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Just a thought. Maybe instead of filing insurance claim of questionable honesty, with best possible result of being right back where you were with an under engineered system, take accountability and fix the issue. Pull the bed, straighten the frame, reinforce the frame along with correcting the poorly engineered airbag mounts. Replace the OE hitch with a higher rated one. You could then feel better about continuing with towing that trailer which massively exceeds your 500lb tongue weight rating.
Insurance would surely reject your claim if they were aware of just how much you had the truck overloaded and that your mod actually caused the damage. Only logical way they wouldn't would be that they were not made aware of the truth of what really happened. The easy term that comes to mind is "insurance fraud".
i am well aware that I was over the tongue weight rating. And I know that I made a mistake and caused the frame to bend. Those brackets are from Firestone, they design them like that for a reason. The oe hitch is still in good shape, it didn’t suffer any damage.
The point of this post was to see if anyone else had seen anything like this before. And to get some other opinions and more knowledge on it.
That youtube video was great, and also answered one of my lingering questions about why the gooseneck rating for the F150 is a ton lower than the bumper pull rating: the frame on a Superduty is reinforced to withstand the load of a gooseneck whereas an F150 is not.
The plate on the current superduty frame is a goose mounting platform since it's no longer a c-channel except for the chassis cab trucks. It only runs for 1/4 of the distance between the spring perches, not remotely long enough to be a significant reinforcement.
The strength for a goose or fifth plate in the F250 is in the gauge and height of the frame. Check under an F250, the frame is noticeably taller than the F150's.
As we are on the subject, here's the Lightning frame, which has a coil spring suspension. The rear stub is noticeably taller than in the the leaf frame trucks.
If I understand correctly, when using a wdh, you can go as high as ~1200 lbs on the tongue.
I saw early in the thread an estimate of total trailer weight around 12000 lbs. From a spec point of view it does not seem that much overloaded on the tongue.
As an air bag user for towing my travel traveler this has caught my attention.
Insurance would surely reject your claim if they were aware of just how much you had the truck overloaded and that your mod actually caused the damage. Only logical way they wouldn't would be that they were not made aware of the truth of what really happened. The easy term that comes to mind is "insurance fraud".
Isn't insurance for covering things you're not supposed to do- like getting into an accident?
If I understand correctly, when using a wdh, you can go as high as ~1200 lbs on the tongue.
I saw early in the thread an estimate of total trailer weight around 12000 lbs. From a spec point of view it does not seem that much overloaded on the tongue.
As an air bag user for towing my travel traveler this has caught my attention.
Tongue weight of the trailer, not the amount of actual weight translated to the hitch ball. That is because the bars reduce the effective weight transfer from the trailer tongue to the hitch ball. I do not believe that OP was using a WDH, so on an F150, the rear axle weight was completely overloaded. After the frame repair, I'd get the dial gauge out and check for runout at the wheels when mounted to see if it bent any axles on impact .
Workshop Manual has a procedure for replacing that section of the frame (if I have identified the correct section from the picture) and a quick check of Tasca Parts shows the rear section is available. It does require welding it to the existing frame and installing reinforcement plates but a good frame repair shop should be able to do this. It won't be inexpensive.
Thank you for always posting up stuff like this. You're a major asset to this community
The only other time I've seen damage like that was with the first gen Raptors when guys were jumping them a little too high. It was a similar overloading situation where the rear suspension was hitting the bumpstops hard enough to kink the rails just above the axle. The damage looked similar. Do a search online to see how guys were fixing them. Search Raptor bent frame.
