Helping out a buddy....

[ScubaRx]

A friend of mine has recently bought a used fifth-wheel trailer. He is new to the camper scene and asked me for some advice on a tow vehicle. I told him that a pickup with a fifth-wheel hitch mounted in the bed was necessary but he's an ornery ole cuss and informed me that he didn't see why his little two-wheel drive wouldn’t do the trick. I tried my best to convince him that was probably not the ideal vehicle to tow with but he insisted and I agreed to help him rig it up. This is what we came up with, let me know what you think….

 

Here he's hooked up and ready to fly!! It's amazing how the extra weight really smoothed out the ride in the truck. He did have to air up the rear tires a bit (around 160 psi)

 

We added some heavy-duty chain for extra support on the tailgate (note that we used the "Heavy-Duty 'S' hooks to attach the chain) I insisted that he pay up for some BIG 5/16 sheetmetal screws to attach the hitch to the tailgate. Yeah, I knows it's overkill, but we didn't want the possibility of having an accident.

 

Much of his time was spent on his front porch whittling down that MASSIVE 4x4 board to fit precisely into the ball mount receiver. Also note that we used a 14" piece of 1x4 to help distribute the load more evenly--It cost a little more, but you just can't be too safe when pulling a trailer of this magnitude !!".

 

Look out Utah , cause here he comes !!!!

 

[dougi]

That's amazing. I'd think he would get stopped by the police with that rig.

[alex k]

Hilarious!

 

I know you're just kidding. It reminds me of the "Home inspection nightmare" files on ThisOldHouse.Com

 

You may want to give those a look one day, if you have such a twisted sense of humor.

[herm]

I guess I severly underestimated the strength of the Blazer tailgate!

 

Even though this is obviously not your buddy, it still sort of scares me that SOMEBODY actually did this. Wow!

[efelker]

... well see, his first mistake was not logging in to a helpful RV forum and asking the ubiquitous, "Can I tow my X with my Y?" ... thus leading to his second mistake.