crumple zone duties

That then required the designer to put in notches in the receiver torsion cross
tube bracket welded to the frame

Going over the specified limit will have a greater loading that will focus on
those notches (stress raisers). Those notches are designed to be weak areas
and bent/crumple/break/etc during a crash where the forces are in an instant

BUT...higher forces than they spec will also play on those stress raisers to
ultimately crack/bent/break/etc...think 'tin canning'

A potential failure mode would be to have the bumper and receiver torque tube
fall off or come loose or ??? when those or a single bracket cracks/breaks/etc

rcarpe06, the vehicle 1500 pounds, the receiver 1000.

I have a 2012 3/4 ton (2500) Suburban. I tow with a TW of 1050 pounds without any problem. According to the owner's manual and GM, the 2500 series Suburban is capable of weight carrying TW - 1000 lbs. and weight distributing TW - 1500 lbs.

Many people tow with GMT900 SUVs over the 1000 pound TW and even the 600 pounds of TW weight carrying. 700 pounds dry TW - I wouldn't worry about it.

There are no aftermarket ones because every 2007+ GM SUV has one already. I contacted Curt, Duraburb and CanAmRv. All say no aftermarket will work, but CanAm says they recommend reinforcing the OEM receiver.

GM put a class V hitch on my 2013 Silverado 2500. If they only put a class IV hitch on the Suburban, it's probably because of some limiting factor like the GCWR of the Suburban. GM put a class IV hitch on my previous vehicle, a 2002 TrailBlazer. Using a WD hitch increased the allowable tongue weight. Class V hitches have a 2 1/2" receiver.

sportsman16 wrote:
Last year I upgraded from 1500 Suburban to a 13 Suburban 2500 with 6.0/6 spd/3.73. It does fine with my 6,000 lb loaded Jayco 27 BH. I am looking at upgrading the trailer to larger/heavier Jayco Jayflight or Eagle. The models I am looking at have posted dry tounge weights around 700+ lbs. I realize I am limited by the crappy hitch that is not replaceable and limited to 1000 lbs. I do not intend to go over this but am wondering if others have experience towing up near the rated limit. Any thoughts? Anyone towing 800-900 lbs tounge weight with this hitch?

IMO about the only safe way to do this with this non replaceable receivers is to keep the potential tongue wt under the receiver stated limit by taking 13% of the GVWR of the TT as the max tongue wt that you might see. I can easily see a 700# dry tongue wt. exceeding 1,000 lbs. I'm in sort of the same situation with my Van and it's note because of frame, RAWR limitations, but w/o going to something like the 2K/20K Pull Rite which is available for my Van almost all the aftermarket receivers are limited to 1.2K/12K. This limits my TT to around the 8K max GVWR.

Larry