2012 Husky Round Bar failure

[rgwatkin]

I purchased through the AS dealership a Husky round bar hitch for my 2012 28ft Flying Cloud. I have about 10k miles on the trailer and hitch at this point. During a rather short trip last month I noticed that the platform where the ball is bolted to is bent about 20 deg. The welds appear to be ok but the 1/4 steel platform is bent. I don't remember anything special happening during the trip. I check my truck class 4 hitch and could not see any sign of stress, cracks, or bending. So...has anyone seen this before? I am wondering whether Husky will stand behind the failure?

[cwf]

Did the WD bar break or bend the mount? Did "someone" bak into you in a parking lot and failed to leave a note because they had no
Paper or pen? ;p

[rgwatkin]

The damage was to the head where the ball is mounted. It bend the plated down approx. 20 degree's. No other damage to trailer or TV. My guess is the steel was not tempered properly. I purchased it over a year ago so the limited warranty is up but I am going to give Husky a call to see if they will stand behind it. At this point, I would not recommend purchasing the Husky round bar system until they beef up the head plate.

Rich

[Pileus]

A picture is worth a thousand words...

[dwightdi]

The steel plate is made from unheat treated or tempered roll stock. The welding would have ruined the temper anyway. If it is bent down, the ball has experienced higher pressure downward than designed. If it is bent up around where the round bars go through it, the bars have bottomed out and bent it upwards.

[rgwatkin]

Good point about the welding defeating the temper. The plate is bent downward so...no bottoming out cause here. During the trip in which it bent there were no events that in my mind that would have put undue stress on the hitch so...the only conclusion I can come to is that the plate is under designed for the tongue weight range that they spec.

[RichHog]

I had the Husky hitch with round sway bars on my 72 Tradewind. Last time I used the Husky hitch the sway bar would come off and would be dragging on the road til we would discover it. We replaced the metal clips that is supposed to keep each bar in place. I bought wire and used tie wraps to try to keep the things from dragging across mid America. After that I got a different hitch. I threw away the hitch portion 6 months ago but still have the sway bars if you want another set.

[rgwatkin]

After giving Husky a couple sets of pictures of both the coupling on the trailer and the head on the hitch it was their assessment that problem was caused by jackknifing. At first I thought they were crazy because I had not any catastrophic jackknifing but when I looked at it, it showed that side of the head plate had struck the bottom portion of the trailer frame under the coupling thereby putting stress downward on the head plate. So in short with my 2012 28ft FC cannot make sharp turns without possible damage to the head. This is not an issue with small AS but only with the larger ones where the frame is larger and thereby hangs down below the bottom of the coupling. To Husky's credit they replaced the head saying it was for "good will". Clearly Husky had seen this problem before as they were quick to assess the problem. I believe most of the design issue is on the AS side as they should ensure that the bottom of the coupling is on the same plane as the bottom of the lowest component of the frame.