Just curious if anyone knows if it's safe to modify a hitch.... I have a class
III
Draw-tite receiver hitch on the back of my XJ. I recall when I bought it, that
there
was a warning not to "drill, weld, or modify" the hitch. I'm guessing it was
there
for liability reasons more than anything else, but I'm curious....
Background: I need the hitch to haul around my bikes for racing; hence the
receiver.
I recently bought an aftermarket outside rear tire carrier, which bolts up and
occupies
the same space as the drawbar of the hitch. The thing is ungodly huge; it's
bigger and
heftier than the hitch! Now, the smart thing to have done would have been to
dump the
hitch and have a receiver tube welded to the tire carrier, but I wasn't that
smart..
(well, I suppose I could go back and do that, although the thing wasn't
designed to be
a hitch). Instead I started hacking up the carrier; I figure the hitch should
certainly
be strong enough the handle the weight of the carrier/spare tire, and I could
just weld
the necessary section of the carrier to the hitch. Then I started thinking,
well, maybe
they heat-treat the hitch after welding, and this mod might affect the
tempering. And
I also just thought, how will this affect the tongue weight rating of the
hitch, now
that I've got an additional 100 lbs hanging off of it.
To maybe clarify a bit: I've got a normal receiver hitch that I installed when
I first got my Jeep. I just recently got an outside spare tire carrier. It
very similar (nearly identical) in design to the receiver hitch, except that
it doesn't have a receiver tube for the ball. Instead, on one end, it has
a pivot that the spare tire carrier bolts to (think factory outside spare
carrier, but bolted to this hitch looking thing instead of the body). Since
they have the same basic shape and mount points, I can only use one or the
other. I was thinking I should chop off the mounting points and weld this thing
directly to the hitch, but wasn't sure if that was safe or not... Hope this
makes a bit more sense....
Do any of you guys have some input into this?
Thanks,
Mike
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