Hitch-lowering safety
My ‘05 Workhorse Bounder has been towing an ‘06 CRV all its life using a Blue Ox set up. With a hitch lowering adapter and the Ready Brake, which is also a lowering configuration, our hitch was dropped about 5-6” which got us pretty close to the CRV connection height.
We recently moved to an ‘07 CRV on which the Blue Ox base plate mounts lower than it does on the ‘06, so now I’m faced with lowering the hitch height some more to keep it within the recommendation that came with the base plate, +/- 4”. (I realize B.O. is on record recommending 3” in other situations.)
I have heard that it’s not a good idea to offset the receiver by too much since it can cause lateral or twisting stress, and now I’m looking to offset by about 8” total. I don’t think my receiver is unusually high, and I know CRVs of this vintage are commonly used as toads so I’m wondering what people do. Neither my Bounder manual (a piece of work that is!) nor my Workhorse manual cautions against using offsets. Maybe I’m worried about nothing?
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