2" receiver hitch for 2016 Prius?

I see Curt and Drawtite 1 1/4 inch receivers at etrailer.com, Uhaul also has a 1 1/4 inch at their site. Torklift Central, who often makes 2 inch receivers, still has none for 2016.

 

No dice on the 2" receiver. Just use the adapter.

I recently helped a friend put a motorcycle carrier on his 2016 Prius. He's been hauling around a Honda Grom with it for about a month. We adapted the carrier by shortening the 2-inch bar that fits into the receiver by the same length as a 7-inch long 2 inch to 1-1/4-inch adapter (Harbor Freight).

Sunday we crawled under the car to have a look at the hitch mounting points to see if there were any signs of distress at the mounting points for the hitch. No sign of distress at all. We did modify the carrier by cutting the additional width off each side (a very easy modification). The carrier now is within the envelope of the rear fenders and looks a bit less ungainly.

The reason I bring this up is that I don't think the added 7-inches for the adapter we used would over-stress the hitch, even with the added added length to the fulcrum arm.

BTW, seeing the Prius with the Grom on the back is pretty bad nice person.

 

Not really my field of expertise, but I wonder if all potential distress/failure will be obvious to the naked eye, or indeed visually magnified.

 

I wouldn't do a 2 inch as there really isn't one officially offered. I have a 1.25 inch for bike racks and I like it but that's all I would do.

 

To answer this, consider what would be the typical mode of failure. It's not likely to be sudden catastrophic failure at all eight connection points under normal circumstances, or a sudden tear out of the bumper mounting location on the car. It would be cracking and sagging. Or possibly stretching of the bolts, which Curt confirmed on their web site to be Class 5.

Most hitches are engineered way beyond their intended rating, because the manufacturers know that Joe Assclown is going to overload their product and the connection points, and then sue when it fails. Even under normal circumstances and not overloaded a hitch is subject to considerable stresses.

For my friend the 25 to 35 pound load over the 200 recommended tongue weight is not exceeding the mfg rating by much. Good engineering practice is a 2.5 times redundancy factor over design loads. While a manufacturer likely will not reveal their redundancy values, they must have some redundancy built in for an engineer to sign off the design. Engineers are responsible for life safety, and no engineer would sign a drawing or calculation set without lots of redundancy. They also specify load capacities that are modest for the design.

The point is that you do take a risk overloading (or even using) a hitch, but the risk is very (perhaps vanishingly) small if the load is close to the maximum rated capacity. And keep in mind that those published round numbers of 200 lb tongue weight and 2000 lb trailer capacity are regulated by factors not related to actual strength of the hitch (such as tube size). A more believable tongue weight based on detailed analysis would probably be 256.4568 pounds (a number OVER 200 pounds), or some other non-round number AFTER the safety factor is taken out. That is rounded down to the class weight for rating purposes that are legal to publish and provide predictable risk to the manufacturer.

A hitch that is subjected to sudden impact such as the tow vehicle hitting a curb or the hitch structure hitting a curb or speed bump and stopping instantly might cause a catastrophic failure. But short of a sudden, cataclysmic event there really isn't enough force from a load that is close to the tongue weight capacity to cause a properly designed and installed hitch in good shape (no rust) to fail.

If you have a rear mounted load, it is good practice to inspect the mounting points, the connectors and the hitch itself. If rust, sagging, cracking or metal distortion is observed, do not use the hitch.

 

I'll say a "friend of mine" bought a stock hitch with a 1 1/4 receiver and had it cut off by a qualified machinist/welder who welded a 2 inch on. The local welding shop would not do it since the Prius is not rated for a 2 inch receiver hitch. All is well so far and it looks badass.

 

Nothing about this sounds like a wise idea.