B&W Tow & Stow

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2003F350

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Okay so a quick search didn't bring up anything Power Wagon specific.

Any of my fellow Power Wagon drivers use the B&W Tow & Stow hitch? I have...a LOT of trailers...with different size couplers, with all 3 different sizes. I want to get the tri-ball setup, but I have one VERY important question -

What drop do you guys have for your trucks, and how often do you go to the lowest setting? I have a...I want to say 2018 AMO 7k car hauler that I pull pretty regularly during the summer and I'd like it to sit halfway level, since it's a pretty low-slung trailer and I'd rather not drag the rear of it all the time.

I'm looking at the 7" drop version, since I currently have what claims to be a 7.5" drop and works great. I'm just concerned that I may have trouble with the 7" not being long enough, but the 9" being too long and dragging the ground, especially since I'll have another ball sticking down that I don't currently have now.

Just looking for a little intel - I'm tired of swapping hitches every time I grab a different trailer/boat/jetski.
 

thkbaron

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What size tires are you running? I routinely use a six inch which is not enough but I’m too cheap to buy an adjustable hitch.
 

corneileous

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It’s real simple and doesn’t even matter what you drive unless you have multiple tow vehicles….

With of all your trailers, park them and disconnect from them on flat level ground. Take a torpedo level and put it on top of the tongue and then use the trailer jack to raise/lower the trailer so that it’s level or about where ever you’d like it to ride when you pull it.

Next, take your tape measure and measure from the ground to I believe the bottom outside flange of the hitch where it would connect to the ball- not where the top of the ball would be when hitched but to the bottom edge of the hitch where it drops over the ball.

Write those numbers down for all your trailers and then make sure your pickup is parked on flat level ground and then take your tape measure and measure from the ground to the bottom inside part of your receiver tube without anything in it. Out of all of the
Out of all the measurements you took on your trailers, use the one that rides the lowest to the ground and subtract that from the measurement you took when you measured the height of the receiver tube on your truck. Whatever that number is will determine how much drop you need in a drop hitch for your lowest-riding trailer. Everything else will fall wherever in between whenever you go to hook to them. Hope this helps.

But yeah, if you’re worried about being too low for whatever you have that rides that low, one hitch may not be enough for you and by not remembering how the balls are situated on the B&W Tow and Stow, you’ll still run into that problem where two of your hitch sizes will put one of the unused balls down on the bottom making it easy to drag the ground if you have to go with a hitch that has a lot of drop.

I don’t know why you’re eyeing the B&W but when I was doing my shopping for an adjustable drop hitch, I chose the WeighSafe. I’m sure the B&W is nice, it must be because I see it in the receivers of a lot of pickups but I just wasn’t crazy about it because it had way too many sloppy pin points on it and just didn’t care for the design. Sure, I went with the 180° hitch for mine where the two balls are one on top of the other but being that I drive a half ton and being that my little utility trailer does ride fairly low, I had to go with a 6 inch drop but having the flippable slider, there was a few times where I drug bottom even with auto-leveling air suspension and so being that I realized all the sudden that even though I really don’t need it, I should’ve just gotten the one that had the tongue-weight scale in the slider only because for one, you can buy all three balls for it and instead of flipping it over for the other ball, you just take the slider off, pull the inner pin and replace whatever ball that’s in it for the size you need and you don’t have to worry about having an unused ball on the bottom of the hitch just waiting to drag on something.
 
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Pudge

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I have the B&W TS20043B which has the 8.5 inch drop, and comes with two balls. perfect height. Love it!
 

thkbaron

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not to mention with the b&w, the balls themselves are not stainless so they'll look terrible soon enough.
 

TRad

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I have the B&W 5" drop from my last Ram 1500 2" receiver and i have it on the bottom drop or the second to bottom most of the time. I will be upgrading to the 2.5 this year to get the extra capacity and will be going to the 7" drop. I think 9" is also to long. I also upgraded to 35" tires this winter so another reason to get the 7".
 

thkbaron

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they are? It's not ad
Um, mine are ss. And the rest is powder coated.
They are? It's not advertised anywhere that I saw. It's the one thing that was deterring me from going with their hitch.
 

Pudge

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Yep, what @18CrewDually said, helps with your decision. I’m using 8.5” drop, but I also have 35s so I’m an inch higher than a stock 21’ PW. I’m happy with 8.5.
 
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2003F350

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It’s real simple and doesn’t even matter what you drive unless you have multiple tow vehicles….

With of all your trailers, park them and disconnect from them on flat level ground. Take a torpedo level and put it on top of the tongue and then use the trailer jack to raise/lower the trailer so that it’s level or about where ever you’d like it to ride when you pull it.

Next, take your tape measure and measure from the ground to I believe the bottom outside flange of the hitch where it would connect to the ball- not where the top of the ball would be when hitched but to the bottom edge of the hitch where it drops over the ball.

Write those numbers down for all your trailers and then make sure your pickup is parked on flat level ground and then take your tape measure and measure from the ground to the bottom inside part of your receiver tube without anything in it. Out of all of the
Out of all the measurements you took on your trailers, use the one that rides the lowest to the ground and subtract that from the measurement you took when you measured the height of the receiver tube on your truck. Whatever that number is will determine how much drop you need in a drop hitch for your lowest-riding trailer. Everything else will fall wherever in between whenever you go to hook to them. Hope this helps.

But yeah, if you’re worried about being too low for whatever you have that rides that low, one hitch may not be enough for you and by not remembering how the balls are situated on the B&W Tow and Stow, you’ll still run into that problem where two of your hitch sizes will put one of the unused balls down on the bottom making it easy to drag the ground if you have to go with a hitch that has a lot of drop.

I don’t know why you’re eyeing the B&W but when I was doing my shopping for an adjustable drop hitch, I chose the WeighSafe. I’m sure the B&W is nice, it must be because I see it in the receivers of a lot of pickups but I just wasn’t crazy about it because it had way too many sloppy pin points on it and just didn’t care for the design. Sure, I went with the 180° hitch for mine where the two balls are one on top of the other but being that I drive a half ton and being that my little utility trailer does ride fairly low, I had to go with a 6 inch drop but having the flippable slider, there was a few times where I drug bottom even with auto-leveling air suspension and so being that I realized all the sudden that even though I really don’t need it, I should’ve just gotten the one that had the tongue-weight scale in the slider only because for one, you can buy all three balls for it and instead of flipping it over for the other ball, you just take the slider off, pull the inner pin and replace whatever ball that’s in it for the size you need and you don’t have to worry about having an unused ball on the bottom of the hitch just waiting to drag on something.

I have multiple trucks that I tow with, yes. Along with multiple trailers. And I've already got enough storage issues in my truck - that damned subwoofer that came with the Alpine system is under the back seat.

I'm not looking at the WeighSafe because I don't put enough weight behind my truck to be worried about tongue weight. That and I've been towing long enough now that I've gotten pretty good at estimating when I'm at the right ratio.
 
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2003F350

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I have the B&W 5" drop from my last Ram 1500 2" receiver and i have it on the bottom drop or the second to bottom most of the time. I will be upgrading to the 2.5 this year to get the extra capacity and will be going to the 7" drop. I think 9" is also to long. I also upgraded to 35" tires this winter so another reason to get the 7".
Thanks. I'll likely go with the 7" then - I am debating going up to 35's with my next set of tires. If the 7" isn't enough then I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy a second one.
 

Grand Mesa

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Running 35's, I use a 11" drop for my ski boat and a 4" drop with a long shank for a 5" lifted travel trailer. Every other trailer that I tow is in between these drops. The long shank is due to the tailgate won't clear the travel trailer's tongue jack.
 
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thkbaron

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According to their site it’s not.
 

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corneileous

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I have multiple trucks that I tow with, yes. Along with multiple trailers. And I've already got enough storage issues in my truck - that damned subwoofer that came with the Alpine system is under the back seat.
Not sure what this concern has to do with the subject at hand unless you’re silently saying the reason why you want the B&W tow and stow is because you can just leave it in the hitch and not have to store any of the other trailer balls somewhere else… Am I correct? Even if this is the case I still don’t understand what concerns you’re having and why you’re even having those concerns about storage.
I'm not looking at the WeighSafe because I don't put enough weight behind my truck to be worried about tongue weight. That and I've been towing long enough now that I've gotten pretty good at estimating when I'm at the right ratio.
If you would go back and reread my post, hopefully you’ll see that I wasn’t recommending the weighsafe hitch clearly because of that redundant tongue weight scale and that the only reason why I recommended it and why I myself even though I started off with the weighsafe hitch that just had the flippable slider and spent the money on buying the other slider with the scale and just the 2 inch and 2 and 5/16ths balls purely because the slider that has the scale in it only uses one ball at a time so that if you’re worried about clearance issues, you won’t have one of the other trailer balls on the bottom of it making your hitch even lower to the ground if you did wind up having to have a lot of drop for one or more of your trailers to ride level or where you want them to ride.

I don’t give a damn about that scale either because unless you know exactly what your trailer weighs, that little scale does no good because you have to know what your trailer weighs in order to know how much tongue weight you’re supposed to have which you can simply attain by going to a cat scale or something similar.
 

corneileous

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According to their site it’s not.
I was going to say, unless they’ve changed anything in the last couple years when I was doing my shopping trying to figure out which drop hitch I wanted, I don’t recall the B&W tow and stow as one of the ones that had stainless steel balls.
 

corneileous

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This would require me to have a level spot to measure from - which I don't have easy access to right now for really any length of time. Otherwise I'd have already done this.
So you don’t have any place nearby, nor the time to take one trailer at a time to park it on flat level ground to take these measurements? But either way regardless, without doing a lot of guessing, if you want to know exactly how much drop you need for your trailers to ride where you want them to ride, you have to do this or settle with the possibility that you might get a hitch that has too much drop or not enough because even though to the extent of my knowledge that the standard level hitch height on a trailer is about 14 to 15 inches or something like that, not every trailer is made the same so you really can’t go off of what everybody else here says because they may or may not have a trailer that rides at the same height as any of yours do so that’s why this is crucial.
 

Trailmaker

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I have to ride with it low when not in use so the bumper sensors don’t go off.
 

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