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Old Goat's corner. He's at it again, what the heck now!


phoenix2013

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2 hours ago, Larry Burkett said:

Awesomely sharp bends and curves. Wow look at those perfect little circle thingies. Did Darren make them for you?😁

Ah, my young padawan, Jedi material be you might. Master Darren whipped his droids to make these and a friendly gungan delivered these today in a ground transporter. 

How many of you Jedis know what these are for?

Edited by phoenix2013
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They look like they are mounts for some rear rollers for a trailer so they don't drag the rear bumper. We made some similar ones for some 5" rollers.

2005 Freightliner Century S/T, Singled, Air ride ET Jr. hitch
2019 46'+ Dune Sport Man Cave custom 5th wheel toy hauler
Owner of the 1978 Custom Van "Star Dreamer" which might be seen at a local car show near you!

 

Check out http://www.hhrvresource.com/

for much more info on HDT's.

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Had a chance to look at the parts. I'm impressed. My design called for perfect squareness and matching radiuses.

RcmyslOl.jpg       hAXHEgyl.jpg

Radiuses are off by few thousands, but the squareness is dead nuts on.

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As lot of you know I'm working with Young's on a "baby version" of an ET, 12-16K trailers, typical pin weight of 3,000 lbs. Utilizing four 1,500 lbs. airbags (the one in my right hand).

mT5q7fYl.png

Just in case, since people inevitably will try to "push it", the hitch will also be pre-drilled for the 2,000 lbs. airbags as an option to go to larger rigs with 4K pin weight. I have the hitch design conceptualized but my primary focus is to have the new head design solid, since this is the MOST critical part of any hitch design. Some of you might be familiar with recent fiascos when this philosophy was not followed. Here's the concept.

o1znTe0l.jpg

If the head design is critical, it's the swivel in the head that is MOST critical. The swivel is the part that sees all the forces first and redirects these in various ways into the hitch. Youngs already prototyped one head for me

71iPiscl.jpg mp9gyRHl.jpg

but I was still tweaking the swivel design.

BsW1uWml.jpg

We've had a cursory FEA look at this, we might be able to loose the gusset "thingies", but I like overkill in my designs.

Next step is to build these things, see what kind of welding jigs we might need, welding sequence, etc. That's why I had Darryn send me 5 prototypes. You don't learn much looking and building just one on a product that needs to be mass produced.

Edited by phoenix2013
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21 hours ago, Larry Burkett said:

Henry, how will they attach in the bed of a dually, our F450 might like one of those and we have the Ford in bed hitch system.

Larry, the "Baby ET" is specifically designed to take care of the 350, 450, 550 and 3500, 4500 and 5500 market. The "Super Pickups". The Big Three have been evolving the hitch puck mounting systems in their beds for several years and it's been a real pain in the ass of ego BS. Dodge was first

na4vnOql.jpg

with the biggest puck span and also a dealer system for actually upgrading their older Dodge pickups to their puck system (they had upgrade kit with detailed instruction, the bed had to come off). Not sure if they still do it or just put it into new trucks only.

z8TI9BAl.jpg

Ford was next and obviously they wouldn't copy Dodge, they came up with their own puck mounting system with a smaller footprint.

Chevy was the last to the party and guess what theirs was even smaller than Ford (same in length, narrower in width), they tried it for couple of years and it was as warmly accepted as a skunk at the party and I heard it's now the same as Ford's, but I can't find any "official info" to confirm it.

Youngs (popuphitch.com) makes all kinds of adapters, but didn't have these so I offered to design  them.

For Dodge

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And for Ford and Chevy, since the length was the same, you just re-bolt the latches into the narrower width.

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You can see those in their website https://popuphitch.com/our-products/5th-wheel-baseplates/  They haven't made any of the double ones, they want to see if Chevy indeed comes to their senses. One interesting tidbit, at least they all settled on one latch design (Dodge's). Don't re-invent and screw around with something that works. 

UwOi9Bwl.jpg

My initial reaction was, "why don't I design the Baby to plop into one of these and the mounting is done"? Darryn thought that it was too complex (read costly) approach and I agree with him, I can do it with heavy duty tubing welded directly to the hitch bottom. So there will be two versions initially for Dodge and Ford, who knows about Chevy.

The mounting will look similar to this.

L5y3HSfl.jpg

The air supply is another issue. I'm exploring small compressor addons, but that is not necessary if there are air accessories on the truck, like air suspension, helper air bags on the springs, etc. Do you have anything like this on your truck?

Edited by phoenix2013
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55 minutes ago, Vegas Teacher said:

I love looking at all of your pictures and explanations. I am a Biology teacher and this screams scientific method. 

Just a deep dive into   RV.NET: Photo Upload & Post  which Jack posted in the guide, once familiar with it one becomes a banshee with the photos.

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Don't forget, many of those Super pickups are cab and chassis configurations.  Flexibility required when doing without pucks and such.

2012 F350 KR CC DRW w/ some stuff
2019 Arctic Fox 32-5M
Cindy and Tom, Kasey and Maggie (our Newfie and Berner)
Oh...I forgot the five kids.

 

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9 hours ago, Vegas Teacher said:

I need to get better at posting pictures, thanks for the information. 

Later,

Cory O

Cory, I've done a guide how to do this on this forum before. I'm going to re-post the updated version of the routine in a new thread, watch for it.  It's a little complicated on this forum, this is where the Facebook has a plus. They probably have a similar sequence except you don't see it, it's buried in their algorithm. So posting visual crap in Facebook is much simpler.

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