Not sure if I can post this here is this section or not but here is my problem. I have a 2011 F250 with the snow plow prep package and am having a hard time setting up a reese wd strait line hitch. For the past three times we went out camping with our travel trailer I have bent the heavy duty snap up brackets. According to the ford manual it says for wd hitches the height of the fender wells should be half the distance of without the bars loaded to sitting plan. Why would you not want the front sitting normal to more compressed the problem being it takes a lot to compress those heavy duty springs, 1500# bars. And the rear leafs are terrible the front of the camper seems to teeter tooter a lot over bumps sags so much for a 3/4 ton truck. Anybody got any advise? I called reese and sent them some pictures but they didn't seem anything was setup wrong. I asked if you could have to much tension on the spring bars and they said no they have been tested for 17,000 pounds.

 

Not sure I completely understand the problem. What I would do is find a CAT scale at a Flying J or other truck stop and weigh the trailer off the truck. Have the front setting on one part of the scale and the wheels on another scale, there are usually 3 sections to the scales. This will tell you what the tongue load is and the total weight of the trailer. Now when you hook back up again you should weigh the truck and trailer combo as a package, this again will show you how much weight you are putting on the rear of the truck but also how much you have lightened the front end of the truck. I usually adjust the spring bars to where it balances out the weight of the tongue over the front and back end of the truck.
Also the trailer should be about level or slightly lower in the front approximetly 1/2 to 1 inch lower. You can park on a fairly level roadway or parking lot and measure the trailer frame and level it front to back. This is about the height of what the ball on the truck should be, before hooking up. When you drop the trailer onto the ball you should be able to pull the truck and trailer up to the 1/2 to 1 inch drop. It also helps to use the tongue jack, mechanical or electric to lift the truck and trailer and take some of the load off while putting on the spring bars.

I don't know how big your RV is but I have never used anything heavier than 1000 LB spring bars in my years of RVing, last RV tow was a 29ft Wilderness. Never bent one so I would be interested in how heavy your rig is. Hope any of this helps with your set up, but remember the people at the RV dealerships usuallly, not always, have people who are experts at hooking up and getting the proper set up for towing that is safe for you as well as the other drivers on the road.
Good luck

 

Thanks for replying! I weighed the trailer and tongue weight last year and the RV came in at 8450# loaded and the tongue weight was like 680# which I thought was light. From what I have been reading it should be 10-15% of the RV weight. So I tried to rearrange how things where packed and couldn't get any more weight forward so I ended up putting 4, 70# sandbags in the front compartment. I have measured and adjusted numerous times trying to get the wd hitch right but something is not coming out right to keep bending these snap up brackets. I guess my concern was I am putting to much forward on the front end of this truck with the spring bars. What I am coming up with by measuring is the front will drop 1/4" from normal and the back is about 3/4" drop from normal. But the spring bars seem way to tight. I guess I will try and go weigh the front and rear axle to see what exactly I am putting on there. What kind of weight should I be seeing on those axles?

 

This is the Reese Dual Cam, Spring Bar, and Trunnion that I have. They come in 600lbs and 1200lbs. When I had my C1500 it would lift the rear up 2"-3" no problem. On my F250 it pulls it up about a half inch. My tongue weight is approximately 650lbs. I have never worried about bending the bars. I have tried.

Where I see a lot of problems is the height of peoples hitches/*****. Many times they have lifted trucks and only a 1" drop hitch when they need a 4" drop or greater. The higher you have to lift the trailer the more weight you are actually lifting. You end up taking weight off of the front axle of the trailer thus distributing it between your hitch and rear trailer axle. The point is keep the trailer a level as possible.