Need advice on hitch removal

Right. I'm saying it has nothing to do with the hitch. It has to do with the frame design. The whole front end of a car is one giant krinkle zone. Further more where does that hitch hit on a car. On a truck. On an crossover. As soon as that hitch goes into something soft, the force slowly gets spread across everything else in the front of the other car.

That hitch is essentially a cross member. What are you assuming is going to happen. If you get hit with it and it's not on.

 

*receiver

 

My frontier got rear ended at 28 MPH no tow package, bent the bumper and frame down 90 degrees........ Does not matter.

 

20 minutes of googling - I only found 2 states - California and NY with laws on removing receiver hitch balls. Hardly "most" or "many" states. Proposed in Illinois, but never passed in the legislature.
Also, brings up the issue of non-receiver hitches - would owner be expected to remove just the ball ? Would hitches with the ball welded to its mount be illegal?

 

Hundreds ? OK, I'm not trying to be an obnoxious jerk here but why didn't you say thousands or tens of thousands or dozens? Seriously, if you had said, "It is a frequent issue with rear end collisions" I might have said, "OK, I'll play ......how frequent?" And does it matter if the hitch is present or not ? What's to say that if the truck lacked the hitch the damage would not occur? What about other makes of trucks, do they suffer the same problem with hitches and rear end collisions ? But Hundreds ??? So I guess out of all the Tacoma's ever made, that have receiver hitches, that have been involved in rear end collisions - you have some definitive study that shows between 100 and 999 Tacoma's have suffered frame damage exclusively due to the presence of a receiver hitch ? WOW, I would love to see that study; why don't you share it with us.

As for, ".....I think the many threads here on TW alone is more proof than anyone will ever need", that type of anecdotal evidence is hardly proof. Lots of people with Tacoma's get nails in their tires but that doesn't mean Tacoma's are somehow more prone to getting nails in their tires than any other vehicle. The presence of a receiver hitch may result in frame damage but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that frames get damaged in rear end collisions that DON'T involve hitches as well.

 

Actually the last time I was rear ended (...full disclosure: many years ago in an F-250, not a Toyota), my hitch receiver had a tiny scratch, and no damage to anything else. The little econobox that ran into me had a couple K worth of damage.

As for leaving in the ball in, legal or not it's a pain in the ass, or more accurately, the leg. Every time I have the damn thing in I end up barking a shin on it at least once.

 

Seriously OP you are over thinking this. Just enjoy the truck. You are worrying about something that may not even happen.

 

I was rear ended in my previous truck by some guy in an Acura. It was very low speed. The result was that he got a square dent in his hood and I couldn’t find any damage on my hitch or truck.

I’ve been hit like that 2-3 other times in my driving career. Every time it happened, the other vehicle got the damage. The worse was scratches on the bottom of my bumper.

 

I was on a job site and the construction trailer and yard was surrounded by chain link fence. This worker pulls in and backs up to the chain link fence and hits it pretty good. The guy goes into the trailer,comes back out and takes off for 30 or 40’ ripping the chain link fence down and dragging across another’s guys truck. The ball on his hitch must have been forced through the fence somehow when he back up.
We couldn’t help buy laugh at this guy trying to figure out what just happened. Even though we didn’t know him, from then on we call him “ trailer Hitch”.

 

Same here. I leave the drawbar in all the time sine I tow my boat so often. I'm not taking it out each time. Anytime I have to take it out I end up having to cut the locking hitch pin because the keyhole gets so corroded from lack of use and those little rubber covers fall off after a couple months.

 

Just put in one of these, it’s amazing how much space you’ll get while someone parallel parking behind you.