Gary Lewis

Well done, Bill! At some point we may want to add that to a page on the website.

Ok, let's try this on for size/strength. And please critique, upgrade, or comment. First, here's a view of the original plan showing how the receiver is welded to the cross piece and the cross piece is welded to the tow eye as well as the piece of angle. And all of those joints are fish plated. And now, here's Plan D. It is basically the same as the Original Plan but the angle gets turned so the 3" extends down instead of in, which makes it as strong as the current hitch, and it gets repositioned to the inside of the tow eye and directly below the frame. That way it'll clear the spring hanger. And I've modified the drawing to show the radius of the frame (1/2") and the angle (1/8") to show that there is some clearance for a weld. Plus, I've shown how the angle will be cut and re-welded to handle the 1/2" offset of the front hole. And remember that this is all one assembly. The receiver and the tow eyes are both welded to the 1/4" thick bumper in both the front and rear. And the receiver is welded to the cross piece, which is also welded to the angles and the tow eyes and fish plates. So with the 3" x 1/4" angle taking the place of the current hitch I think the whole assembly is stronger than the current hitch, and much stronger than the current bumper. Thoughts?

Ok folks, here's one of Jim's points explained. I think. And I hope that the red dimensions show up. That point, which is well made, is that the current plan gives away a whole bunch of leverage. If you assume that the pivot point is the rear bolts of the tow eye and trailer hitch, which are ~ 1 1/2" forward of the rear of the frame, then you have one bolt that is 3" and another that is 6" farther forward. That's not much leverage. To this point I've been giving up the bolt hole that is 11" farther forward, and that distance means that it has about 3x the leverage of the one that is 6" forward. The next post will lay out an approach that I hope will take advantage of that leverage. Also, another thing to note while we are here is that the current hitch is made of 1/4" plate, and that it is 3" tall about where the "11" is, and those dimensions determine its strength, which has been adequate. In addition, note that the frame turns down just forward of the middle bolt. That puts the forward bolt hole ~1/2" below the rear two holes.

Jim - While I don't fully understand everything you said I do understand the overall meaning. Which is basically what I've been worried about as well - the strength of the connection to the rear of the frame, and the strength of that bit of the frame itself. Your point is that there's not much leverage on the rear of the frame where the two bolts in the side and the two bolts in the bottom are. So regardless of how strong the piece on the bottom is, whether angle or strap, everything is keyed to the last few inches on the frame. Right? Unfortunately I've not figured out a way to go forward to catch the 3rd bolt hole in the bottom of the frame where the current trailer hitch bolts. The frame bends down just ahead of the 2nd hole, the one you can see near the spring hanger, so no piece of straight material is going to work. Let me take some more pics today as well as some measurements. That will give me a better understanding of what we are dealing with. And maybe we can come up with a way to make it stronger. And I'll ask my engineer nephew to see what he thinks. Perhaps he can model it or suggest an upgrade.

Bob - That is great luck! Both on the wiring as well as the mower's transmission. Hope the luck continues.

Ding, ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! John/Machspeed's logo got 15 of 27 votes, so is the clear winner. However, all of the other entries got votes as well, so I thank everyone for their efforts. We had some really creative thinking. John has graciously agreed to create a way for all of us to get stickers, so I'm going to leave it to him to explain to us what that way is. Perhaps in another thread that we can pin some place so it won't get lost? Again, thanks to all and congratulations to John!

I was thinking KC-135, but we are on the same page. I am paranoid about safety, and there is no way I want that trailer hitch to be anything less than what I have now, which is a commercial hitch. It has six 1/2" bolts holding it to the frame while the to-be bumper/hitch will have eight 14mm bolts which are .55" in diameter. So we are gaining a bit there. And to Jim's question about how to secure the swing arm, I'm back to this approach. The pin latch may be this 1/2" Dia Plunger Premium 'POP' Pull Pin from Amazon, although I'm open to others. Not shown, but it'll ride up a piece of UHMW plastic and drop into a hole in it as a safety latch. But the bolt will take a bit more thinking. It is a 1/2-13 bolt with a nut Loctited on it to prevent it from coming out, and just enough threads protruding to fully engage a nut welded to the bumper. However, I think I want there to be a top and bottom support so the bolt won't have a chance of coming into the nut at an angle, so will redesign that. But, I want it to be open so that there's no way for water to be getting into the swing arm past the bolt. Anyway, that's where I am at the moment, but welcome all suggestions, comments, and upgrades.

Bruce - I'm sorry to see that. Was looking forward to meeting you. I hope all is well. You will be missed.

I always hate it when I find nothing but it works. I'm afraid it'll come back again.

I mocked it up on the '81, but then worried that the '85 might be different so I pulled the bumper off of Big Blue. As I told Janey, I really didn't want to do that but Scott is shopping for materials and this changes the materials list. And I'm glad I did 'cause I discovered some differences. So I wrote it up on here and sent him a text with a link to it and asked him to take a look at his convenience. The decision of which plan to use will determine what material to add to the list. For instance, we could just add 30" to the 15" of 2 1/2" strap, but that changes what he's looking for dramatically. As for the swing arm, the pivot is on order, but I suspect you are talking about the "bolt" to secure it for travel and the spring latch for the safety. Yes, I need to get that worked out, but I was going to put it off until after the show and the trip to Ouray. But do you have suggestions?

Glad you got it worked out, Jim. But no smoking gun?

Well, before the onslaught of comments on the previous post, let me post again and ask basically the same question but in a different way. Why? Because I did what I said I wasn't going to do and pulled the bumper off of Big Blue and tried the tow eyes on there. And I learned some things that are important to this discussion. First, the factory bumper bolts are 14 x 2.00 MM, which is important as the front of the two holes on each side has a welded-on nut on the inside of the frame. (Dad's truck just has a .775" hole there.) So I can't move the holes up on the frame. Next, the tow eyes do hang down 1/4" below the frame on Big Blue just like on Dad's truck, so the original plan of welding a piece of angle to the bottom of the tow eyes and then bolting that angle to the frame won't work as it'll be 1/4" below the frame. You can see that here as the trailer hitch bracket that's bolted to the frame is 1/4" thick and the bottom of the tow eye is flush with it: In addition, the angle would hit the spring hangers before getting to the front bolt in the frame, as shown below: Given that, I've come up with Plan B and Plan C, as shown below. In B the strap would have to be trimmed to miss the spring hanger, but that wouldn't be the case in C. On the other hand, B is stronger than C as the strap can be welded on both sides of the tow eyes instead of just having a bead top and bottom where it butts up to the tow eye in C. Thoughts?

Yippeee!!!! Here's hoping!

I think Bill/85lebaront2 did, but he also changed out the whole dash. Let's see if he'll come and explain. Bill - Sorry for paging you again, but you seem to have a whole lot of knowledge, so...

Yes, and I should have explained why we didn't. I suggested it to the guys pulling the bush but they wanted to do it this way as it opened things up and let them cut the roots. But I have done it and it does work. A friend and his FiL spent days trying to pull up a stump and then I suggested that approach. The stump came up on the first try.

Well, this isn't what I've done "to" my truck but what I've done "with" my truck. Janey has some landscaping work going on and the guys were struggling to get a rather large crepe myrtle out of the ground. That is until I suggested we use Big Blue and his winch. I will say that it took a bit more than I expected as it was dragging the truck, even with the park brake on and the rear tires sliding. But the wheel chocks I have in the bed solved that problem.

Ok, here's a mockup of one of the tow eyes on Dad's truck. (Not taking the bumper off of Big Blue at the moment.) Things to comment on here is that the holes line up, but the tow eye is ~3/16" too low as it sits that much below the bottom of the frame. And at first blush it appears that the frame heights between Dad's truck and Big Blue are the same at that point - 5 11/16". So the question is what to do about that because there's a piece of angle that is to be welded to the bottom of the tow eye and bolted to the bottom of the frame, as shown below. (And, there's a cross piece that is welded to both the front of the receiver as well as to the angle, so the angle needs to be there.) Given that I'm looking for ways to solve the problem. One is to drill the holes in the tow eyes a bit lower. I'm going to have to drill them anyway because they aren't truly round, as you can see in the pic below. They measure .558 top to bottom and .595" side/side. So I could enlarge to .750 keeping the top of the holes in the same spot and lowering the bottom by ~.2", which would raise the tow eye the same amount. And yes, I'd have to enlarge the holes in the frame, but just the rear holes as the front bumper holes already measure .775". So I'd just drill the rear holes out from the current .585" to .750". Another approach is to replace the angle with strap, as shown below. On the left you can see how it was designed with the bottom of the tow eye flush with the frame and angle used. On the right you can see that the tow eye extends below the frame and a piece of strap has replaced the angle. It would be welded top and bottom to the tow eye, and since the frame is well rounded at that bottom corner I think there's plenty of room. I'm leaning to this approach, but would like your comments and thoughts, please? http://www.garysgaragemahal.com/uploads/6/5/8/7/65879365/waving_orig.gif

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You and my DiL.

No, not yet. They said "In the next few days" so I'm not sure when that might be. The process is that they alert me and then I change the CNAME entry in our DNS listing to move.nabble.com, and both of those steps have happened - and we are still working. Then they move us and let me know via email and I change the DNS entry to N1.Nabble.com. I'm guessing that during the time between the move and the change we might be down, but I don't know.

Yes, prices have really gone up on everything, inc steel. Scott said they've gone up about 3x. But he found a guy with the 1" plate laying around, so we got a wonderful deal. And he's going to work on my materials list and see what other "drop offs" he can find. For instance, I need 10" of 4" x 1/8" strap, and 15" of 2 1/2" x 1/4" strap. And 41" of 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 tubing with a 3/16" wall. So if I have to buy 8' of those it is going to really start adding up. On the latch, I think I like having the spring-loaded pin that will latch in whenever the swingarm is closed. So when I ordered the pivot from RuffStuff yesterday I asked about theirs. But it only comes with a T handle and where I'm going to put it the handle could hit the tailgate if left pointing forward. So I'm looking for one with a round handle. However, if all else fails the handle does unscrew on the RuffStuff latch, so I could replace it.

Larry - That's pretty much the story I read as well. Nothing wrong with boilers or locomotives, or the people who make them. I come from a railroading family, and worked 18 months there, although not on a steam locomotive. Bob - And I thought Corn Huskers was a bad team name!

Welcome, Dave! Glad you joined! Would you like to be on our map? (Bullnose Forum/Member's Map in the menu.) I certainly know where Harrisburg is. Used to live in Kennett Square and Harrisburg was the getting-on point to the wonderful PA turnpike. Nice truck! Do you intend to plow with it?

Are you worried someone will steal your plate, or take it off and throw it away? Seriously though, I often wondered why they are called the boiler makers. I find this website that says the origin was a newspaper article that said "Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue." Is that the story you've heard?

And, I forgot to say there are some trophies on order as well.