62Blazer
Senior Member
Posting a quick summary of the Weigh Safe 8" drop hitch I purchased for my PW. I spent a bunch of time searching the internet and posts on here before I bought it and wanted to share the information for anybody in future searching. My truck is a 2016 PW with 35" tires and stock suspension.
It is the black aluminum 2.5" shank, 8" drop version with 2" and 2 5/16" balls.
https://www.weigh-safe.com/product/cerakote-black-weigh-safe-drop-hitch/
Always just had a couple of different cheapo steel receiver hitches in the past but decided I would rather just carry one that allowed all of the adjust ability needed. Some people recommend 6" was all that was needed but after some measurements determined I needed at least 8" drop. There are two trailers I typically pull. One is a 18' steel deck tandem axle car hauler that weighs about 2,500 lbs. empty and the other is a 12' single axle lawnscape style (side rails and fold up rear gate). On my previous Chevy 2500HD crew cab it required a 2" drop for the 18' tandem and 4" drop for the 12' single axle. For the PW it requires about 5" drop for the 18' tandem and the full 8" drop for the 12' single, but the tongue still sits a little high on it. The 18' has significantly more tongue weight even when empty and causes some rear suspension squat (I cannot lift the tongue of the trailer up by hand at all), where as the 12' I can easily pick up the tongue and move the trailer around by hand......hence why I only needed about 3" additional drop for the big trailer and 4" drop for the little trailer. Attached are pictures of the 12' trailer loaded with what I typical haul (1,800 lb. SxS pulled most of the way forward for about 250 lb. tongue weight). While it pulls fine the trailer still has about 3" of tilt towards the rear.
Some comments on the hitch.
It does have a scale to read the tongue weight....I don't really need this but does provide some interesting information. Being aluminum it is obviously lighter than a steel version but still hefty. Changing ball size or height height is pretty easy. Pull the locking pin out and you can either slide the ball mount up or down on the drop shank to the right height (about 1" increments), or to change balls slide it all the way off, pull the internal pin, remove the one size ball and insert the other. There is some slop in the hitch, both where it goes into the truck receiver and the ball mount. Don't know if it's worse than other hitch but does rattle quite a bit with an empty trailer, or if you run around with the drop hitch installed. Looking at getting one of the hitch anti-rattle devices, but don't want to have to use a tool to take the hitch on and off. I did purchase a locking pin (that holds the drop hitch into the trucks receiver) with a matching key to the ball platform.
Overall - I'm happy with the hitch and the adjustability is nice. 8" drop is just barely enough for the 12' trailer (which seems to have a common hitch height).
It is the black aluminum 2.5" shank, 8" drop version with 2" and 2 5/16" balls.
https://www.weigh-safe.com/product/cerakote-black-weigh-safe-drop-hitch/
Always just had a couple of different cheapo steel receiver hitches in the past but decided I would rather just carry one that allowed all of the adjust ability needed. Some people recommend 6" was all that was needed but after some measurements determined I needed at least 8" drop. There are two trailers I typically pull. One is a 18' steel deck tandem axle car hauler that weighs about 2,500 lbs. empty and the other is a 12' single axle lawnscape style (side rails and fold up rear gate). On my previous Chevy 2500HD crew cab it required a 2" drop for the 18' tandem and 4" drop for the 12' single axle. For the PW it requires about 5" drop for the 18' tandem and the full 8" drop for the 12' single, but the tongue still sits a little high on it. The 18' has significantly more tongue weight even when empty and causes some rear suspension squat (I cannot lift the tongue of the trailer up by hand at all), where as the 12' I can easily pick up the tongue and move the trailer around by hand......hence why I only needed about 3" additional drop for the big trailer and 4" drop for the little trailer. Attached are pictures of the 12' trailer loaded with what I typical haul (1,800 lb. SxS pulled most of the way forward for about 250 lb. tongue weight). While it pulls fine the trailer still has about 3" of tilt towards the rear.
Some comments on the hitch.
It does have a scale to read the tongue weight....I don't really need this but does provide some interesting information. Being aluminum it is obviously lighter than a steel version but still hefty. Changing ball size or height height is pretty easy. Pull the locking pin out and you can either slide the ball mount up or down on the drop shank to the right height (about 1" increments), or to change balls slide it all the way off, pull the internal pin, remove the one size ball and insert the other. There is some slop in the hitch, both where it goes into the truck receiver and the ball mount. Don't know if it's worse than other hitch but does rattle quite a bit with an empty trailer, or if you run around with the drop hitch installed. Looking at getting one of the hitch anti-rattle devices, but don't want to have to use a tool to take the hitch on and off. I did purchase a locking pin (that holds the drop hitch into the trucks receiver) with a matching key to the ball platform.
Overall - I'm happy with the hitch and the adjustability is nice. 8" drop is just barely enough for the 12' trailer (which seems to have a common hitch height).