Reese DC question

Turbosix wrote:

Thanks for the input, a lot of good information. I was looking at the 1200# bars. Will that be enough? Also, round bar or trunnion?

Reese has info. on sizing the bars and part number info. http://hitchworldinc.com/catalog/section6.pdf It's important to note that Reese states "HITCH WEIGHT = TONGUE WEIGHT + VEHICLE CARGO load BEHIND REAR AXLE". I actually forgot about this. Reese is different than the other WDH manufacturers and I think most Reese DC "experts" on RV forums don't agree with this. So when sizing bars, you should be taking cargo into effect. IIRC, to go to the next size above 1200 lbs requires a different hitch head as well.

You may very well need to go with higher rated bars than expected. The best thing to do would be to go to a scale and weigh the TT and TV to get the TW but may not be possible. You could buy or try and borrow a tongue scale or it can be done with a bathroom scale and long plank. There's info around on how to do it. For comparison, our TW is around 950 lbs and we have 1200 lb bars and it works very well but if we added the cargo weight to determine bar size, we'd be too small by quite a bit. Taking a guess at it, 1400 lbs may be the correct ones. You might try asking about bar sizing in the towing forum and see what others have to say.

For bar type, we've had both and I much prefer the trunnion style as they are easier to handle and they are easy to insert into the pockets on the hitch head. The trunnion type also will give more ground clearance which can help some folks.