Front Hitch Receiver Strength

[WarNose]

I am thinking about getting a rear shackle kit from PMF with a mounted front receiver hitch and possibly with recovery hooks.
Here is the link: http://www.pmfsuspension.com/OBS-RSK-SD-Spring-Hanger-Conversion-Kit_p_13.html

I am concerned about the strength of the crossbar that the hitch receiver and recovery hooks mount to. It looks to be 1x1x1/4" tubing to me. That seems to be a bit light for pulling a 7,000 pound truck out of a sticky situation.

Then I saw the front bumper that IDIoit is building in this thread (post #14): https://www.oilburners.net/threads/custom-front-bumper.81152/
That crossbar looks massive.

What do you all think? Does the PMF kit look strong enough? My plan is to build an awesome tow rig rather than an off trail beast. But I still would hate to try to pull on this thing and have it fail.

 

[Thatoneguy]

One side of my mind says that companies that build trailer hitches and such have engineers that design their products. The strength is usually in the design rather than relying on strictly material strength. This allows them to build the product as cheap as possible.


Now the other side of my mind says that since this is a FRONT receiver hitch, they could have it somewhere deeeeeeep in the small print saying something along the lines of "not rated for use with full vehicle weight" or something like that. That would protect them from lawsuits should it ever break while being used...

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[79jasper]

The site says it's 1/4 inch if you do HD/Receiver/Hooks.

tube size in inches 2
decimal gauge .25
length of beam in inches 30
center load in pounds 7000
Deflection = 0.0368"

Don't know how accurate that is though. Just a calculator I found online.

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[WarNose]

The site says it's 1/4 inch if you do HD/Receiver/Hooks.

tube size in inches 2
decimal gauge .25
length of beam in inches 30
center load in pounds 7000
Deflection = 0.0368"

Don't know how accurate that is though. Just a calculator I found online.

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That is assuming that the crossbar is a 2" tube. Here is another link showing the same kit with the hitch, and it looks to me that the biggest it could be is 1 1/4" square tube by 1/4" wall thickness. My truck weighs in the neighborhood of 7,000 pounds. Your calculator would call for a 2x2x1/4 as the bare minimum.

 

[79jasper]

Could always shoot them an email to see what size it is.
Although, I'm sure plenty people are out there putting some abuse on them.

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[Thatoneguy]

Could always shoot them an email to see what size it is.
Although, I'm sure plenty people are out there putting some abuse on them.

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Exactly. These days I doubt any company big or small would be putting out a product that couldn't handle they weight of what it will be mounted to. Too much liability.

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[79jasper]

Yup. And PMF is a fairly big name in the industry.

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