Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Adventure
The WDH also spreads the loads better on the hitch receiver attach points.
It does this by placing a positive lift on the hitchball. Essentially, you've got a wheelbarrow where the spring bars are the handles, and you're lifting the tongue weight as you pick them up.
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Without a WDH, the weight of the tongue hangs* on the rearmost hitch bolts multiplied by the leverage of the hitch ball vs the bolt pattern. With a WDH, the rear bolts go to zero and the forward-most bolts carry the tongue load (the really good hitch receivers, like I'd expect to find on a pickup with a big tow capacity, have 4 bolts in the pattern up there). So with the WDH, you'd have both lower point loads plus more bolts working and therefore even lower loads per bolt.
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I'll have to take a closer look at how my receiver is installed. I don't recall much asymmetry (front to back) in how it's mounted, but if true, this could explain the difference in acceptable tongue loads between a WDH and regular hitch in the factory receiver.
As for the receiver's difference in towing capacity, it must be because the WDH distributes some weight to the TV's front axle. But how much weight, if any, is distributed depends upon the size and adjustment of the spring bars.
Presumably they mean a "correctly" adjusted and sized WDH, whatever that means. Everybody's got a different opinion there ...