Installing a rear hitch on an early 303RLS

[Cate&Rob]

Hi John @jkwilson

Seems like our thought process . . . and welding skills are very similar. I recently rebuilt an old trailer frame into a cargo trailer. I first built a "spit" for it so I could roll the whole thing through 360 degrees during fabrication . . . so all my welds would be at my optimum angle (ie: not inverted!) I would also like to fabricate off the RV and bolt the final assembly to the RV.

If we are into custom fabrication, the mounts to the trailer do not have to be Class IV or even Class III square hitches. I would think that two or three solid 1" round bars would carry a reasonable cargo rack load and would only require 1 1/4" round holes through the existing bumper tube.

Rob

[jkwilson]

Hard to measure exactly without some hardware mounted. Looks like the off-the-shelf Curt hitch will put the receiver below center on the bumper so I will probably have to go with a custom fabrication. Looks like the brackets that come with the Curt would be perfect IF the receiver was mounted on top of the cross bar rather than centered. The frame to lower rear wall distance requires a fairly significant drop in order for the bracket to be mounted on the side of the frame. A bracket mounted on the bottom of the frame might work too.

If you want some head-scratching entertainment, check out the customer provided images on the etrailer site of the Curt hitch installations https://www.etrailer.com/p-13703.html Stunning how much ground clearance was lost on some of those. I can easily imagine the rig getting stuck sitting on the hitch many places.

[jkwilson]

Progress update on my efforts so far:

After more study and measurement, I decided that the simplest answer for me was to remove the rear bumper and install a Curt 13703. I looked at fabricating a hitch similar to the Lippert version or just buying theirs, but because of the unique bumper attachment of the 303 there would have been issues with keeping the bumper in place since the rear stabilizers were in the way as well. It will cost me about 3" of ground clearance to go with the Curt, but installation is relatively easy.

I failed to appreciate how well the bumper brackets were welded to the frame. @Cate&Rob mentioned how well it was welded in this post and you can see from the picture there how it is attached. Looking at the welds, I expected maybe a half hour or 45 minutes with a cut-off wheel in my angle grinder would get the job done. Not so, at least for the first one. I probably have 3 hours in it and went to Lowe's for tool reinforcements in the middle of it. This thing seems to be the ticket for taking it loose, but still not easy. After cutting all the welds back with the disk and whacking at them with a cold chisel, I had cracks all around. Except for the dang weld on top of the bracket at the rear. That weld is very close to the rear wall of the trailer, very well done and very difficult to get to.

A little more chisel work and I was able to get the angle grinder disk into the gap and do away with the remnants of the front weld. I ended up applying some upward pressure with a hydraulic jack to get a little more access on the front side of the bracket. Then, alternating between pressure with the jack and use of the chisel I was able to get a big enough gap to get a recip saw blade into the area of the rear welds, but it was slow going. Second side should be faster since I know in general the extent of the welds ad have the new cutting wheel from the start.

When I finish the bumper removal, I will have a single 2" receiver in the center. My plan is to eventually mount two more off to the the sides for stabilizing or mounting other things similar to the way @johndeerefarmer shows in this thread, though I may install the outer receivers higher than the center one for ease of installation. In addition to a future generator rack, one of the things I plan to be able to mount with those outer receivers is the rear bumper. At least I believe I can make that geometry work.