Good Friday to all. I have a 20' heavy duty tandem 7k axle bumper pull trailer with a adjustable height 2 5/16" coupler. At the height adjustment point there are two 5/8" through bolts that serve as pins. Regardless of how tight the bolts are the coupler is somewhat loose vertically. Is this normal? Thank you!
Mine was too, its from the clearance in the bolt holes. I added a jack bolt near the bottom to take the slop out. Ed
A few of them I've had to shim but usually a good old fashioned impacting does the job.
I installed 4 separate short bolts w lock nuts this tightened it up
I just sold it, I had a 10,000GVWR deck over with that. It was made to convert from Ball coupler to pintle, but it was always loose. We used it often for 5 years. Most frequent cargo was a Ford dually pickup, kept breaking down. The hitch was loose, but never seemed to get worse.
We have one of these couplers on a fuel trailer at work and we’ve had both bolts break at the same time twice, thankfully we noticed before anything terrible happened... We’ve tried shimming it and it helped but they still broke... we eventually went to bigger bolts and reamed the holes to very tight tolerance with the bolts so now the coupler is slop free and so far it’s holding up but we still swap the bolts out annually as an additional precaution.
dang! Thanks for sharing... I’ve got the same thing on my trailer... thinking it’s time to fix that!
I've seen trailers like this, they seem to be manufactured this way and no harm comes from it. I can see how it would be concerning and even annoying.
I appreciate the responses. It was loose when new. I pulled one of the grade 8 bolts which revealed some wear. It probably has less than 1k miles on it. It is very noisy and makes for a rough ride. I will try the 4 bolt method but might have to heat the channel section and try try to squeeze it together a bit.
That’s why I did the 4 bolts it squeezed it together on each side. It stopped all that movement for me. Had to put the bolts in from the inside facing out
I have the same setup on my skid steer trailer and it was loose when new. I have well over 100K on that trailer and the holes for the level I use for pulling with my Dodge were egg shaped from the bouncing. I've replaced the bolts once and relatively sure they could use replacement again. Back in 2014 and using my forklift I stood the trailer onto it's side and welded the worn holes up solid, then redrilled the same with the mag drill. Best I know they've been fine since but I've never broken one of the grade 8 bolts which IIRC are 5/8"-18 with hardened washers and nylocks.
I do DOT inspections on trailers, and if those are loose, I'll fail it unless the guy pays me to take it apart and inspect the bolts and holes, which happens ALOT. You fail for "ineffective fasteners" or when the lunette is worn 20% or more. I kind of extend that 20% to the bolts too. It doesn't take much for a few 1/2 or 9/16 bolts to wear and become "ineffective".