[Shop-talk] Ohh. My. God. Was: Re: Holy m#therf*cking ChrI$t HOW TO GET A TRAILER ONTO THE HITCH

[Scott Hall]

Okay. Long story short(er):

I ended up disassembling the whole receiver. If the latch is a 
two-pronged fork, at the belly of the "Y" was a blob of...weld spatter? 
Or just a bad casting. A blob of metal sticking up. Anyway, the latch 
would start to close on the ball then that blob would hit the ball and 
it couldn't close.

I disassembled it entirely with an eye towards just manually putting the 
latch under the ball then screwing it shut. It wouldn't screw shut. 
There's a spring and it's hard to do, but it was stopped entirely. 
Hanging upside down, in the rain and dirt, with my face right under a 
precariously-supported trailer tongue is stupid even to me so I took the 
whole hitch receiver off the trailer and disassembled. The blob was on 
the top-ish part of the latch where I couldn't see it through the rain, 
the fog on my glasses, and the frustration.

Removed the blob, re-assembled the whole thing. It works now. I sould 
probably go as H-F for a new latch. I bet the missing chrome there is 
going to rust.

I want to bash it with a hammer anyway. This whole thing is starting to 
sour me on H-F.

There's no ground spot for the wiring as the instructions. No sweat, 
I'll ground it to the clean metal of the receiver. The wiring plug 
doesn't fit my truck--it's a male plug, but it's got the 'female' rubber 
surrounding it. Circumcised plug--lights do not light. This is not a 
complex wiring system. And I hate electrical troubleshooting so I think 
I'm off to the store to buy a spool of wire and a new hitch plug and 
I'll just re-wire the whole thing myself.


On 10/2/2018 10:23 AM, Randall wrote:
> I agree.
>
> Lift or jack it up off the ball and make sure the latch piece inside 
> the trailer receiver is all the way down. Then move the tow vehicle 
> forward by 1/2" or so, such that the ball rubs on the front of the 
> receiver as you lower it back onto the ball.
> -- Randall
>
> On 2 October 2018 10:07:31 GMT-04:00, Jeff Scarbrough 
> <fishplate at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     If you already fit the ball to the tongue, then it has to be the
>     latch piece is hung.
>
>     I'm going to go take a shower now...
>

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