The lower lip of my hitch was bent down and the pin would not go far enough through to insert the key in the pin hole. We heated the lower lip with a rosebud and put a jack under it. We lifted the back of the dozer and the lip still did not bend. I removed it and took it to a metal works near me in Ripley, Ohio. They thought they could cold bend it on a neumatic press. I think he said they pumped it up to 40,000 pound of force on the hitch. It did not bend until they got it red hot with a rosebud. I just wondered if anyone other experience bending 3/4 inch metal on these machines. And I assume the hitch would be an area where only the best metal would be used. The lower lip was bent down when I got it so I do not know how it was bent but I have pondered that if it is so hard to bend these hitches; How did it get bent in the first place? One guy told me it could have been used to pull a pan (scraper). But I would think that a D3 is small for that. Any speculation?
Somebody had something like a disk or other dececent sized farm attachment hooked to it. The impliment hitch bound against the top plate of the dozer hitch as the dozer went over a quick drop off. The hitch worked like a big pry bar and the dozer was the weight at the end. Because the lower plate was farthest from reinforcement, it bent. Why do I think this, cause when I was 15 or so I bent the crap out of the tongue on a small manure spreader on the farm. I was hurring, and forgot to raise the jack, when I pulled out I went down a small incline and the jack didn't let the tongue follow the tractor and the lower lip of the hitch bent, just like your dozer did. In my case a piece of pipe, the loader on the tractor and a large sledge straightened it out, but it was alot smaller.
Or it slid off a trailer doing about 50 mph, or somebody got it stuck and used a large track hoe to dig from behind it and snagged the drawbar.