WD Hitch Danger

Had a bit of a freak accident last week when disconnecting my TT from my truck. Thought I'd share the story and hopefully prevent an accident for someone else.

Spent about an hour getting my Reese WD bars properly set up and took it for a test run, 30 MPH winds with 45 MPH gusts and it towed like a dream. I don't even use anti-sway.

When I got back to the house I began the detach process, chocked the wheels, put a cinder block under tongue jack and raised jack enough to take most of the weight off the hitch, what I FAILED to do was disconnect safety chains 1st. I didn't notice they were hung up (crossed) on the underside of the hitch so as I raised the trailer it put pretty heavy tension on the chains. Next step was to use the bar to release the spring bars from the snap-up brackets. I noticed the 1st one released with some force but I was able to handle it. When I went to lower the other side I had a quick thought 'I shouldn't stand too close to this bar', thank GOD I had this thought and shuffled left a bit. When the snap up bracket released it did so with tremendous force, the bar flew out of my hand, hit me in the hip and then drove 6'' into my lawn. I said a few choice words and doubled over in pain but I'm very thankful that bar didn't go through my foot! Over a week later and I still have one hell of a nasty bruise on my side. So, the moral from this moron is to always stand clear of the bars when lowering snap-up brackets AND make sure all tension is released from the bars before you lower them!

Yikes man! I've always been cautious of this when pulling off the WD bars. That would hurt like a *****!

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My 2000lb blue ox bar nearly pulled my shoulder out once. I have to set it with the jack lifting both trailer and truck and when I disconnected in WY the site wasn't level and I was guessing if I had taken off enough weight to safely remove spring bars.

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I had a moron moment with my new hitch a couple weeks ago. I had never setup a sway control but have used wdh many many times. Well I didn't know you had to slide the sway control out before mounting, should have been obvious, but missed that. Hooked up fine when straight in the driveway, went to turn to leave and made an awful noise which was the sway control bending and popping off both balls and bending both balls. Both my boys were like, dad was that good? Nope, sure wasn't, so needless to say I still don't have sway control!! Wdh works great though. Whoops.

I did the same thing years ago as a dumb teenager. I wasn't so lucky to avoid injury. It was my job to put away the trailer after a week of camping. Used the tongue Jack to release tension but the slope of the driveway left a lot of load on the driver side bar. Passenger side came off with no force but the driver side ripped the lever out of my hand and severed the tip of my toe. Went through my sandal (as I said, dumb teenager) and took a chunk out of the asphalt. I was lucky it didn't do more damage. Years later, I now have a collection of steel toe boots at the house.

Yep been there , had tail gate down in process of unhooking dropped tail gate on trailer tounge 2 small dents in top edge of tail gates. NEVER HAVE TAILGATE DOWN WHEN HOOKING OR UNHOOKING. New truck now no dents yet ( knock wood)

Ouch!! Glad you're ok!

Careful @RubberFrog