M923 receiver/hitch assembly

[Lantzj22]

@Jbulach I am with you on this particular hitch being... well not how I would do it. @Lantzj22 I am a bit worried about it, I would just be sick to my stomach if I heard of the hitches failure and you loosing your possible precious load of cool cargo as well. Each point made by @Jbulach is valid and should be considered. I too don't want to offend anyone, especially when we all put our hard earned time and money into something we can be easily offended. Take a good look back through this thread and you will see some of the other hitches and how they were re-enforced for maximum strength. Best wishes.

Well my initial drawing to the welder fab guy was like most, side of the frame run grade 8 bolts as well as welding to 4x4 square tubing. I’ll be towing a 9-10k camper to the beach and back about 2 miles round trip but some rough areas through sand.
Expectations were not met but he said if I can break it we can do it again (doesn’t cover my 100k camper sitting behind the truck)

 

[Lantzj22]

Not trying to be offensive, but I would not trust it. I see a lot of issues with design and installation. Those braces should not be attached to the bed. Square or a rectangular cross tube would be a better option to mount the receiver to instead of pipe. The side plates look like they could have left a lot more meat on them where they taper back to the cross pipe. Welding the hitch directly to a tempered frame is not desirable, but if you were going to weld it, the paint should have been ground off and it should have been welded onto the outside edge where the frames web radiuses into it’s flange. I would at very minimum add a sheet of 3/16” or 1/4” between the side plates from the cross tube as far forward and up under the truck as you have clearance for. Also, chip the slag off all the welds, wire brush and repost pictures of them.

As for paint it was ground down then re sprayed! So I guess that’s a plus