Removing heavy hitch from truck

Njmurvin wrote:
I do something similar. I back the truck into my garage. My Harbor Freight electric hoist is mounted in the garage rafters. I pull the pins on the Superglide, strategically place chain hooks on the hitch and lift it off. Then I drive the truck out from under it and roll my metal utility cart under the hitch and lower it onto the cart. The whole process takes 15-20 minutes.

Exactly what I do. Right down to the Harbor Freight winch. Works slick!

That hitch looks like a very heavy beast. Nothing wrong with using brains instead of your back to accomplish a goal. To each his/her own.
What are the vertical silver brackets at each corner of the hitch. Did you install them to keep the hitch from coming off of the table or do they serve some other purpose?

Get on the cell phone and call my grandsons to come lift it out. Simple and safe....

You can also get a hitch-mounted crane to assist. I found one that comes in two pieces that works well for this.

http://www.ramgunner.com/stark_crane.html

I leave mine attached to the kingpin. Easy peasy !!!!!

I =did= do a "kingpin hoist" one time, when my brother borrowed my FW and his '05 F350 cr@pped out. Just loosened the u-bolts on the Companion, lifted it out of the Turnover Ball base, pulled his truck out from underneath and slipped my truck back underneath. Dropped the front of the FW back into my bed, took the weight off, unhooked it from the king pin and slid it into =my= Turnover Ball base and tightened everything back down. Away I went. :-)

Lyle

Durb wrote:
This has worked well for me so I thought I would share. I leave my hitch hooked to the 5er, remove the rail pins and use the landing gear to lift the hitch out of the truck. I use a 500# hydraulic table from Harbor Freight ($136) which happens to fit the hitch perfectly. I jack the table until the entire weight is off the kingpin then unhook the hitch. Lower the table to ankle height and roll into the garage. No lifting, no climbing.

Those tables are awesome. I bought one from Harbor Freight, used it to install my 300 lb Onan generator, then sold it for almost the same price on Ebay.

PS - nice looking garage by the way.

To bucky,

The hitch weighs 300 pounds. It would take bigger guys than me, probably four, to manhandle it out of the truck. The vertical corner brackets have a lower hole and is where the hitch is pinned to the bed rails. The rear aluminum channel with the eye screw pivots back so I don't have to crawl into the truck to hook up the breakaway cable. I do like a neat garage, my office is a mess!

I got a 99 dollar lift from Harbor Freight, I took a little extra fabrication to toughen up the mounting but it makes short work of the hitch and the 300lb generator.