Acoals
Senior Member
Looking for some opinions or ideas here. The truck is an L9000 dump, I pull an tandem axle air tag trailer that weighs up to 50,000lb with the excavator on, including pretty substantial tongue weight; about 15,000lb. When I got the truck, it had a swiveling pintle that is rated for 30,000lb as near as I can tell. I am trying to upgrade the pintle to a fixed setup that is rated for 45 ton. The trouble I have is that the holes from the old unit obviously don't line up with the new, and there really isn't room to move the new unit to a different place. I am a bit uncomfortable having to many holes to close together, but I really don't want to take the body off and completely rebuild the tail of the truck. The plate on the truck that the hitch bolts to is 1" plate.
The white dots are the location of the holes for the new hitch. The old hitch was held on with 1/2" bolts. The new hitch has 3/4" bolts. If I moved the new down a bit, the top holes would overlap the upper holes on the old, except about 1/4". The only way I have to cut an overlapping hole like that would be to cut with a torch, which isn't terribly precise. Not sure if that is acceptable with 25 ton floating around . . . ?
What was in there:
What I am planning to put in:
The white dots are the location of the holes for the new hitch. The old hitch was held on with 1/2" bolts. The new hitch has 3/4" bolts. If I moved the new down a bit, the top holes would overlap the upper holes on the old, except about 1/4". The only way I have to cut an overlapping hole like that would be to cut with a torch, which isn't terribly precise. Not sure if that is acceptable with 25 ton floating around . . . ?
What was in there:
What I am planning to put in: