So for a few years now I've been borrowing my neighbor's JoeHauler to haul my dirt bikes on my van.......when I'm taking a single bike somewhere; I have a heavily modified Harbor Freight trailer to carry more than one bike.
I think the JoeHauler is great, it just didn't meet all of my needs (and I don't own it!), so I decided to design a build a custom unit with the following requirements:
The new contraption has to:
be lighter than the JoeHauler (I think the neighbor's hauler is a heavy duty unit...it's heavy)
be stable, ie no rocking on the receiver hitch
provide a platform to stand on when showering out of the back of the van (we have been standing on the JoeHauler and it worked OK)
provide a means to carry gas/oil and other grimy motorcycle related stuff (existing Joehauler has no provision for this, and I couldn't modify as it wasn't mine)
be able to simultaneously carry my mountain bike (with 15mm front axle)
So here is what I came up with.....
I spent about $50 for steel at the local metal supply house....about 50% remnants and 50% cut stock
I fabricated two new smaller receivers out of 2" square stock/3/16" wall and some remnant angle iron. These hang on the same three bolts that connect the receiver hitch to the van frame.
The original grade 5 bolts fastening the receiver hitch to the van were replaced with longer grade 8 bolts. The original hitch is bolted to the frame with heavy hex nuts, then the new angle brackets are slid on the exposed tails of the bolts and nutted again with heavy nuts and washers.
The angled reinforcements on the ends of the new receivers are also rems...they were found as-is in the real cheap bin. A little filing of the seam and they slipped over the 2" square stock.
The hauler itself was quite straightforward...a couple of lengths of 1 1/2" stock and an import aluminum hitch hauler purchased from Craigslist. I think these are fairly generic as I've now seen a few around.
I drilled 11/16" holes through the receivers and the hitch square stock to allow using a generic 5/8" hitch pin to retain the hauler.
I had angle tabs welded on the square stock to retain the aluminum rail with fasteners....and had another tab welded for the inner tie down point. These weld tabs are about 60-70 cents each.
Lastly, I drilled and tapped a couple of holes for the loading ramp and used some thumb knobs to retain it.