wdgold wrote:
cummins2014 wrote:
Helped a fellow rv'er in Montana last summer, could not get his hitch to latch, it came down to removing his lube plate, it was beat up a little , and holding the kingpin up just enough that it wouldn't latch. It worked fine once the plate was removed. Apparently some pretty close tolerances on those kingpins or hitches.
That is exactly my situation, I had to remove the lube plat to get it to latch properly. A previous 5th wheel I owned had no issue with lube plate on it and had plenty of gap between pin box and hitch when unhooking at site. I don't see much of a gap on my current one so its hard to tell when the weight is off enough to pull the slide pin.
In his case the lube plate was beat up a bit, and you could see a very slight gap when it sat on the hitch, you would never think it would prevent it latching, but it did. I finally just removed it ,and all was well.
It was actually a pretty new hitch, didn't pay much attention to what brand. He was just happy to get hooked up to leave, they messed with it for quite awhile before I went over, he had a brother-in-law there that was convinced that the kingpin was off center, and the problem. I tried to convince him that it centers itself when entering the hitch, but he was adamant, finally I said humor me . I removed the lube plate, and the latch closed. He mumbled something, and wandered off back to his RV to leave.
