Tow hitch

Hello Grenna,

We tow our Sonoma, which is similar in weight to the 193, using a Fastway e2 hitch (600# bars).  It works very well.

I had a 1000 lb Reese Pro wdh. Worked great. Regardless of what your bar weight rating is, if your wdh is set up right the loads on the hitch/trailer/tow vehicle are the same. The difference is only that the lighter bars will provide a softer ride because they will flex more, and they will also bottom out sooner, similar to what happens when you go to softer vs firmer shock absorbers on a vehicle.

So Forest River is lying to you if they are blaming trailer damage on a 750 lb wdh. Blue Ox's recommendation is sound, that's a very normal rating for an rpod.

There is something else going on here. What specifically is causing the cracking, did FR tell you? What is being done to correct it?

While you might be ok without a wdh, you will probably like the way your rig handles better with it, and it will be safer too.

First, don't go by listed dry tongue weight. Dry tongue weight has little to do with your actual loaded tongue weight. That depends on how you load how much water your carrying and where, whether you have dual or a single battery and/or propane cylinders, etc.

For example, I had to work at it to keep my tongue weight to 500 lbs even though the listed dry tongue weight was only about 270 lbs. Also, the wdh lifts both the trailer tongue and the weight in the back of your tow vehicle, so that weight has to be taken into accoubt as well.

Also bear in mind that a higher tongue weight is a good thing as long as it doesn't cause problems with your tow vehicle because higher tongue weight relative to total trailer weight reduces the trailer's tendency to sway. You never want to have your tongue weight be less than 10-11% of total trailer weight.

So how do you get a handle on this? First load up your trailer and tow vehicle as you plan to travel, including all supplies tools gear, water, people, pets, fuel, etc and get the actual weights (tongue, all 3 axles, trailer, tow vehicle).


If you look in my posts with the advanced search you'll see how you can get all that from a trip to your local public scale, as well as a link to a good towing calculator that will tell you know where are relative to your vehicle and trailer specs. You with most likely be surprised about how much everything weighs.

The calculator also lets you set up a wdh before you actually buy one so you can see what the effect would be. You will see that without the wdh the tow vehicle front axle gets lighter which can cause handling and braking problems. That extra weight has to go somewhere so the weight on the rear axle goes up by the tongue weight plus the redistributed weight from the front axle. So the problem is worse than you might initially think.

The wdh reduces the weight on the rear axle and redistributes that between the trailer axle and the front axle, the objective being to adjust it to bring the weight on the front axle back up to what it was without the trailer.

At that point there will still be some squat on the rear axle, because it will have the tongue weight (and only the tongue weight) on it.