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<p>Okay. Long story short(er):</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>I want to bash it with a hammer anyway. This whole thing is
starting to sour me on H-F.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/2/2018 10:23 AM, Randall wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:115C2F96-4B48-4108-8FCF-16F9B9E75C6E@ca.rr.com">
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I agree. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
-- Randall<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 2 October 2018 10:07:31 GMT-04:00,
Jeff Scarbrough <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:fishplate@gmail.com"><fishplate@gmail.com></a> wrote:
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="auto">If you already fit the ball to the tongue,
then it has to be the latch piece is hung.
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I'm going to go take a shower now...<br>
</div>
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