4 different tow hitches compared, we give you the answers so you don't have to stress COMPARISON

4 different tow hitches compared, we give you the answers so you don't have to stress COMPARISON

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[Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign have you ever wondered what is the best hitch for your setup for your truck or vehicle and your van well I'm here to help you out because we've tried four of the main hitches on our setup and there's some clear differences between all of them some are great and some are atrocious that's what we're here for to save you the money because I've spent it all on all four hitches four hitches we're going to run through today are the Shocker hitch the Hayman Reese load distribution hitch the Gen Y hitch and the air safe hitch just because we've ended up with the airsafe hitch doesn't necessarily mean it's the best hitch for you so what we're going to do is run through the pros and cons of all the hitches so you can make an informed decision on which one suits you the best they're all different sizes they mount differently and they perform very differently to each other did anything into the length of the different footages for the different hitches we had never planned to do this video it just evolved that way so we've got different footage old footage some short and some longer anyway let's get back to our comparison starting with the Shocker hitch the Shocker hitch mounts in the 50 millimeter Hayman restyle receptacle they all do but it hangs down with the airbag underneath the tow bar so the good thing about that is it's nice and compact it's close into the vehicle which is a plus it's also not that heavy being about 25 to 30 kilos the bad thing about the Shocker hitch is that the airbag hangs down relatively low that's why we have our rubber flat to protect it because it will get punches by Sticks and Stones if they're big enough and hit the bag in the right way because it's all exposed at the front we haven't had any problem in three years with it we've had it on the vehicle for three years up until now and it's performed very well but you do need to keep that in mind if you have a very low vehicle well it's going to hang down lower so your departure angle is going to be reduced even more the Shocker hitch as I've already mentioned we've had the Shocker hitch on our vehicle for three years and it has performed very well I did make one modification to the hitch well actually two but I'll go through the second one in a minute the bottom of the hitch was exposed on the model of hitch that I bought the current model hitches now come with a bash plate under the airbag to protect the airlines my one did not so I made up a steel skid plate for the bottom and attached it to it to do the same thing the hitch is a robust design and we've got no real wear in the hitch after three years apart from cosmetic wear and tear right about now you might be thinking well why have you changed hitches if it's so good well there was one small downfall to this hitch when our van moved up vertically relative to the truck or the truck for instance went into a hole and went down the hitch has to travel up and absorb that movement to control that movement the Shocker hitch has a rubber Bump Stop which contacts two metal faces and slows the travel of the hitch down before it becomes metal to metal this is where we encountered our issue since the truck rear suspension is very stiff it moves up and down according to the terrain and since our Caravan was reasonably large it also moves up and down a fair bit the poor little rubber Bump Stop on the Shocker hitch had a hard time slowing that movement down and controlling it I tried modifying the bump stop by making it longer so it started to slow the hitch down earlier and that helped quite a fair bit overall I think the Shocker hitch did a very good job and was very good value for money at about fifteen hundred dollars I would have no problem recommending this hitch for anybody with a light four-wheel drive and a big van or a truck and a lighter van we found it's not a great combination on a truck with a heavy van but it is much better than nothing just to be clear when I'm referring to a truck I'm referring to anything that has very very stiff rear end suspension so an American Truck like an F 250 has a quite a soft suspension relative to our truck and that would perform very well with this hitch the Hayman Reese load distribution hitch this Hayman Reese hitch is a totally different designed hitch to the Shocker hitch it's not designed to take any shock loading out of the connection it's designed to put the load back on the front wheels that is taken off by the extra load on the rear of the vehicle the reason for this is particularly useful in smaller Vehicles where you've got a big van or something and it's putting a lot of pressure on the back and you've got decreased braking and steering because there's not the same amount of weight on the front wheels we purchased it for this sort of reason but with a difference we were having Tire issues on the rear of the truck with the tires blowing out frequently and the tire manufacturers in their wisdom said that we really needed this to fix that problem I knew the only way to get them off that train of thought was to put it on and trial it of course they were wrong and the hitch performed really poorly for us it changed the feeling of the truck when steering into corners on bitumen roads and off-road it was bad also now I know you're going to say you shouldn't be running this on dirt roads because they do say that you should take it off but we gave it a try on flat dirt roads and it wasn't good apart from the fact that this hitch didn't perform well on road for us nor did it perform well on flat dirt roads there's one big drawback with it every time you go over uneven ground you must disconnect the load distribution bars from the hit so effectively every time we went off-road to look at a camp for instance if we were turning off the main road or a relatively flat Road I'd have to get out and disconnect those load bars which I hated to add to the issues half the time I forgot so lucky I had caddy sitting next to me to remind me just as you see what's happening right here don't forget you've got the bars [Music] a lot of people I know swear by this type of coupling and it suits them very well they tend to have Land Cruisers and heavy Vans and they're trying to get the weight back on the front wheel that's not really the case with the truck because it's so heavy putting the van on the back doesn't make that much of a difference to the front end weight so really it didn't do anything for us it didn't perform well and it was just a pain I would never recommend this type of hitch for anyone with a truck the Gen Y hitch we only had this hitch fitted to our vehicle for two days and there's a real good reason why it's a total failure we took it back after two days because it just does not work those horizontal arms you can see on the hitch should be moving and pivoting up and down to dampen the motion of the van and the truck but they didn't budge at all this hitch was brand new and we fitted it and tested it as you can see and I took it straight back off and took it back after watching the video I could feel it straight away as soon as I put it on compared to the Shocker hitch that it just did not do the job [Applause] you can almost see the forces being applied to the tow bar where the van is trying to rip it off the back of the truck no way I was going to keep this on it was gone from our experience with the Gen Y hitch I would never recommend it to anyone it just didn't work and you're wasting your money at twelve hundred dollars it's a similar price to the Shocker hitch proof is in the video evidence just continue watching the video and I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion as me the hitch was the correct hitch for the application being a four and a half ton hitch in this video our van weighed just over four times foreign foreign [Music] [Music] this is my choice for our setup by far there's a few reasons why there's pros and cons for the hitch the pros for it are its performance is way better than all the other ones that we tried the closest one being the Shocker hitch which performed quite well but I think it was about at its limit for our vehicle and our van size it was starting to struggle a bit on the really rough roads where this performs much better and can handle it some of the drawbacks from this ah it's a bigger hitch it weighs more it weighs about 40 something kilos so heavier it does hang out from the vehicle further and it can affect your departure angle but we have flipped our Caravan coupling to raise up our toe pillar and help our departure angle so it doesn't hang down so much we have been so impressed with the performance of this airsafe hitch that we have contacted airsafe and had a chat to them and airsafe have offered you our viewers a considerable discount all you need to do is mention nowhere bound touring if you're purchasing one and they will arrange their discount for you we don't get Ascent out of it it's just to help you guys out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the ASA hitch has more than double the travel compared to the chopper hitch vertically up and down so that helped leave the problem that we were having with the Shocker hitch it also has shock absorbers on the side to control the up and down motion so it slows it down even before it reaches the end of its travel which is perfect for us the difference between this hitch and the other hitches was great the truck was more pleasurable to drive the van felt more in control and all together it was just more relaxing there's one other thing I haven't mentioned since this hitch has got much greater travel and it provides a softer ride it will reduce the stresses on the Caravan drawbar and on the tow vehicle both great positives this hitch is in a different League to the other hitches with the price being almost three times as much so at about four thousand dollars for this hitch you're definitely paying for it but after trying all the other hitches this hitch is definitely worth it for our type of situation a truck and a large fan judging by how well this performs if you have a lighter vehicle and a lighter van I assume the next size down hitch would also work equally as well hang around and watch the rest of the video to see actually just how well it does its job what a great hitch [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] if you found this video helpful please help us by subscribing it's free [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe if you want a reminder hit the bell and remember we always love a thumbs up if you'd like to be more involved check out our patreon page or our website [Music] foreign [Music]

2023-05-12 15:39

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