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padec21's avatar
padec21
Explorer
Aug 10, 2015

Hitch failure

Hitch is a Reese dual cam with 1200# round bars.
I headed out last Wed. Night on 245 mile trip. About 50 miles from destination decided to stop and top off tank since it was around midnight and not sure what would be open.
As I left the gas station the truck went down the concrete apron which was pretty steep and I heard a loud bang. Louder than usual hitch noise so I pull into next lot and noticed one spring bar on the ground.the metal tab that fits through the key way in the spring bar was snapped off clean. Other side looked fine so I limped the last 50 miles with one bar on. When I arrived the other bar was missing and the tab on that side was snapped off clean. Must have happened at same time and I didn't notice. Anyone else hear of this happeneding? Hoping its covered under warranty.
  • Not sure if this was the same problem but several years ago on our way to Disneyworld, we pulled into a truck stop in south Georgia. Upon returning to the truck, I did my usual walk-around and saw the left bar was missing. Same hitch as you: Reese dual cam with sway.

    To this day, no clue what happened or when. The bar was gone but the chains were still locked in. By God's grace, we found a Reese wholesaler in Jacksonville, Fl. who hooked me up.
  • I had the same thing happen on a winding road. My metallurgist friend decided it had a casting defect. Reese sent me a replacement ASAP with a return label. 2nd hitch head never failed (although I s****ped it since it was involved in an accident, it was unscathed).
  • I've seen many trunnion WDH failures on this forum and others. I still use the round bar setup because of what I see as design weakness of the trunnion on heavy hitch weights. I have worn out a round bar hitch head (bar socket holes egged out), but never saw a catastrophic failure.

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