I bought a truck a while back and one of the reasons was for towing. I was looking at the hitch and it just wasn't right. The past owner had rigged up a hitch that wasn't meant for this truck using spacers and only two bolts per side. After taking it apart those bolts were bent a bit and it made me wonder about him towing horse trailers down the road.It was an accident waiting to happen. So listen when you get that bad feeling.
You've just demonstrated that one can't rely on another's due diligence for one's own safety and welfare...One's safety and welfare depends on one's own due diligence...whether it be a gut feeling that something may not be quite right...or whether it relies on a standard operating procedure to do serviceability checks prior to using any equipment that one is unfamiliar with and that one is entrusting one's life with.
It always amazes me when people with absolutely no knowledge modify things. My biggest complaint is when something comes in put together with cheap bolts and the spec's, for a very good reason, call for grade 8's.
Thank you for fixing that before it got somebody killed. I've seen the result of failed hitches. On all four occasions it was operator error that caused the failure, and on only one was there a happy ending where the trip could continue. (safety chains rigged correctly) They were all pretty spectacular to see, and fortunately, all on rural back roads. Chevy Silverado at a stop sign with a big yellow bulldozer on a trailer behind it... light duty factory bumper on the ground, still attached to the trailer. This guy never heard of tongue weight. Twin hull boat and trailer that came unhitched, took out a row of mailboxes and stopped with one hull on either side of a telephone pole. This was my country doctor friend (RIP), and he was just making a half mile trip to the landing. Forgot all about even latching the hitch. Had half the farmers in town man-handle the boat back on the trailer, and the only damage was to the mailboxes. And my favorite, two guys looking at a hole in a wooden fence where their bass boat and trailer had gone when the receiver pin fell out of the hitch. I had to stop and look. Safety chains? They were hooked to the trailer tongue.
Saw the remains of a $30,000 boat at the junk yard a few years back, trailer was firmly attached to the hitch with the correct size ball, safety chains were connected and safety wired to hitch, trailer had 4 wheels, electric brakes, everything was correctly done, except the bolts holding the hitch to the sheet metal frame pulled thru the sheet metal and let hitch fall off the truck and did a good job of acting as a skid right up until it hit the oak tree. It is really hard to do things right when the person before you screwed it up.
Something similar, I was working a marina and a tow truck brought in a boat and trailer that had taken the hitch off the vehicle . The welds were wire welded starts and not one good bead . It was amazing it lasted the trip up to the mountains. I did new boat rigging and there were times I found things that seemed to be sabotage but the boss did not want to do any thing about it. Getting the customer their boat in time seemed more important. And since I was giving the boat a full going over it was assumed I'd catch what ever was done wrong. He put a lot of pressure on me. To this day I wish he had listened to me over several issues I repaired . That was one industry that had a lot of love - hate, glad to be free of.
