Hensley Hitch Stretched and broken

I removed the Hensley from the trailer yesterday, and got a good look at the areas of wear.

I have looked for other Hensley problems, and this is not the first report of this type of pulling apart.  The Hensley owners with this type of damage, mostly seem to have a taller tow vehicle, with a long drop hitch bar, 4, 6, or 8 inch drop.  The owners try to transfer weight to the front of the vehicle, and sometimes over stress the system for thousands of miles.  Most of the reported damage is on high mileage hitches, we have 30,000 miles on this one.  The elongated holes seem to be a common wear issue on high mileage units.  We had a 4 inch drop bar, and last year when we were in Michigan, a stop at the Airstream Dealer got it exchanged for a 2 inch drop bar.  I may have over stressed the system way back then.

If Hensley had this issue with every hitch, and with their lifetime guaranty, they would not stay in business very long.  We haven’t used any other hitch, and have had no sway issues, and we don’t even know if the wind is blowing across or straight on, except for the trees waiving along the side of the road.  A fault of the hitch system might be that it works well even if maladjusted.  I don’t fault Hensley for this damage, as I just can’t help but think, that I may have contributed to this failure.

The new hitch will have a warranty, the broke hitch came with the trailer.  I just couldn’t see spending any money for a warranty transfer, with this supposedly bullet proof hitch.  Silly me.

The heavy coating of grease and road dirt may have prevented me from seeing the the first break in the lower carriage.  The pictures are of the unit removed from the trailer, and turned upside down.  The first picture shows the sleeves where the spring bars sit, and the broken metal is actually hidden from view when the hitch is attached.  I only saw the broken metal, because Anne-Marie had backed up to the hitch a little off center, and the lower carriage was shifted and turned to the side a bit for hooking up, and I could see the break.  The second picture shows the deep gouging in the swing arm, lower center, that was caused by the spring arm bending the sleeve away from the lower carriage.  I had what appeared to be an ample amount of grease in the sleeves, and on the ends of the spring bars.

The main hitch assembly is shown in these pictures, and this is the underside part that faces the trailer.  Remember, this heavy thing is upside down for these pictures.  The struts attach to the main assembly with pins that fit through these holes.  The left side holes on both of these sides show the metal being stretched a bit.

These are the pins that held the struts to the main assembly, and both are bent a little.  There must be a lot of pressure on these guys.

The bottom hole on the screw jacks are elongated.  This is where the spring bars attach, and pull up to put pressure on the hitch assembly.

The new hitch will be here today, UPS says that it’s out for delivery.