MarcMcCall

41 minutes ago, Disqo said:

Late to the party, but how much would you guys think is a good asking price for an original McCall Air Ride? I have one that I'm looking to sell, and this is the only legit info I've found on it. Thank you, by the way, for your contributions. Your depth of knowledge was truly enjoyable!

Hi Disqo,

I believe we sold them new in the $2500-$3200 price range when we upgraded to the 6” hinge risers, thinker swing arm rubes and more reinforcement and quick head you bought with it. Either the lighter duty Reese or heavier Binkley. Depending on conditions I think you could get in the $1000-$1500 range. Opinions may vary. 

I can tell you it predates approximately ‘99 to ‘00. We added 2 more gussets to the bag plate around that time, and the swing arm tubes would be 3/16” tube vs 1/4” tube on the updated version. You can see the additional gussets in the image Phoenix2013 posted on the first page of the thread. If my memory serves me right we also extended the bag plate an additional 1” as the bottom 2”x2” angle behind the bags would occasionally rub the bags and the newer extended one was one piece and bent to the 90 vs a plate and angle iron.

I can’t tell from the pic, the hinges were also taller. 6” from base plate to the top. 4” wide at the base for the 3” wide at the top and the pin hole centerline’d 1” down. The 1”x2” hinge bar was the same except taller. It made a big difference in the performance as it relates to surging when driving down certain roads. That surging was what inspired the 4 bag hitch. 

19 minutes ago, phoenix2013 said:

 

 

Being an engineer and a designer, I appreciate things that are well thought out, on point and frankly ahead of their time, the McCall hitch was certainly that in its time. I notice things that to others might appear odd or inconsequential, like the head mounting shaft (front to back) not being horizontal but slightly angled up (or down depending which way you look), why? To re-align the chucking force vector of the trailer coming forward and "bend" that vector more into the anti-chucking air bags. Bravo. Your grandfather also understood that hitch incorporating anti-chucking technology is a must since mitigating these forces is as important as cushioning the up and down movement and force vectors.

Before I designed an ET Hitch, I've been RVing for about 30 years, mostly in pickups and then for a few years in MDTs. I hated the literal pain in the neck from chucking particularly on long cross country trips, which would get worse as the size and weights of my trailers got bigger and heavier over the years. So, the weights of the trailers got bigger, but the weights of the pullers I was using remained relatively the same (around 7,000 pounds). The heaviest trailer I owned when pulling with pickups was 12,500 pounds so there was already almost 2:1 imbalance in favor of the trailer. People routinely pull 18-22,000 pound trailers these days behind pickups, that's 3:1 or even more, I can only imagine what the chucking is in these setups.. If you could make in-roads into that market you should be able to carve out significant chunk of it and I can guarantee you it would be a "grateful chunk", in spite of the fact that such a hitch would be invariably more expensive than the likes of B&W, Curt and other "chuckers".

The ET, like McCall was designed from the onset with an anti-chucking technology. It took me couple of weeks of pondering over different schemes until I came up with the  dual parallelogram arrangement. I knew I could design the rest of the hitch but that part was most "intellectually  challenging". It has been a very successful hitch over the last decade. As you can see from this thread,  

I recently "arranged" for the hitch to be manufactured and sold by a very capable manufacturing outfit which will assure it's existence well into the future. Their manufacturing technologies and machinery is something I could have only dreamed about, certainly the quality will go up and manufacturing cost will come down. You might want to consider to perhaps partner with an outfit like that.

Couple other cautionary "suggestions". I beefed up the ET couple of times over the last 12 years in response to heaver and heavier trailers. You might want to "review" the original design in that regard. Also, it is my understanding that the Binkley head is no longer offered by Holland to hitch makers. Trailer Saver has a copy of it made in China which they make for their use only. I designed my own head years ago in order to cut that "reliance string" and the fact that the Binkley heads reached their "capacity" and were wearing out much quicker with the 20K+ trailers.

 

My hats off to you sir. I've seen this hitch (ET) over the years (web images and articles) and only now putting name to person as we've now just conversed personally. As I stated I just check the web from time to time as it pertains to the RV hauler industry I once worked in with my grandfather in. I'll admit he was a brilliant man for his time innovating the hitch. As with anything times change and things progress. Trailer weights, larger trucks, etc..... The knowledge I took from my days working with him building hitches and trucks to building off road vehicles incorporating 4 link suspensions systems I saw where your "dual parallelogram" has geometrical benefits. 

I can relate to the manufacturing benefits to having an outfit capable of producing a product with precise tolerances. One of the major issues we had during manufacturing was building parts interchangeable from hitch to hitch. When I first started working for my grandfather every part was laid out, cut, drilled and manufactured by hand. I spent the good part of a year making jigs to not only speed up the process but help make the tolerances from part to part tighter. They were still a far cry from a "production line" part, but much better than each individual part being measures, cut, drilled being measured by tape measure and marked with a line or center punch and then cut or drilled to even having templates to cut radiuses with on the bag plates and shock mounts. 

I seriously doubt my thoughts of ever bringing the hitch back to life and manufacturing them again will ever come to fruition. I have neither the money nor resources  to sink into it to fulfill such an outlandish dream. Had I, the first 2 things I would do would be source it out to someone capable of building it so parts were made true to spec and repeatable and expand upon one of the sayings my grandfather used to use. Build it tough enough to haul a freight train but smooth enough to haul a Model A. Third would be to do such as you and design/build a new head. I saw some major flaws coming with the heads of the day as you stated. I knew back then the trailers were only going to get bigger and heavier so the hitch itself would need to get beefier parts built with different materials and the head as it was was only going to prove sufficient to a short extent. The materials weren't going to prove as a long lasting item. Cast parts just don't seem to have the life of something made from superior steels and proper machining. 

Hey Phoenix. Thanks for the reply. Sounds just like the old man sizing you up. I learned a lot from him in the short few years I worked with him. I think things would have went a lot different had he spent more time on marketing back in the day. The internet wasn’t quite what it was back then as it is now. Guys like Jerry back then had a leg up when it came to that and knowing how to use it. I’ve had often thoughts about trying to start the hitch building back up over the last few years and see where it goes. The patents are long lapsed, but all the dimensions are still in my head. I like to check the net from time to time to see what’s been posted over the years. when I came across this post it makes me feel good to have been a small part of it for the time I was. I still have a firm belief from what I’ve seen out there the hitch is still quite remarkable and knowing he was an innovator of the whole market of today from back then. 

On 6/19/2018 at 11:25 AM, phoenix2013 said:

For all you "newbies" and lurkers, a bit of history.

McCall hitch is the granddaddy of all RV air hitches, designed and built way before it's time. Gene McCall was a real pioneer in the RV field. His company, Square D in New Mexico, did the first conversions of MDTs to RV Haulers. At that time it was discovered that commercial trucks, like MDTs (and later HDTs) are brutal on the flimsy frames of RVs. Gene was a brilliant engineer and a fabricator (I had a pleasure of meeting him in New Mexico) and he designed the McCall air hitch for his MDT conversions. What is brilliant is that he not only designed an air hitch but also designed into it an anti-chucking feature. Those two horizontal airbags can be "tuned" to the weight of the trailer to reduce that incessant tugging back and forth while puling trailers (fifth wheels in particular). Along the way  somehow he met Jerry Clark. I'm assuming it was for business reasons and not friendship. The reason I say that is because McCall had to tell Jerry to stop building the hitch on the account that Gene McCall had a patent on it, oops! I had a chance to review the patent, pretty strong.

Jerry doesn't give up easily so he designed TrailerSaver and with his aggressive marketing essentially out-muscled Gene in the marketplace. And that's too bad because until ET showed up, there has not been any anti-chucking hitch on the market for 20 years.

Jerry built a very successful business and he and his partner sold TrailerSaver to it's current owners. Both signed non-compete agreements, I know the partner. However, there is Comfort Ride hitch, Jerry's new "invention", which functionally is about as close a knockoff of TralerSaver as possible. The pattern continues.

 

Old thread but this is quite right. The shocks are Monroe shocks that were sold through Napa. I don’t remember the exact part #. I built the first air glide hitches In my grandfather’s shop. This image is the very first prototype ever built.