Straight from B&W

[laknox]

OK, guys. Here's the straight scoop from a B&W engineer. As I contended in another thread, he said that the Turnover Ball base and Companion FW hitch =system=, carries the vast majority of the pin load through the hold-down receiver and into the TO Ball base and to the truck frame. The feet of the Companion =stabilize= the lateral forces to the bed and carry very little of the pin weight. He called them "outriggers, in effect". Doesn't matter that there's a certain amount of tension on the draw-down bolt, or not; you have to look at the entire =system= to see where the forces are acting.

Again, this was direct from a B&W engineer and not something I pulled from the same place that RV dealers pull MSRP numbers.

Lyle

[Cummins12V98]

I want to be really clear I do not think B&W had a design flaw with the original 18K companion because when they designed their base the truck beds were much stronger and the part of the base rails that was over the valley in the corrugation when the base was in my 11 RAM was sitting over the top of a rib on my 98 RAM. They did change the base and upped the rating to 20K to accommodate the newer truck conditions.

[bfast54]

laknox wrote:

bfast54 wrote:
Technically---- The gooseneck ball is not involved at all----:) it's not even used when you put in the companion:W

The ball is not used, but the base that holds the ball, and the Companion, =is= used, and is the major support for the entire hitch system.

Lyle

YES I OWN ONE !!!!!!!!!:B

Please see my Signature, and MY post above this one.

[bfast54]

laknox wrote:

bfast54 wrote:
Ok---a little bit puzzled here ???how did this topic appear out of the blue????:h

Anyways the drawdown bolt with 40 PSI on it-(LBS torque) the main purpose of it is to stabilize and because you're pulling up on that pin that holds the bar in--- OK and then you put 60 or 80 LBS TORQUE on the U-Bolts.(dont remember which)

The bar is transferring the load or torsion down to your frame Mount --and like he said the plates part is just kind of stabilized and everything.

If you look at it 40 pounds of torque is not very much at all.

40 LBS TORQUE PRESSURE, Spread out over thr LENGTH& WIDTH of the Companion"Base"..... Really is negligible-- hardly any pressure at all when you spread it out over that square footage.

The TUBE is transfering the Weight,Tension,etc---- to the Turnover mount,which transfers it to THE FAME.:W

This was an outshoot of the thread about the damaged Andersen Ultimate hitch.

You have the basics on how the load is transferred to the truck frame and how it was explained to me by B&W.

Lyle

Thank you for that explanation of the thread.

YES I am a VERY HAPPY " Heavyweight" B&W hitch owner.

If you like , Read my REVIEW posted by B&W, on their Review page. I believe it is titled "Worth the Cost, Price".
from 2013 :W

[laknox]

Me Again wrote:

CumminsDriver wrote:
The Valley parts of the bed are also resting against the frame of the Companion Turnover Ball Hitch under the bed. The plastic strips transfer the load of the Companion 5th Wheel Hitch to the Turnover Ball Frame below, so there is more than just the top hats transferring load to the frame. I have no problems with mine, and love that I've got a clean bed when not using the 5th Wheel hitch. Yes if I were to get a new truck I'd get one with the factory pucks, but they've only been available for a few years now so those of us that didn't have that option use what works the best for us.

Rich

Where the bed normally gets deformed is at the front and back of the side pieces. If you mount a video camera in the bed and watch the hitch while traveling you will see it rock back and forth a bit front to back. The plastic bed strips helped a bit but it still rocks. Chris

Nobody is denying this, but the fact is that this is =not= pin weight; it's stabilization by the base.

Lyle

[laknox]

Me Again wrote:
To top that off Russ, if the TO hitch was holding up weight, then the hitch would tend to want to turn around on the bed floor. Ask Cummins12V98 why B&W came out with the adjustable spacers to go in the bed valleys under their hitch base? Hint the base was crushing the raised ribs in his bed.

This might help some.

http://www.spaenaur.com/pdf/sectionD/D48.pdf

So many people have a hard time understand this pulling down verses holding up!

Look at the Andersen Ultimate 5th Wheel Connection manual here, were pin #6 and tube #11 go over the ball with the pin under the head of the ball so the hitch can be torqued down to the bed floor. The pin below the head can not hold up anything. The B&W uses the same principal.

https://www.andersenhitches.com/Catalog/installation-manuals.aspx

If you look at this B&W installation manual you will see that the socket post has an elongate hold in it where it is pinned in to the B&W TO ball socket. So when it is torque down the TO ball latch pin is in the bottom of the elongated slot, and can not hold up anything! The OP did not talk to a mechanical or structural engineer.

http://www.turnoverball.com/uploads/EcommerceProductDocumentModel/43/document/rvk3500-08-24-2015.pdf

Chris

The holes in my GN ball and the tube on my Companion are round, not elongated. Yes, I =did= speak to an engineer at B&W.

Lyle

[laknox]

rhagfo wrote:

Me Again wrote:
Some engineer has trick mirrors.



The weight of the fifth wheel is place on the hitch which is transferred to the bed floor which has top hats that sit on the trucks frame. The gooseneck ball does not hold up anything!!! Period!

Beds have been deformed and will continue to be deformed from hitches that mount like this.

A basic high school physics class could figure this out.


Chris

:S :h :S

Is this all that hard for you "The ball adapter carries the weight" to figure out!!

40# of torque applied to the Draw Down Bolt, does two things.

1. It presses the the hitch base snug to the bed floor.

2. It applies the same 40 ft. lb. of LIFTING force to the TO ball adapter.

Now before the ball adapter can support any thing it needs to go back down the same distance that it was raised up when torquing the draw down bolt. Say it is 1/8" maybe 1/16" now the force on the bed is the 40 ft. lb. of torque on the bolt, and the weight of TO adapter until it bottoms out.

Keep in mind 40# of torque applies, far more force than setting 40# of stuff on the hitch!

I will Respectfully disagree with the "Engineer" you spoke with at B&W, and agree 100 percent with Chris!

And you have the software to show the force, tortion and torque vectors on this hitch system...as does B&W?. They also have the expertise to use, and understand, it.

Lyle

[laknox]

bfast54 wrote:
Technically---- The gooseneck ball is not involved at all----:) it's not even used when you put in the companion:W

The ball is not used, but the base that holds the ball, and the Companion, =is= used, and is the major support for the entire hitch system.

Lyle

[laknox]

Me Again wrote:
Some engineer has trick mirrors.



The weight of the fifth wheel is place on the hitch which is transferred to the bed floor which has top hats that sit on the trucks frame. The gooseneck ball does not hold up anything!!! Period!

Beds have been deformed and will continue to be deformed from hitches that mount like this.

A basic high school physics class could figure this out.

Chris

Not according to B&W. Email 'em and ask for yourself.

Lyle

[laknox]

bfast54 wrote:
Ok---a little bit puzzled here ???how did this topic appear out of the blue????:h

Anyways the drawdown bolt with 40 PSI on it-(LBS torque) the main purpose of it is to stabilize and because you're pulling up on that pin that holds the bar in--- OK and then you put 60 or 80 LBS TORQUE on the U-Bolts.(dont remember which)

The bar is transferring the load or torsion down to your frame Mount --and like he said the plates part is just kind of stabilized and everything.

If you look at it 40 pounds of torque is not very much at all.

40 LBS TORQUE PRESSURE, Spread out over thr LENGTH& WIDTH of the Companion"Base"..... Really is negligible-- hardly any pressure at all when you spread it out over that square footage.

The TUBE is transfering the Weight,Tension,etc---- to the Turnover mount,which transfers it to THE FAME.:W

This was an outshoot of the thread about the damaged Andersen Ultimate hitch.

You have the basics on how the load is transferred to the truck frame and how it was explained to me by B&W.

Lyle

[laknox]

MFL wrote:
My neighbor across the street just put a turnover ball and Companion in his 12 GM. I don't know why, he has no use for a ball! He came over and asked me , and I said in his case, he'd be better off with rails and Patriot, but he spent twice as much and went with the ball. That set up has sold well over the years, for people that needed a ball, and FW hitch. I am thinking that the U-bolts are gone from the newer Companion?

The later model truck beds are getting thinner, making this less than ideal IMO. The plastic bed inserts will help, but they installed them wrong on my neighbors truck. The puck system will be the future, even GM finally got on board. It sure took them a while.

Jerry

You are correct, Jerry. The newest iteration of the Companion no longer uses the u-bolts. From my conversation, I don't think that B&W ever really liked that solution, but it was easy, simple and robust. NOT part of our conversation, but I wouldn't be surprised if B&W came out with an =under-bed= support of some sort for these newer trucks. Just speculation on my part, though...

Lyle

[laknox]

rhagfo wrote:

laknox wrote:
OK, guys. Here's the straight scoop from a B&W engineer. As I contended in another thread, he said that the Turnover Ball base and Companion FW hitch =system=, carries the vast majority of the pin load through the hold-down receiver and into the TO Ball base and to the truck frame. The feet of the Companion =stabilize= the lateral forces to the bed and carry very little of the pin weight. He called them "outriggers, in effect". Doesn't matter that there's a certain amount of tension on the draw-down bolt, or not; you have to look at the entire =system= to see where the forces are acting.

Again, this was direct from a B&W engineer and not something I pulled from the same place that RV dealers pull MSRP numbers.

Lyle

:h :h :h

Must be a heck of a lot of deflection in the bed floor then!!

The "Hold Down Bolt" is tightened to 40 ft. Lb. as the the hitch is installed. so the whole assembly is now pressing down into the bed on the base, not the ball base.
Now the "U" bolts are tightened around the RV post to 80 ft. lbs.
So to put weight on the RV post you will need to deflect the bed a bit.

Not so, according to B&W. The hold-down bolt pulls the hitch and the base together, but the base still supports the majority of the weight, just as it does when you're using the GN. Yes, you do get some flex, and the bed =does= support a small amount of weight, but not much. As I said, the footprint of the Companion stabilizes the lateral loads acting on the hitch system. Because the GN is hitched so much lower, you don't get these stresses because they are 1) less and 2) transferred directly to the truck frame. With the hitch point being higher for the FW, you now have that leverage acting on the base to flex it slightly, so you need to have the support for these tortional loads. If there are no lateral loads, the base still supports nearly 100% of the pin weight. Think about why most of us won't use a GN adapter on a FW. You're taking those loads and moving them to the FW =frame= instead of the truck bed. Those forces don't simply disappear; =something= has to absorb them.

According to B&W, there are several reasons for the bed deflection issues, especially with GM. #1 reason being the thinner metal used in the bed means they're just easier to crush. Second, the Companion base is a one-size-fits-all and the Big 3 truck frames are not spaced the same. GM uses the widest frame, so the support point on the frame is =not= directly beneath the center of the contact point of the Companion, but actually towards the outside. Ford is slightly narrower and Dodge is the narrowest frame. They found that these were the 2 main contributing factors to the bed deformation issue.

I'm really not making this up; I =called= B&W and asked them. I had a 20 minute conversation with one of their engineers and got the scoop from him.

Lyle

[Cummins12V98]

Me Again wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
If this were a real problem and I had 3,000 lbs. sitting on a relative small area my bed, you'd think there would be some marks on the bed of the truck. There aren't and never have been. How can that be? Maybe because the amount of weight that is actually sitting on the bed is negligible, and most of the weight is transferred through the ball to the frame? Nah, that can't be it.

Here is a picture of the B&W insert that goes into the TO Ball gooseneck hitch. Notice the slot where the TO Ball lock pin goes. when you torque the hitch down, you have the pin in the bottom of the elongate slot, so it is NOT going to hold up anything. As is pointed out in another post the TO Ball if install correct is up against the bottom of the bed valleys, however that is only in about the center third of the hitch base.

Chris

My TurnoverBall hitch slide pin went into a ROUND hole in the post provided with the 18K Companion. Nothing looked like your picture above. I guarantee a lot of the weight is transferred to the TurnoverBall hitch by the base being clamped to the post. I can't say how much. I also know there is weight being applied to the bed/cross rails from the hitch base. I can't say how much. I can also say for sure more weight is transferred to the font when decelerating and the back when accelerating. Bottom line the 20K Companion that sits on the bed is rated to do so and does it VERY well!

[Cummins12V98]

IdaD wrote:
My personal opinion is none of the turnover ball setups are as good as puck or rail setups. Not that they don't work because clearly they do, and a great many have had success with them, it just isn't my preference given the options on the market. I suppose the plastic strips on the B&W are nice to protect the bed ridges, but we're still talking about plastic strips resting on the sheetmetal bed floor. I'd rather have an unambiguous attachment straight to the truck frame.

Honestly I think the old fashioned rails are pretty hard to beat. You can use about any FW hitch you want with them, and it's also easy to drop a gooseneck adapter on them if you also have a stock or utility trailer. The tradeoff is having them in the bed when not towing, but the flexibility is unbeatable.

I agree the puck system is better!!! So does B&W because the fact is the exact same head and side pcs the head attaches to are the same on the 20K Companion and the Puck system 25K companion. B&W understands design limits and clearly Andersen is learning the hard way!

[Cummins12V98]

Cummins12V98 wrote:
I remember LONG ago when Chris was mentioning bed deflection with the Companion hitches (I thought he was just being a dick). THEN..... My Dad said he had dents in the bed where the front of the hitch pressed down into the top corrugation of the bed no doubt from when braking hard. The bottom of the sides of the base were actually bent in an upward angle from level. He tows a 34' HH Premier. So I looked at mine and sure enough the bed had a couple small dents like his did and my base had a bend on each of the bottom rails of the hitch base so did his.

We contacted B&W they said they were aware of the problem. The fact is truck beds are getting lighter that means thinner steel. Also the main pressure point of the base was over a valley not on top of a rib like the same hitch was in my 98 RAM. They sent us both complete new bases with filler strips so the base could press down onto the strips and then the weight would transfer to the bed cross rails. They have since changed the base and upped the rating from 18-20K. I was towing at the 18K range at the time my dad's was around 15K.

So maybe those thinking I am "Bashing" Andersen for their Ultimate design where the base is sitting on the bed and actually carrying much of the load especially when braking hard will realize I do have personal experience on this subject.

Here is a pic showing the base looking from the back of the truck. You can see how the corrugation was not supporting the strongest part of the base where it bends.