I am in the process of restoring a #5 army trailer, which comes ready to be towed with a pintle hook. I want to keep it this way. After restoration, it needs to be towed home, some 000's of kms, behind a tarago.
Some of you may be familiar with a tarago towbar. It is a flat tongue removable mount for a 50mm towball.
I have seen the adapter plates for the square hayman reece hitch, where you then bolt on the pintle hook to that.
Haven't seen anything like that for a flat hitch, so I guess it is down to making it. Is the consideration purely physical (ie if it is strong enough it will do), or is there an engineering/legal consideration too?
Be assured the trailer will be embarrassed being towed with this combination, but I'm not about to tow a 16t trailer with the pintle hook.
I made an adapter that would fit into a standard 50mm ball mounting hole. I used it to secure my camper trailer on my car trailer (when I needed to move both at once). The winch base plate (which was designed as removable) fitted into my car trailer winch mount pedestal.
I cut a 150mm boat trailer roller down to make 2 cones that clamp (16 x 125mm HT bolt and nyloc nut) the lunette ring. I don't know how legal it would be on the road, but worked great in my situation. I have heard of this type of thing being available from trailer shops, but would probably cringe at the price, particularly for a once only job like yours.
I think there may be engineering considerations.
Have a chat with Hayman Reece or some other towbar manufacturer. They may have a solution. It might be expensive though.
What I would be doing is replacing the lunette on the No.5. It's held on with six nuts I think. There is a fellow on this forum who made a "L" shaped bracket that bolted to those six studs and a 50mm ball hitch was bolted to the bracket. When you get the trailer home, swap them back.
Here is the solution employed. It drops the hitch 140mm from centre of drawbar to centre of towball. Looking to put the original hitch back on (which I don't have)
PM me if you have a spare pintle ring (lunette) you would like to sell.
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