Hitch Specs Question for 3210

truknutt

Committed Member
Have a question for the masses...

My 2009 3210 has 6.000 lbs axles and the VIN decal lists a GVWR of 20,400 lbs. I glanced at the hitch and noticed the Lippert 1621HD lists a max gvw of 18,000 lbs.

In my case, I'm not concerned with being close to the 18k but will weigh her empty before our first trip anyway.

My question is simply this, if some other customer had these same numbers and loaded their unit to the max, wouldn't this be setting the hitch (and owner) up for a potential catastrophic failure?

Is this something the factory should be made aware of?
 

Loco

Well-known member
The neck should be rated to handle the Max GVW of the trailer. If the neck is rated less than the trailer. Than this could open a can of worms if you ever had failure of the neck. It may be that the trailer max weight is still at 18000 even with the new axles and 16 inch wheels are above. I would guess that they put up dated labels on the trailer and not on the neck. That is some thing I would look into. I know when we got our rig I made my dealer put a 20 K hitch in our truck, even with our trailer rated at max of 18000lbs. They wanted to put a 18K hitch in. But I wanted that safey zone in our hitch so we got a 20K, knowing I will never go above 18K. I know my hitch can, makes me feel a little safer.
 

Pwrplayer

MickeyMouseEngineer
Not Surprised

This fact does not surprise me.
From an Engineer's perspective, we caution against to many design changes at once. Every modification has to be reviewed extensively to determine the impact to other systems and access items such as safety, etc. This is just a classic example where the axle upgrade increased possible GVWR, but the sticker never should have been updated until every other component related to GVWR ratings has been evaluated.
In summary, the GVWR is only as high as the weakest link (the pin box at 18K).

There is a slim possibility that the manufacturing line installed the wrong pin box (they may have a 20K+ model).

Recommend you follow up with Heartland.
Let us know the outcome.

If you would like to read more about design changes and model differences, then read this thread.
 

jpmorgan37

Well-known member
This discussion has come up before and this is a reply by Scott Tuttle to a similar question: //heartlandowners.org/showpost.php?p=25637&postcount=19
 
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