I'm planning on welding up a trailer hitch IN PLACE on a 2003 Dodge. Other than disconnecting the battery and being aware of any fire or safety issues, is there anything else I should worry about? Do I need to disconnect the computers, ECM, BCM, etc or you tell me. Thanks in advance, Mike
arnt all the new trailer hitches bolted onto the frames? why are you welding to it? i would disconect the battery and anything else if your worried.. im more worried about why you are welding to your frame or trailer hitch...
To be safe I always disconnect any harness or cable on the alternator. It is possible to damage it when using a wire-feed welder.
i agree, why weld it up? just bolt it on. there's always the once in a blue moon event that your fuel sender unit wire creates a spark and your gas tank erupts. happens more often in steel gas tanks of the yonder years.
It will be bolted on, but I need to jig it up and tack up all the pieces in place on the car so I have the finished product built correctly. Mike
Yeah....here's something to worry about. The guy is flying down the highway @65 mile / hr w/ a car on a trailer and the liability that would be involved if 'said' trailer hitch broke causing catastrophy. Carl Hagan here in Kc Ks
I know the answer to my untyped question already because I usually feel exactly the same way...(it's because you like to fabricate and anyone can go BUY a readymade hitch)...but my thinking on it is that you might want to consider liability issues when fabbing a hitch. Fabbing a non-available, one-off part for a car is one thing...but designing a loadbearing member thats easily available, cheap, recognizable AND most importantly, has been tested and p***ed by a Government testing agency, according to Government guidelines...is really asking to be made an example of if anything went wrong. Even if it wasn't really the fault of the hitch itself. That approval sticker can make a PURCHASED hitch worth its weight in gold if something happened that caused injury to an innocent person. I agree, that ****s...but its true! You can get away with a lot of stuff, but not with stuff that Lawyers EXPECT to see a sticker on...yet for some reason can't find one.
Buy the bolt on hitch from Chrysler ! The rear frame rails are designed to absorb the load of an impact. Crush Zones. If you fit a part of the new hitch over one of these zones or weld across a zone it could compromise the safety of the truck in an accident. This is in addition to the points HackerBill makes.
he is not welding it to the frame. He is building it while its bolted onto the truck so that things dont move when there welded up
i understand hes welding the hitch piece by piece while it is being bolted to the frame rails BUT,....you can buy a cl*** 3 reese hitch for a 120 bucks just about anywhere i got my old man one for his 02 ram 2 weeks ago at a rural king...and if your worried about the grade 8 hardware that comes with just buy the $9-11 grade 9 or f11 bolts...use the time you save to drink some beers
Ok, I just looked up a Reese cl*** 3 hitch for a 04 Dodge pickup on Autozone 119.95 but it looks to be one that is somewhat of a universal fit and could stand some welding to make it a one piece unit. With liability issues the way they are I don't think I would remodel or fab a hitch either today.
I picked up THREE cl*** 3 hitches at a swap meet in Aridzona for $5.00 each... If you are a certified welder and using the right gear, there's a pretty good chance it wont fall apart on you.
Hey guys, Thanks!!!! You answered all my questions and then a whole lot more I didn't ask and wasn't interested in. I'm not going to give details. I will say I am making something that is NOT available commercially in the configuration I need. porsche930dude has it correct, I am jigging it up and tacking it together ON the vehicle, not welding it to the vehicle. I also know, through my research what pick-up points the commercially manufactured hitches ARE using, and I will be using those same points. Next, even if I had a couple of those $5 Cl*** III hitches laying around (really wish I did) I would still be doing the same thing, using one of them as a starting point. Lastly, I will not spend my life living "What IF...???" worrying about what might possibly, if everything else fails, go wrong. I'm talking about a one off trailer hitch. The thing which has continued to draw me to this site (this is the HAMB isn't it?) is how many of you guys build stuff, really cool stuff, cars and trucks, completely from scratch..... AND omygosh, even get in them, start them up and DRIVE them!!! We are about doing things for ourselves, aren't we? Okay, it's late, I'm tired and I'm climbing down off my soapbox now. Mike
I've welded hundreds of exhaust systems on the new cars/trucks and never disconnected a battery or had an electrical problem as a result. Put the ground clamp on the piece that you are welding/tacking. Electricity takes the path of least resistance. Keep the ground on the piece you are working on and it won't take any stray paths throughout the car. You'll get better welds too. You can get into trouble if you hook the ground on the front bumper and weld on the rear fender. There is no way to predict how the electricity gets from the front to the back.
I second what Tommy said. I've been doing exhaust like that for years and never had a problem. TopHat
its amazing how many people are talking liability about a hitch (for a newer vehicle)but when some guy comes on with pictures of the frame he just built with the harbor freight welder for his coupe everyone is ooh and ahh. sounds like alot of you guys shouldnt be welding anything that sees any road time. good luck with your project BTW exhaust systems are generally isolated by rubber mounts.welding on the frame or something directly attached to the frame you should at least disconnect the battery.
Because thats what Lawyers focus on. They KNOW that a hitch (in their narrow world) is something that simply CAN'T be fabricated safely(********!) so it can easily be transformed into a lawsuit. Dumb as it sounds, a homebuilt frame, unless it snaps right in half at a stop light, is beyond their scope of reality in most cases. One word of advice...don't confuse caution with incompetence. Competance and caution go hand in hand...
I don't see that. Battery is grounded directly to the engine block. Engine block has a ground strap to the body. Most newer cars have a ground strap from the tail pipe to the body somewhere near the rear. On an OBDII car the exhaust has to be grounded for the oxygen sensors to read properly. The whole key is to ground the welder to the part you are welding. If you are welding the exhaust, don't ground to the frame or the bumper. TopHat
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