The Wiggles

In a previous post, I mounted my rope making machine to a trailer hitch for stability.  It still wiggled around during use, which made it a little harder for the Scouts to crank the handle to make rope.  I decided to fix that problem.  I did this by welding a bead onto three sides of the hitch, then filing it to fit tightly in the receiver.

First I put the hitch into the receiver and wrapped some masking tape around it to mark the border.

Then I ground off the paint where the welds will go, as well as a spot on the end for the ground clamp on the welder.

Next I welded a bead onto the top and both sides of the hitch, about halfway between where it enters the receiver and the hole for the hitch pin.  The next step was using an angle grinder and then a file to get a tight fit.  When it started to get close, I would do 10 strokes with the file, test fit, then repeat.

Then I cleaned up all the mess with a wire wheel.

The last step is a coat of black gloss spray paint.

Now it fits tightly and doesn't wiggle when we make rope.  I did the same thing with the hitch that I use to tow the Troop trailer.  The downside to this is that the hitch might not fit into another truck if you lend it out.  A few minutes with a file will fix that though.

I had previously wrapped some duct tape around the hitch, which was a pretty good temporary solution to the wiggle problem.  After a while though, the duct tape started to bunch up from repeated insertion into the receiver, and was getting to be a bother.