[Vwdiesel] TDI hitches

[Travis Gottschalk]

The piece that goes into the frame tube of the car we did with just angle iron as that was the easiest to weld nuts on to the angle. You could do a tube but it couldn't be square because if I am remembering correctly one side is sqaure on the hole with a rounded oposite end. A smaller square would work but a larger angle iron is just as good. If you look into one of the holes there is something in the way so we had to notch the back of the angle iron some as well to have it sit flush. This again didn't affect the strength were it was notched and this is 1/4 thick angle. We then took apart some ebay bumper shocks (yes the new VW's have the shocks like the old ones). They are pressurized FYI. We cut with a sawsal and then let it spray out. I wouldn't advise heating up. We did this to save time as I had a day to build my hitch so I wanted it done right. We notched the mounting plates out to fit the angle and drilled a couple holes (the rest already were holds and there is a couple peices of tar/tape we found on the jettas that you don't even have to drill for access to bolt this down). Once all the bolts were on the plate was welded on. Then the reciever/tube was leveled with where the licence plate was to go and for added strength we put a little more angle on on the outside that you can see in the pictures since we had to cute the angel down to fit the hitch tube down more. The bumper plates only mount with two bolts that thread into the sheet metal only. There is almost no strength there other then some up and down movement could be reduced. That is one of the two reasons we put one on, the other was keeping dirt out. Brother cut the next two bumper plates out of flate steel rather then cutting the bumper shocks out and they fit much better. He also used on the jettas a reciever tube and some more square tube to run to both sides. Both the Jettas have the lower bumpers notched out some so you can put the hitch pin in but they look great. We actually could still mount the normal bumpers back in since we still have them if we wanted. I sold my old hitch and the rest of my family didn't even want to do that they were so poorly built with theirs. Sorry for the long post. Hope that answers the questions. Someone did build one out of stainless from WI as well. Offered to make me one as I was bugging him to-then I moved closer to my brother who is a welder and had mine built first. 
Travis G