When we got our Freightshaker, it was in terrible shape. I could fill an entire thread just on what we had to do to make that thing a useable truck. 🙄
But here, I’d like to just focus on its rear bumper.
First, what it came with.
It was terrible. Bent, rusted, falling apart, and when its receiver hitch started to part ways with the rest of the truck, I knew the time had come to rip it off and build a new one. Last thing I needed was to loose an equipment trailer loaded with our stuff on the freeway. 😬
So I cut all the nasty crap that was jury-rigged on to hold what was left of the bumper to the truck and got it removed.
The outrigger tubes are a big structural part of the bed, bumper and hitch, so it got some love first just making sure it was sound.
Then the main bumper bulkheads were put in place. They are 3/4” thick plate, and tie all the way around the outriggers and bolt to the truck chassis.
Then the top plate of 3/8” steel went on.
An internal pass through was installed.
Once that was all welded up, the rear cover, made of 1/4” steel, went into place.
Note the big tubes clamped to the top to minimize warping during welding.
This has to haul some pretty heavy loads.
I consulted with a good friend of mine and amazing fabricator ( Douglas Main at Mainline Welding) who deals in big trucks and equipment on the regular and he set me up with some big boy hitch material. Here is some standard pickup truck class V receiver tube held in the space where our receiver tube will go for reference of scale.
Here’s our receiver tube with a reinforcement collar TIG welded to it.
And here it is all welded up with side doors, lights, etc.
the receiver sticks out for access to the hitch pin.
Now, it turns out you can’t just go out and buy slide-in pintle hitches. They have to be made.
So I purchased a 30 ton rated pintle and went to work.
First, I cut out a nice piece of 3/4” plate with the pintle bolt pattern.
Then it got triple-pass welded inside and out to the hitch tube and all bolted together.
No, I don’t have midget hands-it’s a big hitch.
And here it is ready to drag our crap all over the state-never to be this pretty again. 😄😄
That receiver tube sticking out serves one more purpose: this truck doesn’t always tow the equipment trailer-sometimes it has to tow our RV.
And that presents a special challenge.
A word to anyone wishing to tow trailers with a wide vehicle like a service truck or motorhome-you WILL damage your RV or box trailer if you don’t have either an extended tongue length trailer or an extended hitch.
An extended trailer tongue is the preferred method, but that wasn’t possible here, and the trucks big enough that the extended hitch isn’t a big deal, even with a ten thousand pound RV.
And all of that brings us to this-the semis giant receiver tube has a reducer with adjustable lengths to adapt it down to your standard 2” hitch.
It will also accept the newer 3” hitches too.
And here you can see it installed in its RV towing position with a Shocker air ride hitch( to save the sensitive RV the beating that even an air ride semi dishes out). As you can see, I can now jack knife the trailer fully without fear of destroying the body of the trailer.
Alright bitches-that’s enough about hitches!😄😄
Everyone have a great day!