The Lime and The Toad Get Hitched

Some NOS (New Old Stock) and aftermarket hitches are still available for the VW Bus to this day. Most are out of sight price-wise and not particularly sturdy looking.

I decided to fabricate my own. A while back I bought some 1/4" wall thickness 2" OD square tubing and some angle iron for this project. It was scrap and I think it cost me $11.

Due to time constraints (lots of projects and plans fighting for my time) I decided to look for a suitable hitch to work with as a starting point. I found exactly what I needed at Princess Auto in an ACAR adjustable 1 1/4" receiver style hitch. These are regular $199 but on sale for $139. I found an un-boxed hitch and asked for a price reduction and got it for $79! It is a universal style with an oversized centre section and sliding end pieces that bolt to a typical SUV or pickup frame. These end pieces were far too short and the bracketry far too tall to fit the Bus so I opted to use the metal I already purchased to fabricate a main crossbar and then slide the commercially available centre section over it.

It actually went together quite quickly and bolted up perfectly between the bumper and frame with new 8.8 grade bolts.

I also had to splice in trailer wiring. Since the bus has amber turn signals a 3 to 2 wire converter was required. A little trick I learned was to look at surplus places like Princess Auto for "plug and play" style wiring kits for obsolete vehicles with amber signals instead of buying a universal kit. I picked up a 1995 Honda wiring kit for $6.99 as opposed to $26.99 and literally only had to snip the plugs off to make it identical...

So far I've taken the rig only around a big block. Everything seems to work!