Stripped bolt on Reese WDH
I have a Reese dual cam WDH, and the bolts that hold the cam part thread into the frame. Found THIS today and the rest are very loose. Question for those more mechanically minded, I am just going to...
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Not surprised to see this. There are only 1 1/2 threads of the Reese forming screw engaged into the A-frame tubing. Not sure what vintage your brackets are, but older ones were not manufactured well and don't fit that well. I had this problem and ordered new ones from Reese at no charge to me after explaining the issue. See photos below. Even then, the radius of the bracket still does not match the radius on the A-frame tubing. This THE weak point of these Reese hitches. They have their riv-nuts that you can buy but the hole looks too damaged.
The photos show what I did. I had the Reese screws in ours back out and get damaged in just one season with just under 1K TW.
I cut out the thin plates on the ends of the A-frame tubing for access (welded back on afterwards). Found lots of rust inside the tubing. Made up a backer plate and welded on a couple of flange nuts and a 3rd nut to allow me to push in a removable pipe. Welded a bolt onto the end of a piece of conduit (removed zinc coating first). Pushed plate into position (after drilling appropriately sized holes in the A-frame). Mounted the Reese bracket using a couple of 1 1/2" long 1/2-13 flange head bolts. I also made up a spacer plate from 3/16" flat stock and ground one edge to match the Reese bracket. I also drilled a couple of 1/4" holes in the tubing and plug-welded the backer plate to the tubing, ground the welds down and painted.
Reese says to torque the standard forming bolts to 50 ft-lbs. I think this doesn't work well with only 1 1/2 threads engaged into the A-frame and is an invitation for trouble. With the nuts I have, they have more threads engaged and can be torqued to 75 ft-lbs.
I think riv-nuts should be a minimum but even then may have problems on higher tongue weights. The head of a riv-nuts protrudes and you have would need to make a spacer plate to allow the plate to be tight against the bracket.
I already have a MIG welder so that helped. Took a while to find the flange head nuts and bolts, but I saw some in a hardware store recently. If you do decide to get new cam arm brackets, I'd suggest buying them from e-trailer.com as it took quite a while for me to get them from Reese. Once I had all the items in hand, it was only about 4 hours of work to do this.
The photos show what I did. I had the Reese screws in ours back out and get damaged in just one season with just under 1K TW.
I cut out the thin plates on the ends of the A-frame tubing for access (welded back on afterwards). Found lots of rust inside the tubing. Made up a backer plate and welded on a couple of flange nuts and a 3rd nut to allow me to push in a removable pipe. Welded a bolt onto the end of a piece of conduit (removed zinc coating first). Pushed plate into position (after drilling appropriately sized holes in the A-frame). Mounted the Reese bracket using a couple of 1 1/2" long 1/2-13 flange head bolts. I also made up a spacer plate from 3/16" flat stock and ground one edge to match the Reese bracket. I also drilled a couple of 1/4" holes in the tubing and plug-welded the backer plate to the tubing, ground the welds down and painted.
Reese says to torque the standard forming bolts to 50 ft-lbs. I think this doesn't work well with only 1 1/2 threads engaged into the A-frame and is an invitation for trouble. With the nuts I have, they have more threads engaged and can be torqued to 75 ft-lbs.
I think riv-nuts should be a minimum but even then may have problems on higher tongue weights. The head of a riv-nuts protrudes and you have would need to make a spacer plate to allow the plate to be tight against the bracket.
I already have a MIG welder so that helped. Took a while to find the flange head nuts and bolts, but I saw some in a hardware store recently. If you do decide to get new cam arm brackets, I'd suggest buying them from e-trailer.com as it took quite a while for me to get them from Reese. Once I had all the items in hand, it was only about 4 hours of work to do this.
