Had a mounting bolt failure on my Equal-i-zer hitch

[opnspaces]

I took a trip out to Anza Borrego desert this weekend and all went well. I pulled up to the house and walked back to the tongue to unhitch. That's when I saw that a mounting bolt had broken in the hitch.

Here's a picture of what the hitch mounting normally looks like.

And a picture of what I saw when I went to unhitch.


Upon closer inspection I can see that the bolt had been failing for quite some time now and one of the plates is bent.


My guess is that I must have over tightened it over time. But as you can see in the first picture the mounting has been known to walk around on the tongue. Over that last 15 years I have repositioned the mounting and painted the frame a few times. The funny thing is just last week I was considering welding the hitch plate to the frame to stop it from walking around which would have probably prevented this.

I did reach out to Progress mfg about the broken bolt and bent hanger plate to see if they might want them returned. Being Sunday afternoon I don't expect a reply for a day or to though.

[TravelinDog]

Sjm9911 wrote:
On both of the pictures i see the indents of the screw on the frame in diffent spots. Unless you moved them it seems as if the bolt isn't tight enough as its moving. They do say to check it , but i doubt many do, i dont do it regularly. Now i will. Maybe some lock tight might help.

Fantastic! Kuddos to Progress Mfg. I'm always happy to see a company stand behind it's products. Even when it is 16 years old.:)

[opnspaces]

Yes over the years I would find that the brackets had slipped. I would have to reposition them and tighten them down again. I made sure these are torqued to the specs so I'm hoping they will stay in place this time.

[Sjm9911]

On both of the pictures i see the indents of the screw on the frame in diffent spots. Unless you moved them it seems as if the bolt isn't tight enough as its moving. They do say to check it , but i doubt many do, i dont do it regularly. Now i will. Maybe some lock tight might help.

[opnspaces]

I have to say I'm impressed with Progress Mfg. (Equal-i-zer). A few years ago I sent them some pictures of the square sockets for the weight bars looking like they had spider cracks. They sent me two brand new sockets and never asked for the old ones back. This time I sent pictures of the broken bolt and they said I had the old style L brackets. They then sent me two complete assemblies free of charge. Mind you this is for a 16 year old hitch. So now I have the new brackets with two bolts holding the L bracket in place versus the old brackets with a single pointed set screw type of bolt.

[CharlesinGA]

If you tighten the bolts, but not enough to bend the plates, then they will move around. To get them to stay put, the plates get bent. Move up to grade 8 bolts and keep and eye on them for rust.

That is the older design Equalizer frame bracket, however the new one attaches to the trailer tongue the same way, just the L bracket attachment is different.

After having had an Equalizer hitch, I don't like them. New(er) trailer has a Blue Ox Sway Pro hitch and I like it alot.

Charles