That has not been my experience. Its the Internet, it is where people come to complain and many offer up a complaint when they don't even have the product they are complaining about. If I took everything I've read to heart about everything I have, I wouldn't have a RAM Cummins, Kubota tractor, Samsung Refer or TV, Montana camper, Tracker fishing boat, Mercury outboard motor, etc. You get the drift.
That’s good to hear. Nothing is immune to manufacturing flaws when it comes to things that are mass-produced. A good company will stand behind their product and make it right if something happens.
I’m usually not one to take most internet reviews for straight-up gospel because you are right, we wouldn’t own any of the things we own if we took someone else’s review straight to heart.
I have the 2 1/2 inch shank, I leave the hitch in the receiver since I do tow often and leave it in even when pulling a gooseneck or fifth-wheel. The hitch primarily pulls a utility trailer with tractor/backhoe or my boat. The boat puts 400 pounds on the hitch, the tractor about 700 to 800 pounds depending on how the tractor is configured. I don't see any wear, all I see are witness marks on the shank where it exits the receiver.
Again, it looks like you use your hitch a lot. Mine, whichever one I get, won’t get used near that much. And in saying that, it probably won’t get left in the receiver when it’s not in use because there’s just no need to. Not in my case, anyways. But it’s good to hear that yours isn’t wearing like the aluminum one hitch I have.
I remember seeing a YouTube video from the engineer that designed the Weight Safe's. The hitch is machined from billet, not forged. I don't know a lot about that but the video's explanation made sense, along with the scale I chose the WS solution. No regrets.
Is billet aluminum stronger than forged aluminum? That little aluminum Smittybuilt I have, I believe is forged.
I've read about this but I am left wondering, rattle. If my hitch rattles back there, I sure don't hear it. Maybe it is the weight and fit of the hitch that causes it not to rattle, I don't know, I've never heard a hitch rattle in all my days of towing. To me, any type of device like that is a recipe for shank seize-up.
I don’t know, I’m not so much worried about the hitch rattling for the noise part, it’s just more less about the accelerated wear on the softer aluminum as it vibrates around inside the receiver tube. Loaded, it’s probably not going to wiggle around a lot if the clearances were made right to where it fits just snug enough inside but it’s more less for when you’re pulling an empty trailer, or when the hitch rides in there just by itself. That’s what I’m more worried about.
Like I said, back when I pulled my little utility trailer for most of the day helping those people move from one house to the other, I don’t know if the wear I saw on that hitch at the end of the day was just from when the trailer was loaded, or if a lot of that was from when the trailer was empty and the hitch was bouncing around inside the tube because that hitch had about the same wobble-around play in it as any other hitch I’ve had.
But correct me if I’m wrong; I would think that having a steel receiver hitch inside the steel receiver tube for long periods of time is what would result in a seize-up because of the two metals resting together like that as they rust. I would think an aluminum hitch wouldn’t do that unless it started to corrode.
Since I’m an advocate of “buy it once”, I took measurements of my trailer hitch heights, paying close attention to be sure the trailer was sitting level. I wanted equal weight on both of the trailer’s axels. The 3500, even when the air suspension is set to AUX (about a 1” drop), sits high. I could have gotten away with an 8-inch drop but I had the clearance for 10” so I future proofed.
I’ll have to definitely do that one of these weekends, get the measuring tape out to see just how much drop I would need to make my little utility trailer ride level as I pull it but just by looking at it, it seems as though about a 6 inch drop is what I really have to have.
I see your thread is heading south with pictures of hitch failures made of various materials. The pictures show failure but there is no explanation why the hitch failed, was it modified, overloaded, stressed beyond design, who knows. But, this is the Internet, and I trust it as much as I do mainstream media.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s headed south, but I do want to be aware of possible failures like that. I know that these aluminum hitches are either forged or billet, but its still made out of aluminum and to be able to hold the weight that they say these things will hold, upwards of 10,000 pounds on something like that is a lot. Luckily, as I said, I probably won’t ever exert that amount of load or stress to whatever hitch I decide to go with but as you said, instead of just seeing pictures of hitch failures, I would like to know the history behind that as to what really happened as to why it failed because there are so many different factors that can cause that.
But how come the WS 180° doesn’t have the tongue weight gauge? Even though my halfton does have the air ride suspension, I’m still sporting a halfton with not that much ground clearance so, that would be more of the reason of why I would be aiming towards the flat bottom hitch like what you have is just so that there will never be as much of a problem of dragging the bottom of the hitch on the ground.
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