I have a 29 Fountain on the way with an aluminum trailer. How much estimated total weight am I looking at? My Titan is rated to pull 9200 lbs, so I think I'm good (I'm guess a max of 7500 to 8000). Right now I have a Class III hitch, it is setup for a Class IV. My question is do I need to spend the 300 or so dollars for a Class IV with the weight distro bars? Some people say that Class III tops out at 5000, others say 7500. I've never used a IV hitch before and it looks like to me I would have trouble finding a place on the trailer to hook up the chains from the weight distro bars. Do I have another option? Trying to be safe with a very expensive piece of hardware. Thanks in advance.

Never heard anybody complain for having to heavy duty of a hitch! Also do not C many boaters use w/d set ups w/ boats. Good tongue weight and very good trailer brakes will B very important. Good luck, Wrink

It depends as not all class III and IV hitches are rated at the same weight. If you have surge brakes you can't use weight distribute.

I would say Class IV with an appropriate rating for non distributing for the weight your are towing.

I do have surge brakes. So there's a Class IV out there that looks just like my Class III, just a higher rating???

Yes, You can put your vehicle info in one of several sites and it will show your hitch options and the load ratings. www.etrailer.com has this. BTW I have not ordered from them, just used their configurator.

class V

Like Bob Zubic says, go with Class 5 and buy grade 8 bolts instead of using the ones that come with the hitch. Cheap Insurance and very little extra $

http://www.putnamhitch.com/

I have a Putnam XDR Class-V hitch on my truck. Not sure about what they offer for a metric truck though.


Check out this thread below. It has several trailer hitch websites mentioned:
http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=78812

We have a Class V reciever on our one work truck that has a 15k weight rating. You just have to check the rating on the hitches. Cause they are not all the same. A class IV should work for you. Make sure you check the rating on hitch and ball also. I have a 10k set up for my boat. The shank thickness on the ball makes the difference. And the hitch is solid steel.

Brian, the one Im talking about is the same one from XDR that you have. We recently had an incident with ours. The dumpgate was sitting on top of the ball/pintle when an employee tried to dump about 2 thousand pounds of debris. It bent the reciever. But it never failed. Welds and bolts held. It actually bent the frame of the truck. So if a hydraulic ram and 2k of weight with a direct downforce wont break the reciever, its good enough to tow a boat.