About a hitch?

[Vendetta]

I'm wondering if the hitch will fit the same notch in Rowhard's fiberglass rear skid plate. Any good info on that would be greatly appreciated!
-V

[JAMAS]

I'm wondering if the hitch will fit the same notch in Rowhard's fiberglass rear skid plate. Any good info on that would be greatly appreciated!
-V

I dont want to speak for him, but I believe Tom will make sure the hitch fits in his existing "slot" already cut out for the Tone style hitch. So if its in the same position as before, I would say it will fit the same notch in the Rowhards fiberglass rear skid plate.

[tom4bren]

That's the plan (read page 2 of this thread).

[tom4bren]

I planned on spending about 2 hours with Welder Guy on Friday (I had lotsa honey-do's that the rest of the day was scheduled for).

Instead, I spent about 9 hours in his shop. This is what we learnt:

Rural Virginia has lotsa 'good ol boys' stopping by throughout the day with beer in hand willing to "help".

Things behind the cladding are much tighter than I thought they were. Everytime that we adjusted the design to eliminate an interference, another came about. After about 6 iterations of the design, we think we have a viable product.

The cut out in your cladding (for the original Tone hitch) should still be correct.

The receiver will protrude approximately 1/2 inch further than the original. This should be a good thing though since some were having problems installing a locking hitch pin.

We may be able to retain the tube bumper but the tabs for the cladding bolts will have to be cut off. Of course, I already cut mine up thinking that we wouldn't be using it anymore.

We will lose both of the rear snatch points. Sorry ... you'll just hafta get a receiver Mr Scary Hook from Harbor Freight. The right side snatch point uses 3 bolts that we need to use. The left side only uses 1. Since we are going for strength on this design, 6 mounting bolt features are worth the loss of the shackles. We'll have 2 vertical bolts and 4 horizontal.

It will be made from 2" thick wall steel square tube. It's going to be heavy so shipping cost will be more.

Welder Guy will try to have the first prototype fully welded in a week. He's keeping the tacked version as a shop queen to use for comparison till the process is locked in.

I took some pix. I'll get them posted later today.

[tom4bren]

As promised:

Shows everything removed for installation.

Shows all that's left of the tube bumper (had to retain that part for side cladding bolts)

New hitch (just tack welded so far - spacing and angles later changed)

Hitch held in place with jack & cladding held on with 3 bolts.

Hitch without cladding. Right mounting plate missing (it was a BFH thang - you wouldn't understand).