Weight Distribution Hitches

We own an r-pod 191 for the last three years. Just last spring I installed an Andersen WD hitch and I'm pleased with its performance. 

Yep, the only way to get the rig set up correctly is to be on totally flst pavement.


Different design wdhs tension up differently. With the chain type like I had you connected the top of the chains to pivoting hooks and then using a pry bar rotated the hooks up and over center. In the process the chains tension the wdh bars. Then you put in clips to hold the pivoting hooks in position.

All wdhs are easier to tension up if you connect the hitch then use the jack to raise both the trailer and the TV. Then tension.

To me that has a couple of drawbacks though. First is you have to raise and lower the hitch twice. Second is that if you do it that way you don't get a good feel for how much tension you're applying to the bars. On our relatively light trailers if you have a lot of tension on there something is probably not quite right. Like maybe I hadn't had my morning coffee yet and miscounted chain links when hooking up.

And last but not least you don't get your morning upper arm workout.

Look at it this way. The TV has additional weight on it when you hitch up the trailer. That weight will be the tongue weight minus whatever weight the wdh has shifted back to the trailer axle.

Let's say your TV was level to start with without the trailer. Now let's say your tongue weight is 500 lbs and the wdh shifts 100 lbs of that to the trailer axle. That leaves 400 more lbs on the TV, distributed between it's two axles.

If you have gone though the recomended wdh front suspension adjustment process and gotten back to your unhitched front suspension height you know none of that 400 lbs has gone up front, bc if it had then there would be more front suspension squat.

Since the extra 400lbs didn't just disappear it has to be sitting on the rear axle. So the rear axle will be sitting lower than it was when you were unhitched, and the TV will not be level. Can't be any other way.

How noticeable that TV squat is depends on the tongue weight, how long the TV wheelbase is, how long the TV rear overhang is, and how stiff it's suspension is. If you have a big or long TV or a light trailer its probably going to be pretty darn close to level.

But if you have a high tongue weight and a lighter, shorter wheelbase TV, it will be quite noticeably tail low when hitched, even with a properly set up wdh.

My Highlander was like that. It has a pretty short wheelbase and my 179 ran close to the Highlander's tongue weight limit. It was noticeably low enough at the rear that I at first thought my wdh wasn't tensioned enough. I even went through the scales to convince myself I had set things up right.

The tension on the wdh needed to get the TV even close to level would have been way too high, over 1000 lbs, enough that it would probably have overstressed the frame of the TV and or the trailer. My wimpy old arm muscles likely aren't strong enough to tension it that much without help from the tongue jack.

That's why I wanted to warn folks not to try to tension their wdhs to get their TVs level.
That is, unless you need the excercise and like fixing bent frames or broken axles. Then feel free to build up those biceps and have at it.

Well I'm puzzled by what you're referring to.

I looked up the Fastway E2 round bar hitch instructions on their website and saw the same procedure we've been discussing: measure the TV front axle height before and after hitching the trailer and try to get after to be at least halfway back down to before and preferably all the way back but no further.


Then after thats done they tell you to adjust the ball height to get the trailer level.

sounds right to me...

Originally posted by GlueGuy Not to be argumentative, but using a WDH on a 5th wheel is not possible; at least with all the 5th wheels I know. The load point for a 5th wheel is MOL on top of the rear axle, so it changes the weight distribution equation from a completely different perspective.