Made my own hitch and... is that a basket? (Pics included)

Made my own hitch. With a 205 on the back a hidden hitch just wasn't happening.

I am making a trip out west in about 11 days and neither me nor my buddy really wanted the worry of pulling a trailer. He had the idea of mounting a basket in the hitch. Not the greatest looking but very functional.
It also won't have the drag of a trailer. The basket has it's own set of lights tied into the hitch outlet.

I also mounted a fuse block on the door of my tool box and put a ground bolt inside of the tool box.

You will notice from the pictures that there is an 'X' brace that goes under the fender. This replaces the factory brace that keeps the fender from flexing. I replaced it to add rigidity to my hitch. This was necessary because I used a thinner metal for the hitch. (3/8 was just too heavy and everything but the receiver was made from scrap.)

The hitch lights are powered by a Hoppy 46255 Powered Tail Light Converter kit. Basically this gives the trailer lights a dedicated circuit from the battery. This prevents any kind of short on the trailer from burning up wiring on the bike. This will also allow me to hook up to any kind of trailer. I don't have to worry if a trailer has regular lights or LED's. This fit nicely under the seat to the rear of the battery. Everything then goes to the fuse block/ground bolt.

In total I got about $90 tied up in this project. (Mostly the converter and trailer wiring.)

Special thanks goes out to my buddy Jody who did all of the cutting/welding/ painting. I just made the templates and we both did the build during fabrication.
Hitch Pics

Doc,

Glad to hear there are more tail draggers on the darkside. The pictures don't work, or at least from my computer it says that the link is broken. A hidden hitch is possible, just difficult. I'd like to see the pics as soon as you get them posted.

Keep the shiny side up

Arch01

Sounds like a good idea. Please fix the link so that we can see the pictures.

Thanks
Moon

Sorry about that... tried to fix the link, JIC I'll post the pics here:

One more:



And I have since sealed up the wires on the hitch side of the plug. The picture that shows the hitch on the bike without the basket was before I finished tucking/taping wires.

Dude,

Looks good, congrats, now all you need is a trailer.

Not to Hyjack, but I'll have pics of mine up next week. (trailer that is)

Arch01

I love this type of post,, someone that knows that they can do it and puts his mind to it and does it ,, with the added thought he took photos as he went ,, this is great
you should be proud and rightly so.

arch01 wrote:Dude,

Looks good, congrats, now all you need is a trailer.

Not to Hyjack, but I'll have pics of mine up next week. (trailer that is)

Arch01

I have 2 buddies with trailers... why do I need one?

Seriously though, one of my buddies has a trailer and a hitch but hasn't wired a harness into his bike yet.

He also hasn't put the adapter on the tongue that will allow the trailer to roll without taking the bike with it.
I wouldn't pull a trailer without one. Know a guy who was in the hospital for over a year because his trailer blew a tire and rolled over - the torque on the hitch pulled the rear tire out from under him at 70mph. He says if he had one of those adapters he never would have wrecked. The trailer would have just rolled over and he would have pulled it up-side-down until he could stop.

Horseman - thanks for the compliment. I have never done any real fabrication but I learn a lot by observing others. (Hence my decision to go to the Darkside. :pirat: )

Check out my website to keep up to date on my preparations for my trip out west. I am leaving Cedar Rapids, IA on June 13th and will try to post video and pics along the way. (I have a GoPro video camera mounted on the bike.)

I also have a page full of Gizmos on the site.
Here is the link: Docs Road Trips
Check back as much as you want and leave a comment on my site.