I Cut The Hitch Off My Jeep

For the last tournament we fished I towed the ProCraft out to the lake with my Jeep.  Its within the tow capacity (just barely), but I would rather use my truck.  The AC wasn’t working in the truck, and its warming up here in Arizona.  Anyway, the Jeep towed it just fine, except the hitch sagged.

Before I installed the offroad bumper on the back I had installed a hitch that clamps around and is bolted through the rear cross member.  It worked fine, but I don’t recall towing anything heavy with it.  The new rear off road bumper came with a hitch.  It bolted to the rear cross member as well as the frame rails so I figured it would be stronger.  Maybe in direct pulling, but as I said, “it sagged.”  The way it was it twisted on the cross member, and pulled the bumper tabs that go into the frame rails down to the limit of the bolt slots.  When we went to load the boat I noticed one of the trailer axles wasn’t even touching the ground.  Oops.

I didn’t want to get rid of the off road bumper, so grinder, recipro saw, and torch to the rescue.

I have to saw a couple things about that.  Without removing the bumper from the Jeep it took all three of those tools to cut the hitch off the bumper after unbolting it from the cross member.  (It doesn’t clamp around the cross member like the old hitch.)  The DeWalt recipro saw is a beast.  It’s not a Milwaukee Super Sawzall (I have one of those somewhere), but its pretty impressive.  I don’t just mean “for a cordless” either.  The DeWalt cordless angle grinder almost got put away in favor of a corded grinder, but then I tried a bigger capacity battery, and its not to bad.  Its not a corded grinder, but its not bad.  Far superior to (and more expensive than) the Harbor Freight Bauer cordless grinder.

I had to cut away a part of the bumper too, but it was really not that big of a deal.  Did I say that DeWalt recipro saw was a beast?  I’ll come back later and clean it up a little later maybe, but it doesn’t look that bad unless you get right up next to it.

The old hitch got reinstalled clamped around the cross member.  It sticks out less so it will have less force to lever it down, but I think witht he way it mounts its not going to twist down within the load rating of the Jeep anyway.