Time flys when you're having fun.
I finally managed to finish, for now, dropping the floor of the boat tail, and adding an extended hitch. See photos below. Earlier step by step photos of this are a couple of pages back on this thread.
The wife and I took the RV and quad to the Galiuro Mountains for a Thanksgiving getaway. The quad and trailer weigh about 1300 – 1500 pounds so I thought this would be a good first test of the extended hitch.
I clamp-mounted a stationary camera on the inside floor of the boat tail so I could keep an eye on how much the three foot extension flexed while pulling the quad and trailer down the road. I’d say the most it ever moved up and down was maybe ½ of an inch, if that. My photos of the camera and the monitor shot turned out blurry. No pops, groans or noises from the assembly so the first test was a success. The real test will be pulling the 3500# boat and trailer to the lake next spring.
We did a round trip of 129 miles, of which about 75 miles were on the highway, so the 12 mpg we got for this trip was not comparable to much. The other 60 miles of that were either in heavy city traffic or off roading at 5-10mph, pulling the quad and trailer.
Hopefully after the holidays I can get it out on the road and do some more testing of the new configuration. One nice feature of this design is I can remove the lower part of the hitch and have the upper superstructure be completely covered by the floor pan, so nothing of the hitch shows at all.
I also managed to vent the belly pans in the front. Next up are extensive wheel fairings for the duallies and hooking up some smoke and more cameras to this beast and seeing what the air flow is doing. You know, in my spare time.
