Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 09:53:26 -0400
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <ron@NETCARRIER.COM>
Subject: Re: Bus Depot Trailer Hitch
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990515172036.00c447e0@po-2.openmarket.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> I received the trailer hitch from the Bus Depot yesterday
> and here are my observations:
> The unit is well-made and quite "beefy"
This has been the immediate comment of everybody who has received it.
> This is NOT anything like a normal 2" hitch (just in case you
> were hoping it was)... it is made for another market (i.e. South
> Africa/Europe). I will send it out to convert it to a standard 2" receiver
As I have said, this hitch is Volkswagen-approved for the Vanagon but is
indeed intended for the European/South African market. The way the hitch
ball mounts to the hitch frame is of the European standard. As it sits, it
is designed to work with any U.S. trailer that accepts a standard 2" hitch
ball, so if that's what you need, you can use it just the way it sits.
However, converting it to a 2" receiver mount would definately require
fabrication. What you have to work with is roughly a 4" rectangular heavy
iron mounting plate, to which you'd have to weld (or bolt) a receiver. On
the other hand, given the fact that the hitch is specifically designed for
the Vanagon frame, having a welding shop do this modification would
certainly be much easier than starting from scratch.
> The unit is shipped without packaging -- therefore it arrived totally
> scratched up (i.e. gouged down to bare metal) via UPS.
> I will need to paint it thoroughly before installing it.
Remember, virtually the entire unit will be completely invisible to the eye
once installed. Once you push the majority of it into the frame, tuck the
rest of it inside the bumper, and install the tow ball over what's left,
only roughly a 2-inch by 4-inch section will even be visible at all. The
rest of it will be hidden from the eye, and being inside the frame tube or
under the bumper, somewhat protected from the elements as well. I will ship
future units with something covering the 2" x 4" section that will be
visible. If there are scratches on the rest of it that concern you in terms
of potential future rust-through (although given the amount of solid steel
that this hitch is made of, I wouldn't worry about rust-though for a long,
long time), the best solution might be to pick up a can of black rustoleum
spray-paint and give it a quick coat the day before installing it.
Incidentally, what scratches there are likely occurred between South Africa
and here, not in UPS's hands. Fifty of these were shipped to me in a huge
wooden crate, leaning up against eachother with no packing whatsoever.
Purchasing boxes and packing that were both big enough to fit these hitches
in and tested for 35 pound burst strength would have added easily $10 or
more to the price of the hitch. Given how far they'd already traveled
without packing, the small area that is actually visible once installed, and
the much lower cost of simply touching up with Rustoleum even if it were
neccessary (which would probably be an improvement overall anyway, versus
spending the money on a carton box that would only get thrown away), there
seemed little sense in trying to box these things. As I said, I will cover
the 2x4" section that will be visible on future shipments.
> The mounting brackets are less substantial than stock
> This means to me that the bumper is even less securely
> mounted than the stock setup
Perhaps, but even if true, of what significance is this? The bumper mounts
are more than sufficient to hold the bumper on during normal use, in my
opinion (and, apparantly, in Volkswagen's opinion as well, since they
inspected and approved this hitch as a dealer-supplied option in South
Africa). It would, of course, be possible to drill an additional hole in
the bumper mount if you really were concerned about this, although I
personally wouldn't bother, since I can't see any likelihood of it literally
falling off once installed, except in the case of an collision. Now, in the
event of a collision, it is certainly possible that these bolts might not
hold the bumper on as well as the original bolts. But as anyone who has
suffered the most minor impact to a bumper in their Vanagon will attest,
even the smallest impact is likely to severely crumple the metal bumper or
crack the plastic one. Realistically, I think that if you hit just about
anything with a Vanagon bumper, after one look at how the bumper fared, the
condition of the bumper bracket mounting bolts would be the least of your
worries.
> No receiving nuts are supplied for the inserts -- you will need
> to track down six of these to complete the installation
Interestingly, when Dan and Jeremy attached the hitch to my Vanagon for
testing purposes when it arrived, they did so in about 10 minutes with no
additional hardware whatsoever. Unfortunately, I walked outside after that,
to assist with the mounting of the bumper to the hitch, so I didn't see them
do it, but they told me it had just bolted right in to the frame holes. I
will query them today on this and report further. Since many of you list
members now have these hitches, let me know if your experience mirrors
Michael's, or Dan and Jeremy's.
> The hitch mounting plate is shaped like a baseball "base plate"
> with the "point" facing down. It sticks down quite a bit. The
> upshot of this is it will affect your rear "approach angle" if you
> do any off-roading
Are you sure of this? Once installed, the one I tested looked more like a
square with one side pointing down, rather than like a diamond with one
point facing down. Also, on my van (which is not a Syncro), it extended
only perhaps an inch or so below the tailpipe. While perhaps even an inch
can matter when off-roading, I don't believe that it would have any impact
whatsoever on normal "on-road" use.
> Neither bumper mounting bracket worked for me as shipped.
> I will take the brackets to a welding shop to
> cut the "odd-shaped" ones to fit as they are too long
> reweld the poorly aligned "tongue" on one of the
> "odd-shaped" brackets (looks like the welder had a bit too
> much to drink the night before)
Perhaps he did. On the one I tried, the "odd-shaped" bracket seemed to
match up to the plastic bumper just about perfectly, whereas I felt that the
"L-shaped," bracket for the metal bumper possibly could have benefited from
an additional drilled hole in order to fit it to the bumper as flush as
possible. I suppose this could indeed be a quality-control issue. Then
again, maybe you were holding your brackets upside down or reversed compared
to the way that I did. You might try reversing left and right and/or
flipping them, since they are not symetrical, and unfortunately the
manufacturer does not supply instructions to help us avoid this bit of
trial-and-error. This is a learning experience for me and you alike, as
nobody has actually seen one of these in the U.S. until now. Just Kampers
told me that they had found installation to be fairly easy to figure out,
and after trying one on my '89 I concurred (and came up with the basic
instructions that I forwarded to the list last week). Of course, at this
minimal markup I am simply forwarding these hitches to list members exactly
as supplied to me by the company that makes them for Volkswagen, so you are
getting them exactly as they are given to Volkswagen dealers in South
Africa, "warts and all." If I were designing a Vanagon hitch from the
ground up, I might have improved on it here and there, as Michael is
planning to do (i.e. better two hooks and a more ergonomic bumper mount
interface). But as a whole, and for the price, I am very pleased with the
extremely heavy duty construction and the secure manner in which it "becomes
one" with the Vanagon frame. I think everyone would immediately agree that
it is *far* superior to the extremely flimsy light-duty hitch sold for
roughly the same price here in the U.S. (albeit with the limitation that as
supplied, it offers only a 2" ball connection). Then again, the U.S. light
duty hitches are far too flimsy to even consider welding a receiver hitch
to, whereas from a load capacity standpoint these ones would certainly
handle it if you were able to have one modified accordingly. Michael, if
you do have a receiver hitch welded to it, perhaps you can keep us apprised
as to how they did it, and how much it cost.
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
http://www.busdepot.com
(215) 234-VWVW
| 
