Black Series HQ Tips, Tricks, and Learning.....

[draykas2004]

Nice. Consider adding a McHitch to really make using it easy. And you can still use a WDH if you'd like.

I did look at these and decided to use austrailian 500mm ball hitch with anderson weight distribution for the reason you listed. It is very easy to unhook and hook up and no noisy bars and a little more flex for forest roads. I do alot of travel highway to get to Mark Twain forest and wanted some safety.

I do have some questions regarding converting to full battery power. I order replacement batteries (2 410 ah lithium) replacement solar panels (6 200w solar panels) and new charge controller (100 amp Renogy). I also am replacing inverter with 3000 wat Renogy. I want to rewire to allow running ac and all outlets off battery and have heard it is wired strange and makes it difficult. any thoughts or has anyone done this

 

[mvbeggs]

I did look at these and decided to use austrailian 500mm ball hitch with anderson weight distribution for the reason you listed. It is very easy to unhook and hook up and no noisy bars and a little more flex for forest roads....

I'm not familiar with this hitch. Is it a non-articulating hitch? Do you have a link to the hitch you're using?

 

[Raspy]

I did look at these and decided to use austrailian 500mm ball hitch with anderson weight distribution for the reason you listed. It is very easy to unhook and hook up and no noisy bars and a little more flex for forest roads. I do alot of travel highway to get to Mark Twain forest and wanted some safety.

I do have some questions regarding converting to full battery power. I order replacement batteries (2 410 ah lithium) replacement solar panels (6 200w solar panels) and new charge controller (100 amp Renogy). I also am replacing inverter with 3000 wat Renogy. I want to rewire to allow running ac and all outlets off battery and have heard it is wired strange and makes it difficult. any thoughts or has anyone done this

Couple of points:

You may be making the common mistake of bigger is better with the 3000 watt inverter. Why do you need this and have you considered the stand by losses or waste heat? If bigger is better, then why not get a 10K model?

The Anderson hitch, in my opinion, is a poor design and it is definitely not designed for articulation as it has a very small amount of "spring" to make up the length difference of the chains during articulation. They are used on Oliver trailers mostly and are OK for highway use only. It applies the forces in a different direction than a conventional hitch. Be sure to lube the ball to prevent galling. What is the advantage of a 200 mm ball compared to a 2 5/16" ball? Are you in a metric country?

The HQ 19 is wired with some plugs running directly from the outdoor shore connection and some from the inverter 120 volt output. So, you will have to rewire as needed if you plan to not be plugged in to shore power.

 

[Raspy]

draykas2004- congrats on the new purchase. You're going to love the HQ-19. They are very nice, and capable, trailers.

However, I disagree with Raspy on the McHitch idea, here's why.

I also removed the poly block from my HQ-19 shortly after purchase and replaced it with the McHitch. I won't deny hook up to the McHitch is, in my opinion, one of the easiest hitches to get hooked up. The problem I ran into was the unhitching process. I found that if you were sitting on flat and level ground, unhitching was about as easy as the hitch up process. However, if the truck and trailer were on unlevel ground, I found the hitch bound up and would not release. I fought this on multiple occasions- sometimes taking more than 20 minutes to get unhitched. :-( One of the contributing factors was that I found it extremely difficult to determine when the load was released from the McHitch's stinger during the unhitching process.

Even before I purchased my Xplore X195, I was planning to ditch my HQ-19's McHitch for something better. At the top of my list was the Cruisemaster DO-45. (to my surprise the DO-45 was standard issue on my X-195) In the last few weeks I've also seen a new hitch, at least to me, called the Hitch-Ezy, that looks promising. Here's a pretty good video that talks about the same problems I had with the McHitch and an overview of the Hitch-Ezy. Best Trailer Hitch - Hitch-Ezy - McHitch or DO35 | Why I sold my McHitch [2023] Might be worth considering.

Although I don't have a ton of experience with the DO-45, to date, I have had no issues hitching or unhitching. So far, even though the DO-45 takes slightly longer to get hitched up- overall my hitching and unhitching process is considerably shorter.

Good luck, and travel safe, with your new trailer. Let the adventures begin!!

The McHitch is only difficult to release if it is still under load. And if it is not lubed as directed. You should not be releasing it under load, but if you must, it is simply a matter of lifting the release handle with a little more force. And again, lube the mechanism before each trip with a spray of dry silicone lube. When relieving the load to release, watch the gap in the stinger. As soon as it is gone, the McHitch will release effortlessly. I do not understand trying for 20 minutes?

 

[Obsessed2findARuggedHybid]

I have an ARK ball mount articulating hitch and it can be a female dog to get off under load. I finally figured out it's hard to take load off if back onto any kind of chalks or rocks or are not level.

 

[Treefarmer1]

The McHitch is only difficult to release if it is still under load. And if it is not lubed as directed. You should not be releasing it under load, but if you must, it is simply a matter of lifting the release handle with a little more force. And again, lube the mechanism before each trip with a spray of dry silicone lube. When relieving the load to release, watch the gap in the stinger. As soon as it is gone, the McHitch will release effortlessly. I do not understand trying for 20 minutes?

Yep, McHitch is easy if you make sure it's level when hooking and unhooking. Don't forget to add some grease to the zerk fitting on the universal joint every few months. We also keep ours covered when camping to keep moisture/sun/dirt off of it. Dry lubricant is always your friend for the McHitch and everything else that moves on the chassis (it doesn't attract dirt the same way other lubricants do). Overall, the McHitch is much easier to maintain, keep clean, and use than our old 5th wheel hitch.

 

[mvbeggs]

The McHitch is only difficult to release if it is still under load. And if it is not lubed as directed. You should not be releasing it under load, but if you must, it is simply a matter of lifting the release handle with a little more force. And again, lube the mechanism before each trip with a spray of dry silicone lube. When relieving the load to release, watch the gap in the stinger. As soon as it is gone, the McHitch will release effortlessly. I do not understand trying for 20 minutes?

Couldn't I agree more that the McHitch will release effortlessly once the load is released. The key is determining what direction you need to move the truck and jockey wheel to get the load off the hitch- and that's the difficulty I found with the McHitch. Particularily the determining when you have relieved the front to back load on the hitch.

Here's one situation- I had the trailer on the slight decline, nearly flat, but sloped toward the truck. The truck was sitting on a 10-15 degree decline with the break over right at the bumper. Hard to tell if/when the trailer was pushing on, or pulling on the truck/hitch. I chocked the trailer, truck in forward, truck in reverse, lower jockey wheel, raise jockey wheel- repeat ad nauseum. Didn't take long to rack up 20 minutes- but yes, once I finally found the right combination to relieve the load, the hitch came apart like butter. Over the last 13 years, I've never had that kind of difficulty with the Multi Axis Coupler on our AT Chaser and/or AT Teardrop. I believe part of the difficulty is the tight tolerance on the McHitch's guillotine release lever. Any front to back load on the lever makes the lever hard to disengage. On top of that, It only takes a small movement to change the loading- I assume due to the tight tolerance. You can't really manhandle a 7,000lb trailer, with a 600-700 lb tow bar weight, to get it to release- ask me how I know. ;-)

It's good to hear the McHitch has been a good solution for you and you haven't experienced the difficulties that I, and at least one other person, have experienced when the hitch gets bound on uneven ground. For me, I am happy to have found a potentially better solution, even at the expense of taking a little more time to hitch up. Time, and experience, will tell if it truly is a better solution. I'll be happy to report back if I encounter similar "unhitching" problems with the new hitch.

Feel free to comment back. Hopefully our experiences will be helpful to those selecting a hitch.

 

[Raspy]

Couldn't I agree more that the McHitch will release effortlessly once the load is released. The key is determining what direction you need to move the truck and jockey wheel to get the load off the hitch- and that's the difficulty I found with the McHitch. Particularily the determining when you have relieved the front to back load on the hitch.

Here's one situation- I had the trailer on the slight decline, nearly flat, but sloped toward the truck. The truck was sitting on a 10-15 degree decline with the break over right at the bumper. Hard to tell if/when the trailer was pushing on, or pulling on the truck/hitch. I chocked the trailer, truck in forward, truck in reverse, lower jockey wheel, raise jockey wheel- repeat ad nauseum. Didn't take long to rack up 20 minutes- but yes, once I finally found the right combination to relieve the load, the hitch came apart like butter. Over the last 13 years, I've never had that kind of difficulty with the Multi Axis Coupler on our AT Chaser and/or AT Teardrop. I believe part of the difficulty is the tight tolerance on the McHitch's guillotine release lever. Any front to back load on the lever makes the lever hard to disengage. On top of that, It only takes a small movement to change the loading- I assume due to the tight tolerance. You can't really manhandle a 7,000lb trailer, with a 600-700 lb tow bar weight, to get it to release- ask me how I know. ;-)

It's good to hear the McHitch has been a good solution for you and you haven't experienced the difficulties that I, and at least one other person, have experienced when the hitch gets bound on uneven ground. For me, I am happy to have found a potentially better solution, even at the expense of taking a little more time to hitch up. Time, and experience, will tell if it truly is a better solution. I'll be happy to report back if I encounter similar "unhitching" problems with the new hitch.

Feel free to comment back. Hopefully our experiences will be helpful to those selecting a hitch.

I have been known to pull harder than usual on the release handle. Love it when I don't have to, but I'm willing to. I also have a can of spray lube always handy. Dry silicone or Houdini, that get used at the start of every trip.

A few weeks ago, a buddy and I were up in the Sierra Range on a very rough "road" to Leavitt lake. He was pulling his HQ15 (not the best matchup) with his Ranger and snapped off the U joint at the rear axle. It turned out part of the problem was too much axle wrap and binding. Anyway, the only way for him to proceed was down hill with only the front axle working.

We winched him up the trail a few hundred feet and then jackknifed him back into a wide spot on the road. At a 90 degree angle between the truck and trailer, on a steep road, we disconnect him, turned the truck around, approached from the other direction at 90 degrees and re-connected. All very precarious. Before attempting this, I soaked the McHitch mechanism with spray lube and we had no trouble.

It was mostly down hill to get out with one stream crossing and a lot of deep holes and rocks. I stayed in front of him with my Rubicon and pulled him with my tug-em-strap whenever he could not get enough traction.

Fortunately, the Ranger has a flange mounted driveshaft, so losing oil out of the tranny was not an issue. Once out of there, it was 55 miles back to my house where he dropped the trailer. Then he drove down to the Bay Area and back while waiting for a new driveline. All with only front drive. I decided it was better to replace the whole driveshaft since one yoke had been damaged by the axle wrapping up. Interestingly, both the cross and the shaft's yoke broke during the same event, as one trailer wheel was in a hole and the other was behind a boulder, and the Ranger was clawing for traction. I'm a big fan of having just a bit of momentum instead of starting out from a stop while blocked.

Also interesting is that he had replaced the stock rear springs with softer ones to make the truck ride better, and had added airbags to retain the weight carrying capacity. Obviously bad for axle wrap. The driveline U joint looks like it can tolerate about a 30 degree wrap without binding, and it had been binding badly for a while before breaking.

 

[draykas2004]

Couple of points:

You may be making the common mistake of bigger is better with the 3000 watt inverter. Why do you need this and have you considered the stand by losses or waste heat? If bigger is better, then why not get a 10K model?

The Anderson hitch, in my opinion, is a poor design and it is definitely not designed for articulation as it has a very small amount of "spring" to make up the length difference of the chains during articulation. They are used on Oliver trailers mostly and are OK for highway use only. It applies the forces in a different direction than a conventional hitch. Be sure to lube the ball to prevent galling. What is the advantage of a 200 mm ball compared to a 2 5/16" ball? Are you in a metric country?

The HQ 19 is wired with some plugs running directly from the outdoor shore connection and some from the inverter 120 volt output. So, you will have to rewire as needed if you plan to not be plugged in to shore power.

Went with the 3000 watt inverter to handle load of running ac on batteries. The hitch is for on road and light off-road. I know give up articulation