My name is Dave and I cannot leave well enough alone, sometimes much to the chagrin of my wife. This is my first posting (other than my intro) so I'm hoping this is appropriate to the forum. It's a very simple mod, maybe too simple to even post.
We just bought a new Forest River A212HW a-frame (we haven't even slept in it yet) and my mind is already going into overdrive with changes and mods that I want to do.
As a retirement paying hobby I design and machine small Harley parts in my home machine shop, mostly for older Harley's (AKA Milwaukee vibrators). Because of the vibration issue on older Harley's fasteners are constantly vibrating loose and lost and that has to be addressed. Mostly we use a thread locker like Loctite, but sometimes we have to use other means of keeping fasteners (etc) from getting lost. One such way is with a hitch pin.
I was looking at the plastic spare tire cover and I could just imagine going to the back of the camper after a day on the road and find a naked spare tire as the only thing holding the plastic cover on is a thumb nut on a 1/2"-13 bolt. I decided that a hitch pin would be the perfect solution to my worry. I took a 1/2"-13 nut and drilled one side to act as a guide for the drill bit. I then measured where I wanted the hole and drilled the bolt with a #30 drill (which easily accommodates the hitch pin I had). The nut acted to clean up the threads when I removed it. The hitch pins can be bought at any Harbor Freight for about $7.00 on sale (plus it's easy to get an additional 20% discount using coupons available through the newspaper/magazines):
150 Piece Hitch Clip Assortment .
It's not coming off now, unless I want it to.
Here's the nut I drilled and used as a guide:
And the hitch pin installed:
Linear Mode
