warning trailer hitch!!!!
 

Well I thought by now we would be on our way to a solution, but Da'lan has decided to sit on their thumbs.

I put the Dalan hitch on our RX8, purchased from Hitch-web.com, for the trip to the Wendover Prosolo. My tire trailer is a small box trailer ,4'X5" box, hold tires tools etc. Weighs about 400lbs loaded and I run very low tongue weight, about 10% ot total weight. This is well under the 2000lbs total/ 200lb tongue weight Dalan claims the hitch can hold.
Well I was lucky to get my trailer home. After my 1300 mile trip I decided to check the hitch and all hardware. The trunk floor around both of the main mounts has cracked. The cracks are 2"-3" long around the mounting points. The hitch was installed as per the instructions and was loaded at less than 25% capacity.
I called Hitch-web and Greg was very helpful. He asked me to email some pics to them and Dalan. He has checked back with me and he wants to get this resolved as he is does not want any of their other customers to have problems, he did tell me I was not the first person to call about this issue. The problem is Dalan has not responded. They have had a week and have not even called to say we are working on it. So now I have to take our four month old RX8 to a body shop and pay to have the trunk floor fixed. At this point I am not sure I can, or want to, use the hitch anymore.
If you have this hitch on your car please take the time to pull back the carpet and check the trunk floor to see if you have cracks starting. Only takes a few minutes to check, but could save you a lot of trouble in the long run.
I will post if anything gets done with this.
If someone can host I can send you the pics.

Must be why we can't buy the genuine one in Australia... :( Bummer..

Sorry to hear about your troubles.. I hope things get sorted soon.. I wonder if any other owners have check the mounting positions..

Ok, I think I have pics up:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bstockrx8/album?.dir=mail

I had the same problem with a DaLan hitch on a BMW E36 M3 many years ago

sheet metal does not make a good mounting point, it flexes and cracks just as shown, it will need reinforcement to keep from cracking

Had one on the aluminum frame of my corvette for 10 years, no problem. I hope they will come up with a fix. I suggested to them larger plates in the trunk and on the hitch legs, but no one there has had the time to get back with me.

ACK. not good!

I checked my hitch. I don't see any cracks, but the mounting plates are siliconed and bolted down.

Did you unbolt your plates to see the cracks?

No, you could see the cracks around them. However if you can see the cracks around the plates from above they are big. Try looking from under the car and see if you can spot anything.

I checked under the car and didn't see anything. I'm going out of town this weekend, but I'll be back Monday. I'll cut the silicon off and unbolt the plates to see if there is any cracking underneath the plates.

Anything new? Anyone else having this problem?

I've used mine for about 800 miles so far, no signs of tearing or buckling here.

well you should keep an eye on it after you install the stiffer shocks

FYI, I just got a call from the hitch manufacturer. They are sending out a replacement plate that goes across the entire length of the jack tray to prevent this from happening.

"I have not heard of it being an issue, but we want to send you this just to be sure."

ULLLOSE, hopefully they will be paying for your bodywork!

fat chance, they already denied knowing anything about it :rolleyes:

I got the call about the update this morning. I said I had heard of problems and told them from here.

Still not sure where they stand, but hitchweb.com has been a great help. I got an email last week and the new part got here fedex overnight on Monday. I do not think it is going to fix the problem. While the new part does cover the floor from side to side it is only about 2" wide, so it does not even cover the factory holes in the floor as good as the old part. Also the damage to the floor is not from the top. If you look at my pics you can see the damage is from the legs on the hitch pushing up into the floor from the bottom. I think they need to build two plates, top and bottom, that cover the holes and spread the load better. Hitchweb has offered to have me come up to their shop and they will fab a new plate. The only problem is the guy that I wanted to fix my trunk is booked till the end of June. So checking with some other shops about the repair. After I get it fixed I will worry about getting the hitch back on.

Here are the pics of the new part they sent me:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bstock...bum?.dir=/b977

well maybe they'll step up to the plate, I was mostly joking with the other statement

uh, that link is to mail.yahoo.com. unless you want to give out your username/password, can you post it somewhere else? :P

Sorry, still new to posting pics... should work now.

Wednesday I am getting the trunk fixed. I am moving this weekend, not time to put the hitch back on, so I hope the weekend of the 25th I will have time to do a refit with the new hardware. I will keep you posted.

Got the car fixed today... I did a lot of work myself, took all the carpet and plastic out of the trunk, sanded all the paint off in the areas of the cracks. That way all I had to pay for was the welding. They took pitty on me, worked on it for two hours and only charged me $60.00. I just got done putting seam sealer back around all the joints and painting. I hate to think what it would have cost to have the shop do everything. :mad:

Not sure at this point if I am going to put the hitch back on. I dont like the "new bracket" they sent and with a move this weekend dont have time to get up to hitchwebs shop to have them fab a new one. :confused:

just get together with a local metal shop and come up with your own brackets, shouldn't be too hard to spread the load out over a larger area

I almost bought this hitch for my RX8 (to also tow an auto-x tire trailer). If all it needs is a large load bearing plate I'll just fab my own.

Anyone have pictures of the Dalan hitch on the car?

why would purposely run a lighter tongue load? for a given weight, too much or too little tongue load is bad.

10% of GVW is a fairly typical tonge weight.

for small trailers the low-end of the tongue weight range is not all that critical

it's a big deal on large trailer though due to the weight involved i.e. tail wagging the dog effect