Hack #38 Welded Rear Hitch

Here is a mod completed by Paul Cervone – a member of the Grand Design Imagine XLS 22mle owners Face Book group.
Paul had a custom hitch made and welded to the frame as GD strongly recommends that you do NOT add a regular hitch bumper as the bumpers are light weight (part of the XLS reason) and cannot support much weight on their own.
Here are pics of his hitch showing how it was added and welded on:


First, they welded a cross-support member and the long hitch channel together in a ‘T’


The cross-support was welded to the trailer frame (driver left-to-right).


A ‘flat bar’ was welded to the each end of the cross-support AND the bumper frame.


Next the long hitch channel was welded to the trailer bumper.


Here it is in use.

Paul added a BAL spare tire carrier mounted in front of the axles to balance back out the weight distribution and says It still tows awesome!

All thanks to Paul Cervone.