mark kibort

down the grapevine!! wow, that is very lucky. For those of you that dont know that piece of interstate 5, that is a 4000ft down to near sea level in about 15mins.

MUSSBERGER

Aa a "kid" working for my Dad's company I was up and down the Grapevine a lot moving heavy equipment. I had some scary moments going down that thing.

93 FireHawk 968

I check the bolts that attach my hitch to the chassis a few times each season. I had a loose bolt 2 vehicles ago that had backed out about 1/2 way.

IcemanG17

WOW...your friend is very lucky..... time for a not so nice phone call to the RV company from a lawyer!!!

jrgordonsenior

Some pics. When I crawled under the rig Saturday morning I was stunned to see how small the entire hitch assembly was. Still can't believe it's rated for 15k with WDH which he was using. Notice the spot welds on one side of the box. We had to grind off the RR hinge and it took 4 guys to pry that door open....

analogmike

Unbelievably poor mounting method.

kurt M

Cold contaminated weld on right (image) side both the box tube and back plate. The weld root on the back plate is too small for the materal being mated. This would have beea goos area for a pothole weld through the back plate. I bet the cold weld was the start of the failure and led into the small root of the backing plate. It cracks loose during a hard flex and is the stress riser for the rest to follow.
The surfaces of both areas are rusty and there is signs of a older split in the metal of the angle iron added to the front of the box tube. Look a the rust on the ends of the failed area of the angle iron. This all started some time prior to the full failure and might have been visable during an inspection. Overall the hitch box tube weld work seems too light in build and poorly done on top of that for the load rating for my comfort. I might be inclined to fish scale the flats and corners. I would also look at the rest of the structure and add other reinforcments as needed during the repair.

theporscheguy

Extremely lucky. All around poor design, not to mention welding quality.

kush07

Although something may be rated at 15,000 lbs or so, that's just the tow capacity of the tow vehicle, not the weight limit on the hitch/tongue. This should be more like 10% of the load, from what I understand. I think this is the precise reason for weight distribution hitches.

You guys have a lot more experience than I do at this, so I might be missing something here.

Glad to hear everyone's okay. How's the cup car?

kurt M

Weight distributive hitched often put more strain on a receiver tube not less. Regardless of the hitch type used (5th wheel aside) everything goes through the receiver tube.

jrgordonsenior

It's rated at 1,500 tongue weight with a WDH hitch. There was only 1 cup car inside, and it's a 3-axel trailer so it wasn't near capacity....