[Vwdiesel] TDI hitches

[Tad]

Your comments make me wonder... if you got in an accident with this
setup ("modified safety equipment") I wonder if the insurance would
squawk?

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Travis Gottschalk <tgott at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nothing structurally on the car is cut away. The bumper shocks unbolt from the TDI with 4 bolts. The only place on the rear of a TDI to put a hitch into good metal as you refer to on the unibodies is into the cavities on the car that hold the bumper. Otherwise you are kind of left with your spare tire well which we have already discussed isn't the best but that is what the prefab hitches out there already have done and your fuel tank are about the only other things you can find. And I don't think the plastic fuel tank is going to hold up very well towing. The little piece of tin going down from the back side of the bumper won't work either as it is thinner then the spare tire area since it is just a divider. If someone rear ends any of the TDI's with these hitches then the damage that will occurr would be the whole rear of the car. The bumper shocks would only protect you for about 1 inch of shock and then it would do the same thing and you likely would have to replace the re
>  ar plastic part of the bumper anyways either system you use. If I had about a week to work on it and an unlimited amount of metall to play with and some more tools I could have used the more "formed" metall part of the OEM bumper and put that on the hitch to help keep the bumper form as the hitch is more square and the bumper is rounded and the bumper also goes to the side a few more inches for a little more protection.
>
> Another thing to keep in mine is the euro hitches for the TDI's is doing just what we did only it bolts into a different spot (the top rather then the bottom/sides like mine). You take your old bumper out and put the hitch in its place.
>
> Depending on the cars we get in the future we may make our own. TDI's/VWs seem to like to keep the bumper shock area on the rear. My rabbit has them The 2nd gen golf has them and our MKIV and MKV TDI's have them so that seems to be the way to go on that car. The Chevys was a little different story and since time is money sometime prefab hitches are the better route depending on what you do with them and what they are going on. Brother won't put a hitch on his Le sabre as there isn't a good enough mounting spot for it like on the TDI's. Myself I won't own anything without a hitch but don't have a way to build unless I convince my brother since I am still renting (no welder) but having a hitch is nice even if to get pulled out of a ditch. I even used my ball mount from my Lumina when I owned it to get a trucker out of his cab on a turned over milk truck. Couldn't have helped him as well without it in the car.
> Travis G
>
>> I have made my own hitches for all my cars rather than buy them. It cost my $5 in materials from a local metal supply house to make a hitch for my 2001 Ford Focus. On unitized body cars the secret is to fishplate over a wide area if you can't attach to a frame or particular strong point. No welding either. I have made hitches for my Model A, Packard, Citroens, Ford Escort & Focus, & a Mazda 626 diesel which I no longer own. I don't think I would cut away any bumper shocks or structural parts of a car to make a hitch. I probably over engineer my hitches compared to factory hitches you can buy for $100+.
>> William J Toensing, Nevada City, CA
>
>
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