My 1990 38 fountain fever weights about 8600 & the tailer about 2000. My tow vehicle is a 2000 ford f350 4x4 dually. The hitch on the truck is rated at 10000, my receiver is 10000 and the hitch ball is rated at 14000 Lbs. Do you guys think my set-up is safe enough?

I would say yes. I'm gonna ck my rating. 97 ram 3/4.

My rating is 8700# 2500 Ram 4x4. 93 35 Lightning @ 7850+ and trailer . Been pullin for 6 yrs and it's still on.

the bult in safety margin is easily enough to cover 800lbs over. My only concern woudl be insurance. If you crashed and had a claim they might deny it if they foudn out you were overloaded.

Thanks for the heads up there Troutly. I just thought the V-5 and the Class 5 were the same thing, just different labels.

Thanks Troutly, I just ck'd my sticker and I'm rated at 10k. Standard rating on my Ram is 8700 but with tow pkg they up-ped it some. Got us thinkin again!!

My01' Dodge is rated at 12,700. I had to upgrade from a 99 4x4-360 cubic inch motor simply because of the insurance issues. I was told POINT BLANK that if I was in an accident towing something, the very first thing the insurance company would check is that if my tow vehicle tow rating was adequete to what I was towing. If not, insurance was void, no ifs ands or buts. That little move only cost me about another fifteen grand.

I have a 2002 F350 diesel 4x4 and the factory hitch is only a class III V-5 which isn't near what the truck itself is capable of towing. Just take the v-5 that's on the sticker and remember that it has nothing to do with the rating. It's very confusing to people that they put that on there.

The weight distributing rating on the factory receiver is
12,500 and tongue weight of 1250

The weight undistributed(no distribution bar hookup) is
5,000lbs and a tongue weight of 500.

This is what they put on the back of a diesel...

When I bought my '01 Chevy dually, I through away the factory hitch (not really, it's in the garage if anyone wants it) and went with one rated to pull 12,000# WC and 14,000# WD. Now my 41 weighs approximately 11,000#'s and I'm guessing the trailer is around 3000#, so if you go by the numbers, I'm overloaded. Oh, the ball mount is rated for 10,000#'s one of the red multi mount units, never had a problem. I also had the 47 on this hitch and it was around 24,000#'s on the trailer. The thing with a weight distribution hitch, in my opion, is a safety issue, because when you are loading the weight distribution arms, you are putting more stress on the hitch than just a weight carrying load. You are in a since trying to force the front of the vehicle down and pick the back up, to equalize the load on the tow vehicle for braking, steering, and general handling purposes. I will say this though, I use vacuum over hydraulic brakes, prabably the best you can get. So, I would not worry so much about being a little overloaded on the hitch, but I would make DAMN sure I had the best brakes that I could get. Surge brakes on a trailer that big should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned, they have to PUSH on the tow vehicle in order to work, can you say jack-knife. Just my 0.02.

Robert

Funny when you think about it. All these ratings and receiver setups, hitches, ball diameters, ball shafts, GVWR and blah blah blah.

The smallest and most mis-understood single point of movable metal between your truck and boat trailer is that iddy biddy metal pin that holds your hitch in the receiver.

If you were to bolt on a receiver to your truck, you'd most likely use half inch grade eight bolt. At least four of them.

How many hitch pins do you use? Makes ya wonder!