Having issues with this pro pride hitch still. Managed to bend one of the hooks similarly to what happened to oilfield in this thread. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...sers-help.html

I am 100% sure nothing is hitting and binding on the hitch. I actually stood on the bumper while my brother slowly drove around a parking lot making sharp turns when I first installed the hitch. It all seems to pivot like it should and you can turn extremely tight with no issues.

I think my problem is the jack tilted just slightly off vertical because I don't have any of the shims mentioned in the other thread and it bent the hook under stress. I'll add something to get the jacks square and tight and bend the hook back with heat. I tried to bend it on the road with a small cheater bar I had and it laughed at me. It's really tough, but makes me wonder how much stress it was under to bend.

I had towed a couple times before with no issues, but that was with the jacks raised to 6". After a trip through the scales, I found I needed more so went to 7". (weights below) 7" seemed like it was a LOT of tension and was as tight as I was willing to make it. It bent the hook over the course of driving 350 miles or so the first day. I dialed it back to 6" the rest of the trip and it seemed to bend no further.

As far as dirveability, it tows great. We ran through some serious crosswinds out on the plains and it was always 2 fingers on the wheel, amazingly stable. So the hitch works as advertised in that manner. However, I can't get it to transfer enough weight, even set at 7". I suspect the excess tongue weight I have is a big part of that problem, but I'm open to ideas. It has a slight tendency to porpoise a bit on bumps with the bars at 6", not at all with them at 7".

Here's the weights.

Truck only, full fuel, 4 adults, 1 dog, and some misc junk in the back.

3580 Front
4580 Rear

8160 total

Trailer with bars loose.

2720 Front
7100 Rear
7400 Trailer

17220 GCW

With the bars at 6 "

3080 Front
6600 Rear
7540 Trailer

17220

With the bars at 7 "

3200 Front
6440 Rear
7580 Trailer

17220

As you can see, I'm not getting very close to returning all the weight back on the front axle. I'm calculating 1660 tongue weight which sounds huge to me for a 9000 lb trailer. The bars are only rated for 1400 lb tongue weight. When I had the old Equal-i-zer hitch with 1200 lb bars, I was able to transfer more weight. Very curious to me......

My plan at the moment is to move the batteries to the rear bumper which will knock 115 off the nose and theoretically lighten it a bit more by having them at the back of the seesaw. I can also move the few heavy tools (maybe 50 lbs) in the pass-through to a box I plan to install on a rack in the back and get the tongue weight pretty close to 1400. Then try again with some mods to the jacks and see what happens.

I'm all ears for other ideas.

Some pics.

Trailer is 3/4" nose down, hard to tell in this picture. Truck sits good, about 25 lbs in the airbags.




The bent hook.

 

Eric, do you have a picture of the setup? On level surface, the hitch, stinger/drawbar, and trailer frame. The bars in pic #1 look odd (could be the angle/perspective of the picture).

A perspective similar to this picture:


Example


Could the 3/4" on your long frame transfer that much more weight?

IIRC, your tongue weight should not be more than 1350#

 

Here,s a couple, looks about the same. I do plan to add a washer to the head, the bars angle up in the back more than I would like. Didn't have the tools with me to take that apart.

 

About the 3/4 inch nose down, not sure what effect that would have on tongue weight. I am thinking it would be slight st these angles. Since the holes in the hitch head are over 1 inch apart, it's either nose down slightly or nose up slightly which I don't want.

 

Agreed, you may get more input in the bumper pull section.

 

Mine is an e2, but I had my shank like that and it was still a tad low. I turned the shank around and it is much better. I had assumed with the low X, the long end of the shank would be best pointed down. It is an idea...

 

So do you have the stinger pointed up? If you do that will give you more WD on the front without over torqueing the bars.


It looks like on hard turns you are binding causing the bent hook. Are your chains loose enough? My chains almost drag to give me full turning slack.


For a 2WD Ex it looks like everything is correct

 

First thing to check is to make sure the Tailpiece is still centered. I have seen issues where the Yoke has moved over putting the entire head out of alignment. IF this is happening it could cause the Bars on the Jack to exert a bit of a side load on the hooks.
Also it looks like the Yoke is not parallel to the trailer frame. BUT that is hard to tell from the pictures.
The solution that was found in the other post with welding up the hooks, Is a solution but not the answer. But it will work Try this. Hook the X to the TT and with no weight on the tongue jack. Start raising your distribution jacks to normal towing height. Did they start leaning outwards any? IF so this may also be your problem. I notice that in your picture and Oilfields picture the connecting bar is not parallel to the jack. Offload and hanging loose it may be parallel but its more important for it to be parallel when under tension. The PP nd the HA are awesome hitches but the PP is very picky on being set up pefrectly

 

By the way you and oilfield are not the only ones this has ever happened to Check out the Airsteam forums they have a lot of good information there on these hitches

 

Thanks for the comments guys, it was helpful. I read several threads on various forums about these hitches, seems this is not unheard of. After looking and thinking and taking the jacks off, I am pretty sure I figured out what is happening.

A couple things happening here. First off, it seems critical that the jacks remain straight upright. The jack on the side with the very bent hook was definitely tilted out. That adds even more leverage in the wrong direction. With the way the vertical bar from the jack to the WD bar is designed, it can get jammed in a position that gives it leverage to bend the hooks. Hopefully this will make sense with pics.

Here is the u bolt that holds the jack in place, it's bent from the jack shifting on the frame.



I don't have a pic, but the trailer frame is about 3/16ths narrower than the jack bracket. This will allow the jack to tilt with the only part resisting that movement is the clamp bolt. Too much leverage for that bolt to hold it straight without shims.


This is a shot of the hook on the less bent side. Didn't realize it was also bent until I looked closer with the truck unhooked. You can see where the paint is rubbed off which indicates where the bar will ride during travel. It moves a lot. You can hear it popping during turns which means it's moving over this area under load. In all these pics, the bar is just hanging there on it's own by jamming against the hook.



The hole in the bar is just slightly larger than the hook. Here is the bar hanging at the edge of the rubbed paint area. It's caught in this angle which pulls on the hook not straight down as it should, but at an angle which gives it leverage to want to straighten the hook. Pic 2 is hanging straight in the middle and pic 3 is out at an exaggerated angle just to illustrate how it is pulling on the hook.







Here's a few shots of the bars. The holes have done some serious prying on the hooks. The bars do rub on the sides of the jacks as you see by the scrapes, but it looks like it's normal and doesn't look to me like that is causing any problem.














My solutions. First, bent the hooks back. Used heat on the more bent side and just a couple whacks with a bfh on the other.



Then I champhered the holes in the bar a bit with a drill and smoothed it with the grinder. Now the bars can still migrate side to side, but they won't jam like before.




I made some shims from some scrap laying around which will set the jacks straight without them being able to move. Pics tomorrow of that, the paint is drying as we speak.

I also came up with some u bolts and hardware to clamp around the hooks so they can't bend. Not 100% on this setup, but it should hold up OK for now. I think it's redundant now that the bars can't pry from an angle.




I'll post some more pics and the finished product tomorrow.

 

Good pictures and explanation Eric, I'm learning something about these hitches.
What do you think about replacing the open hooks and plates with the holes with a rod that attaches to the spring bars and has a high strength heim joint mounted to a stud on the jack screws? That should allow for the needed movement and swing in all directions without friction to wear on the parts or get caught off center and add the excess bending leverage.
Would it be possible to tie the two screw jacks together with a link with a pivot point at each side (to allow for jack adjusting) that would help to stabilize each jack when pulled to the outside in tight turns.

 

I have considered a strut between the jacks to tie them together to resist moving. Going to try just the shims and reconsider after a test tow next week.

I like your idea of the swivel rod. Of course would require a moderate design change, but it would sure be better than these bars. No doubt more costly to build, but at the price point of this hitch, I would think minor. Once I am sure I have this solved, I do plan to share my thoughts with the company for what that is worth. I didn't really want to call them about these issues since I bought it second hand.

 

Eric, is your TT built on a Lippert frame?

I'm wondering why certain frames are 1/8" - 3/16" narrower than the jacks. Glad you figured it out.

 

Per request of OP, thread moved to the bumper pull towing forum.

Stewart

 

I love all the aspects of the PP-3P and the improvements over the original but the hook arrangement has had me scratching my head ever since I saw it.
I understand it obviously works and well but it is very poorly engineered in my experience as the bending moment is completely cantilevered. Maybe this is a fuse to allow the hook to get bent and relieve tension or maybe it's just a KISS feature?