I am not being pro or con.... I do not own a 5th wheel "YET".

hundreds or thousands sold... one failure that was reported ???

need more information. aka, something is missing ( more to this story )

 

I guess he will get to try out the 5 gazillion dollar warranty now that I have heard so much about. I will keep my B&W, I like the concept of lightweight but at what cost?
I'm sure there are thousands of people with millions of miles logged on these hitches, just not for me.

 

I see no problem in him getting the hitch replaced. According to the op no truck or trailer damage. And worth mention the truck and trailer never separated. Granted this was not on the road which most likely would have caused a different outcome.

Also I have seen much worse when someone does not have a fifth wheel correctly latched....... and companies make a product to "catch" a pinbox that falls out out of an improperly latched fifth wheel head. bedsaver or something like that. Not sure if anyone actually buys them.

 

Accidents can and do happen with any sort of hitch. We as humans make mistakes and forget to latch pins, install parts wrong or damage parts and expect them to perform up to standards still.

Another contributing factor may have been it looks like there was not much support under the 4 corners of the hitch. It looks like most/all of the weight was sitting on the goose neck ball. Which, when you have a goose neck trailer installed is not a problem, but if you have a hitch that rely on support from the 4 corners it might be a different story.

Again, I have complete confidence in my steel AUH attached via 5th wheel rails at the 4 corners while towing my 12K lbs max 5th wheel. I probably would have gone with a B&W if I had been towing what this guy was, but that is just me.

I too think there may have been some damage or a flaw in the tube that failed. Perhaps the trailer was at an angle that put most of the weight on that single leg which was unsupported for the most part and it failed. We may never really know.

Be safe out there everyone and remember to lock your jaws or pins before continuing on to your next adventure with your vacation home in tow.

 

Theres a difference between human error and structure failure.
We won't know and can speculate till our key boards wear out. Hopefully the cause will posted so guys using those can know for sure.

 

It would have to been higher than the truck for that not to contact the bedrails unless he had some serious clearance. Again we are speaking about the internet too....who knows what the real story is. Years ago I was pulling 2 horses in a little 2 horse bumper pull trailer. I allowed my buddy to couple the trailer which I normally dont do. About 200 yards down the road I feel a bump and look in the rear view mirror to see the trailer going towards the hill all by its lonesome. The hitch contacted the hill and polevaulted the trailer landing on its roof. With some friends help we took hammers and ripped the roof off allowing the horses to roll out in the ditch. both horses lived with a few cuts and bruises thankfully. The next day I inspected further, both safety chains broke and I rehooked the trailer to my truck and jacked it up until my tires were almost coming off the ground, telling me he didnt latch the hitch. Moral of the story, we are all humans, accidents happen, I just try to triple check anything I do while hitching up, my wife has learned to set in the truck and not distract me.

 

I have worked as a Quality manager for a major company for many years, and thus I can say with confidence: Speculation is good, testing is better.

Anderson will test the item in their lab for sure if it's provided to them. Before people jump to conclusions we should see to get the whole story and not just pieces.

 

As said above, Andersen says NEVER use this hitch and use the Roto-Flexpin box with it. Not the hitches fault...the user did what Andersen said NOT to do. Andersen will not cover this under warranty nor want the product back from the user.

 

Actually, they say to use their RotoFlex lock out kit, which seems to be installed in the picture provided.

Per Andersen, to me, "These are required if you are using a rotoflex pinbox."

https://andersenhitches.com/Products...ckout-kit.aspx

 

I understand your point, but as one of the engineers on this forum, I can say for sure that the AUH design saves massive weight by carefully aligning materials of just the right shape to resist the various forces the hitch will experience. I agree with one of the other engineers (Sceramingbear) who said there was a 2x (probably much more) safety margin in the design. The more I look at this picture, the more sure I am that this pipe was dented prior to failure. I doubt the forensics will be performed to verify cause of failure.

Personally, I often leave my B&W hitch in my bed and throw stuff on top of it when not towing. A lesson learned here is that one should be careful not to smack the pipes on their AUH (aluminum or steel), and consider not leaving it in the bed when not in use. Tossing in firewood could be setting an AUH for this disaster. Come to think of it, if I had one, I'd be tempted to split a 1.5" PVC pipe and tape it to the rear 2 pipes for impact protection.

 

I'm not an engineer, I'm a heavy equipment mechanic, but failure analysis is part of my job. This looks like a flawed design to me. Single point mount means there is nothing to keep a corner from coming up, as shown in pics opposite the twisted leg. Had this been mounted to the pucks rather than the goose ball, I'd bet this failure would have not happened. And a rail mount would be much stronger also.

This has failure written all over it....................ball extended way out of socket. Ball mount 4" behind anchor point in truck. Andersen socket mounted to kingpin pushes trailer back another 4", making one very big lever by moving all the weight 8" back on a single mount point. Everything done there increases leverage on the hitch. Couple that with a heavy pin and trailer and you have a recipe for well, what happened.

As far as a dented tube caused by the owner, I doubt it. Look at the rest of the hitch. Not a scratch on it. Paint around the bend is fine. Bad tube? Possible. But I'm leaning toward poor design. The other thing that could have been done different is to install the Andersen coupler behind the kingpin, thus returning the kingpin to where it should be and removing the lever effect. There is NO reason the kingpin needs to be pushed 8" back on a longbed truck.

 

I'm sure there's a ton of R&D that goes in that hitch. But, the hitch itself just looks light and well flimsy. Personally, I'd pass just on that visual assessment. I'd rather have something that looks overbuilt and over engineered. Assuming it is actually overbuilt and over engineered.

 

I will take my heavy over built Reese 20K any day.

Denny

 

That is what I was trying to say in my post above, but you did a much better job at it.

 

This link shows a test of the AUH where the aluminum hitch is compressed to almost 55K lbs before failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7R9Hckm3L4&t=535s" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7R9Hckm3L4&t=535s