Propride, safety chain, instructions….
This is the story of two installations of Propride’s P3 hitch system. We have a 26 foot travel trailer on an F150 truck and our daughter’s family has a 35 TT on a 3500 van. We’ve not been impressed with hitches with friction based sway damping, so after a lot of research, we chose the quite expensive P3. The P3 uses a trapezpoid “box” to connect between the tow and trailer. This, as they describe, effectively projects the connection point forward near the rear axle of the tow vehicle. The result is the trailer faithfully follows the tow, but the tow isn’t nearly as affected by side winds on the trailer. “Something like a fifth wheel hitch”.
We ordered two P3s and shipped them to the same address, which saved us a bit on the shipping. We decided to do our (25 ft) trailer first in hopes of working out any installation confusion the first day. Propride says the hitches can be installed in about two hours – but the average from blogs I’ve read seems more like 3-4. For us, it was more like 5-6. Its not because we don’t know which end of a wrench to hold, but rather because the instructions could be a bit clearer, because no two trailers are alike and because we encountered problems, especially on the second trailer.
I’m going to include specific instruction “additions” below, so these descriptions will simplified.
The first part to install is the adjustable hitch bar. Since receivers (car end) and the trailer hitch are often at different levels, the hitch bar is made in two parts, with a series of holes. The instructions have you measure the height of your receiver box and the top of the trailer ball mount with the trailer set level. Then a series of “if this, do that” instructions guide you which parts to put right side up or up side down and which holes to mate to bolt it all together. They are confusing. Some simple pictures would help a lot.
So following the instructions – the F150 said to have the adjustable hitch assembled straight across. The Van had the trailer end ½ inch higher. Neither of these turned out to be right. We tried a number of combinations over several days. I eventually went back to my instructions for a different weight distribution hitch. Those instructions had me take a measurement of the fender height, front and back, with the tow vehicle unloaded, loaded-no-weight-distribution and loaded with weight distribution. That way you get some measure of whether you’ve transferred weight up to the front axles and how much the tongue weight pushed down ont he tow vehicle. ALSO, just important, is to measure whether the trailer has been returned to LEVEL when the Weight Distribution is added in.Your tow vehicle WILL drop some as the trailer is added, and the P3 instructions didn’t seem to take this into account.
On the F150, we left the hitch bar ends even and added in enough washers to get 8 degrees of down tilt to distribute more weight to the front axle. The trailer isn’t quite level yet, so I may do one more adjustment on this. On the van, we raised the trailer side 2 holes and added one washer to get 6 degrees of tilt. We moved measurable weight to the front axle and the trailer is now dead level.
After the hitch bar, comes the jack posts. We had to remove the propane tanks and the tank shelf. Fortunately, the shelf sits on a separate bracket so we’d be able to move the shelf a bit when we put it back. The jacks slide over the trailer frame – and in our case since we have box frames, there is a steel spacer that went in back, plus a set bolt that locks each jack in place. Finally, there is a large U-bolt that goes around the frame to hold the jack down. Instructions say these go 26 inches back from the center of the ball hitch – but that can extend up to 27 ½ most of which was required on both trailers. The big problem was these jacks are designed for trailers that use just under 2 inch box frame members. On the first trailer, they went in fine. On the second one, the frame was just over 2 inches wide. The result was an hour of grinding on the spacers and test fitting. Eventually they barely fit on the frame. Because of this, I suggest a test fit of your jacks FIRST THING, because by the time you might find out yours doesn’t fit, you are well past the point of no return. I can’t imagine I was the first person to enounter this problem.
Then the frame bracket goes on – a heavy bracket that bolts across the trailer frame just ahead of the jacks. The Yoke (which bolts to the hitch head) reaches back to this frame and both allows the head to tip, but also holds the head straight with respect to the trailer. More U-bolts. We carefully measured this bracket, both side to side and distance on each side from the center of the ball hitch. Then again AFTER the Yoke is installed to tweak the distance because the extension on the yoke is supposed to fit in the middle of this bracket’s down posts.
Then the main hitch unit is lifted into place and locked into the trailer ball mount. The spring bars are mounted into the main head and connected to the jacks. The spring bars are lubricated at this point, but there are also grease fittings to keep them lubricated. After I pumped grease in until it came out the bottom, I discovered when we went on the road that a fair amount of grease gets squeezed out while driving and needs to be wiped off so it doesn’t end up all over your hands or hitch cover.
The Yoke is added to the main hitch unit and placed into the slot in the frame bracket and locked into place. Once everything is bolted then torque to specs (you need a 250 pound rated torque wrench).
Hitching up – which is a bit more complicated since you aren’t just parking a ball under a head – the hitch bar has to be the right angle (in two directions) and height in order to slide in enough to lock in place.
Finally re-measure the fender height, front and rear of the tow vehicle before anything is connected. Then measure with the trailer weight added to the tow, to see how much the front lifts (and rear drops). Then adjust spring jacks and measure again.
Basically the adjustment goes like this:
Look at how much the front of the tow goes up with the trailer weight on. You want to eliminate as much as half of that rise.
You then raise the trailer using its jack to make it easier to adjust the P3 spring jacks and run both jacks up to about 6 inches. Then lower the trailer till all the weight is back on the spring bars. Measure the front fender. If you’ve not take enough of the rise out – you can raise the jacks a bit more, but according to Sean, you don’t get much lift past 7 inches, and that is what we found: not a lot of change after 6 inches.
If there still isn’t enough lift or the trailer is nose down, there are two possible adjustments. One change the offset between the tow and the trailer in the hitch bar – raise or lower the trailer side of the bar to keep the trailer level . Two – change the angle – add a washer, to angle down the trailer side. This allows more shifting of weight on the tow vehicle front axle while also bringing up the trailer side. Be aware, this also stiffens the link between the two vehicles. No amount of angle or weight distribution will fix the issue of your trailer tongue weight being too much for the tow vehicle Rear Axle Weight Rating.
By all means, get your tow vehicle weighed and the tow + trailer weighed. This will show you how much weight is added to each axle AND give you an approximation for tongue weight and whether your trailer is overweight as well. I bought a tongue weight scale from Propride – but you can extract pretty good numbers for the two trips to the scale. We used a local Cat scale. The process is pretty simple. Just pull on with your front, rear and trailer axles on each of the three squares. Push the botton and give the guy a number. Any number….. like 77564. When the operator says, OK, drive to the office, go in – give them the number. Pay $11. When you come back, tell them “reweigh” and give them the same number – wait for OK, drive to office. Pay $2. We took our tow vehicle first, then came back with the tow+trailer rig. If you haven’t weighed, you are guessing or hoping that you aren’t overloaded. Given trailer construction these days, you almost certainly are overloaded. You probably can’t completley “fix” it, but at least you’ll know where you stand.
Words of wisdom
The jacks can go back to 27 ½ inches. This helps a lot on the propane bottles on some trailers. You will still have to move them (the shelf) forward a bit.
The frame bar is supposed to be 22 inches – on both trailers it ended up closer to 21.
Two people are needed to lift the heavier pieces and the Yoke because lining up both sides at the same time is difficult with even two people.
The hitch bar instructions are easy to get lost in the A, B, C, D sections. Have someone else read and agree with you before you start using the 250 pound torque wrench. This part is more confusing than need be. It can be understood but there’s nothing wrong with you if you have to read it 4 times to figure it out.
Measure your frame width carefully if it’s a box frame. Make sure it is just under 2 inches – or that your jacks are just larger (with shim) than the box width. Or do a test fit. After you’ve take off your old hitch and started an install is not the time to find out that your jacks are not going to fit without a lot of grinding on the shims. Especially if your rig is parked where you can’t leave it and you have no way to grind metal. (I did, you might not)
If your trailer jack has a foot-pad attached – make sure you either remove it – or run it up higher than the spring bars. You can move the head around when its not attached to the tow vehicle and make sure it clears your jack, but it will not clear the foot unless the foot is fully above the spring arms.
As soon as you attach the head, swing it through the full range of motion and make sure it doesn’t contact anything – such as the safety chains and or chain mounting bracket as it did on both of our trailers. Then if it does, drop it back off and make changes to your safety chains or whatever while it is off.
Both our trailers are Forest River (Flagstaff and Rockwood). Both have the safety chains connected to a single V-shaped bar welded to the front bottom of the trailer. The Propride head hits this bar and the chains coming off this bar when near fully turned. I’m going to have to re-position this mount to the frame sides. (Some states require TWO separate safety chain mounts – this is a FAIL on all accounts on Forest River). I can’t believe ProPride hasn’t enountered this problem before either. It would be a lot easier to relocate the chains BEFORE the P3 is installed.
You will most likely need chain, safety brake cable and electrical extensions. The 35 ft TT happened to have a long enough electrical cable, but everything else on both trailers needed to be extended.
The test….
We took the trailers on a three day, excursion to test out the hitches. Driving, they were great. No being pulled into a semi as it passed. You still know you are being passed – and I think the more we drove, the more we noticed the smaller push from the big rigs. We did have an “issue” getting our brakes adjusted. The “bump”, when stopping or pulling away is in indication that the trailer brakes aren’t set quite high enough. We have not done the “20 mph, see if the brakes lock up” test on either trailer, but we may still have to do that to make sure we don’t have the brakes set too high.
Because both trailers had extra angle in the hitch bar, it also made it a little more tricky hitching up and down. I kept my level handy and put it on the bar, and the head when hooking up as an easy way to see if we had the head at the right angle. I’m thinking a couple of stick on, round bubble levels might be a good thing.
When disconnecting, the instructions say watch for the ball mount to move to know when you’ve lowered to the right amount. That almost never worked. We kept a tape measure handy and did a quick measurement of the height of the hitch bar top at the receiver. That would get us close. Then, after everything is disconnected – have the driver pull forward just one inch. Watching the bar go up or down then indicated the direction the trailer needed to go so the hitch could cleanly pull out. Then pull forward a few more inches to double check. Adjust the trailer jack if need be and then move all the way out. They suggest putting a piece of tape on your breaker bar to measure the Jack height – another piece of tape could indicate the approximate height of the receiver for pulling the tow away from the trailer.
Hitching up is pretty straight forward, so long as someone can go straight backward. A rearview camera helps a lot. Depending on the slope the tow is parked on vs the trailer, it might be necessary to adjust the spring jacks to get the angle of the head to match the hitch bar enough to slide in.
I ordered some waterproof material to make two hitch covers – will report back, when I get around to making them. This is a bit bigger than other’s I’ve seen in pictures, but it also keeps all the chains and cables out of the weather. This was the second iteration – and uses two pieces of material, witih simple edge seams and sewn together down the middle. The material is a bit heavier that I thought it would be, but as something you’d use for Marine upholstry, it will hold up well.
As I mentioned, the safety chain and mount was in the way of the head when it swung when in a backing turn. Each of our hitches had a dent in the edge of the head where it had hit the chain. So, I found some Grade 8 bolts, nuts and washers and took some time one day to start preparing. The frame is box shaped with the two boxes coming together under the ball receiver. They placed a piece of steel over the end of each one and tack welded it in place. I used a dremel with a cutting wheel to grind off the welds enough to pry these off. The plan was to drill holes in the side of the box – sneak in bolts inside and lock them in place with washer, lock washer and nut – torqued to 90 ft pounds. Then a washer, the chain, another washer and two nuts (locked to each other) to keep the chain in place. Repeat on other side. While we were working on my trailer, we realized that we could do the same thing on the other trailer, except put the holes in the bottom of the frame boxes. The end pieces still needed to be ground/cut off to gain access. On the second trailer, we did the work at my house and I used my saws-all to cut the welded on bracket off. Interestingly, cutting one side was very hard – cutting the other side went like through butter – meaning the welding heat treated the metal differently on each side. Each trailer took about two hours to do all the work. I used pest crack foam to seal up the ends of the boxes – at least for now. All of this would have been SO MUCH EASIER if had been done before the P3 was installed.
mgg