Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill
Interesting observation. According to the Ford Towing Guide (on the Ford web site), my Explorer came with a hybrid hitch called a Class III/IV. According to the guide, the weight limitations for this hitch are
Explorer 4-Door (Class III/IV)
Weight bearing 5000 / 500 pounds
Weight distributing 7,290 / 729 pounds
Has anyone else seen this sort of hybrid arrangement?
Bill
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Bill,
Ok, I should take your Explorer off of my list (though possibly not the old one you used to have).
While doing my digging for my earlier comments, I found that manufacturers frequently rate hitch receivers higher for WDH's than for simple weight bearing tow bars. While the spring bars add pretty hefty additional loads at the forward frame attach points, they also lower the weight on the rear ones, evening the loads among all 6 bolts quite a bit as the WDH does it's thing. There are several Class III hitches commercially available with ratings of 600# for some vehicles, but there are just a few choices for any given vehicle. We're left to wonder about the TV frame mounts as well as wondering whether they were thinking of a simple ball mount or a WDH when they did the ratings.
The only Internet references I could find about hitch receivers failing were on Toyota Tundras from a few years back (probably caused by tongue weight overloads). It seems to me that there should be a lot more of these, considering that people will hitch up all kinds of crazy things on a Walmart ball mount and take off down the road. The lack of reported failures suggests that such failures as people might be having are not causing catastrophic losses. On the other hand, the huge number of cases of trailers coming entirely free of their tow vehicles could involve trailers nevertheless still securely attached to their hitches and hitch receivers!
I check my hitch receiver and mount points carefully, and have never seen any signs of anything bending or yielding.