A-Frame Damage

hohenwald48 wrote:
Is that actually a butt weld? I thought the OP said the A frame passes thru the cross member. Hard to tell from a pic.

The A-frame is a solid piece that passes through the crossmember, which is why it's surprising that the tear is forming where it is, and is also why I think they fatigued the tubing with a bad weld from the factory on that side.

69 Avion wrote:
My bet is that what you are seeing is .125 wall thickness tubing instead of .1875 thickness. I would start with rewelding it. Also, as someone mentioned earlier, check the tension on the WDH bars. It appears to be an inherently weak frame by the way the metal is fatigued.

I was surprised, too, by how thin the A-frame walls were when taking a closer look at it and so was the shop that's repairing it (see my next post for a status update).

I was very careful setting up the WDH bars, and, if anything, I have actually lightened the load I carry in the truck and trailer since I bought it 5 years ago. Since I have a F250, I don't have to torque on the bars to get the truck back within spec with the trailer loaded. In fact, I towed to the shop yesterday without bars to avoid putting any additional strain on the cracked weld and the truck handled the weight just fine with minimal squat; my friend's Raptor sags more hooked up to his Lance 1575 with weight distribution bars installed. The real scary part is my trailer was advertised as 1/2 ton towable, and with a 1,000 pound tongue weight loaded and ready to camp, the WDH bars on a 1/2 ton would have to be tensioned substantially more to level out the truck, not to mention the fact that the tongue weight alone would max out most half ton GVWRs.