Low hanging hitches and long overhangs team up to set a trap for the unwary RV’er. Just two years ago I snagged my hitch on a curb and bent the hitch receiver on Arcturus.

You would think that once would be enough. Nooo… I had to go and do it again this last week.  I have to use a drop hitch to make the trailer tow level and spread the weight between both sets of tires.

This makes the hitch vulnerable to curb cuts and steep aprons trying to get out of parking lots. Bending the hitch does two things, it angles the hitch up so that the trailer rides mostly on the rear tires. And the ball is no longer vertical.

How to get un hooked: Well we used the leveling jacks to get a plank under the tires and raise the hitch. I also placed a sacrificial skid block under the hitch. It took several repeats of the above combination of jack and block before we could get loose.

Once we got to the FMCA rally in Indio I went looking for some help. I found Wally at Metalrevelations, a metal art studio, on the internet. Wally was qualified as a heavy steel fabricator from his work on Space Mountain in Disney Word and Disney Land. They also had time to take my job on short notice and… they were close. We loaded the 50 pound stinger in the bicycle trailer and towed it behind “Path” the eight blocks over to their shop.

Compare the before and after photos below. The before hitch is from a 10,000 lb load leveling hitch assembly that I picked up. It allowed me to get the trailer tongue level, but had a lot of heavy metal hanging down in the slip-stream.

The new design brings the hitch back level and only has the nut hanging down. I plan to bolt a sacrificial wooden skid plate under the steel plate to protect the hitch bolt. That will have to wait until we get back together with the shop trailer. We had to drop it over a half mile away at the rally. No room for 53 foot long combination rigs around here. We will be leaving here on Sunday for Blythe California and the next Bluegrass festival.