Reproduction Westfalia hitch installed!

[///Mink]

Thanks to Thom Fitzpatrick of Vintagebus.com, I got an early birthday present – one of his reproduction Westy hitches! I was going to buy one anyway, but this was even better.

First off, my Singlecab had some issues with bending of the transmission carrier – it looked as if at some point in its life someone had chained up to that area and dragged something or the bus had been forcibly dragged backwards by the carrier. Thankfully, some heat and a bigass pair of Channellocks took care of the bending.

After that, the install was fairly straight forward – mount up the bumper bracket side mounts, hang the hitch, install the U-bolts over the torsion tube, tighten everything up a bit, drill 4 holes for the carrier mounting points, tighten more, finally drill two holes for the bumper mount and cinch everything up tight. Took about an hour after fixing the bent carrier.

The hitch is built like a brick sh#thouse – I’m sure it’s capable of towing more than the bus could handle. And comparing the repro hitch to Thom’s original, I’m sure it’s stronger since the hitch ball section is solid instead of hollow and the main runners are made of box tubing rather than C-channel.

All in all, it’s a nice piece. I’d been looking for a long time for an original one, but they never seemed to come up for sale. This is the next best thing (and in some ways better).

Here are a few pics of the install:

[crofty]

Looks good! Are you gonna reseal your rxd boxes while your in there? LOL
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Your Vanagon sucks, Stop waving at me.

[///Mink]

[crofty]

[thom]

[crofty]