WDH Needed?

My hubby just bought a new 2006 Nissan Titan. Do you think we need a WD hitch for that size truck? It's supposed to be able to tow 9500 lbs. We have a TM 3124SL. I currently use the WDH on my Tahoe.

I would. Otherwise the tail of your truck will droop & headlights will be high. Use of WDH will make it like the TM isn't back there. And the towing rating of the truck definitely assumes WDH.

[rickst29]

The wheel base is almost 140 inches, and the curb weight is almost 5300 lbs. Unlike the equivalent SUV, (the Armada), the pickup truck has very little weight on the rear axle-- there's almost no body structure back there, particularly if you don't have the 2-seat "crew" cab. A little bit of front end lift will actually help to balance the weight on the axles: In handling terms, the Titan is definitely too heavy on the front, although I didn't see any Interenet reference to indicate exactly how far out-of-balance the loading is (relative loading % on each axle at curb weight).

Also note: Since the front axle is so far from the rear axle (and the hitch), a large weight on the Hitch has much less effective "lifting power" on the front axle of the Titan than it would on a small SUV like mine... or, for that matter, on your Tahoe. The Titan will balance a lot of hitch load with only a small amount of front axle unload, because the geometrical "moment" (i.e., the length of the arm going back to the axis or rotation rear axle) so long. As Archimedes said, "give me a lever long enough and I can move the earth". The Wheelbase of the Titan is a heck of a big lever, compared to the Tahoe. So only a relatively small amount of weight will come off the front axle.

- - - -
PBUCK1 has created wonderful spreadsheets for calculating TM trailer loads. You plug in your TV wheelbase, distances TV rear axle to tow ball, TM tongue weight, and it'll spit out your rear axle load and front axle unload. If you want to add additional inputs "weight of TV luggage behind rear axle" and distance from rear axle to the center of this weight, then it'll show the the loadings for that stuff too. In your special case, pay attention only to the firwst 6 results, (the pre-WDH values).

He posted this in a thread I started a couple weeks ago,
Tongue Weight versus WDH sizing. I think Paul's spreadsheets deserve a thread all by themselves, they're absolutely outstanding.

[CAmark]

Your TV is much more TV than mine -- but I suggest you try without WDH and assess performance/safety and also headlight alignment. If you then decide on WDH you can move forward with that. I'd also suggest visiting here http://www.catscale.com/locator.shtml to see if there is a CAT scale nearby where you can weigh each axle to really know the axle loading and any future impact of WDH adjustments. This was a very painless way to determine "real" weights.
I had the Pilot and TM loaded for a 5 night trip. I weighed ($8.50) and found I was able to let one more WDH link hang (re-weigh $1.00) thereby reducing the slight sense of "floating" of the front end on bumps, and still know for a fact that I was well within factory loading specs for front, rear, and trailer axles and gross combined weight.

Knowing exact values provides great peace of mind for me.

Mark