I feel a bit relieved today, Aaron @ Outmotoring is going to send me a new hitch receiver for exchange
He IS easy to work with which helps greatly. I'll get a return label as well and I'll be doing a direct swap (meaning he is sending it to me before I return the defective one). That will avoid me having to remove the bumper for the 4th time!
Okay, so I got the new hitch receiver today. Much better than the first one. The install of the hitch receiver is now complete and it's great! To top it off, and as planned, I fully concealed it cutting out the bumper just so when my custom cap is on you could not tell it is modified :biggrin5: I used some REN shape material and some special SEM epoxy I had on hand And here is the comparison between the crooked hitch receiver and the new one. It actually worse than it looks on this photograph Now I've started to work on the project itself by placing pieces in CAD
Can I just question how rigid the wheel support strut is going to be? That looks a pretty small gap between the wheel and the trunk lid - and having the spare wheel rub on the trunk lid on each bump in the road won't do its paintwork much good.
Angib, you're right on it. I don't know exactly yet and that is an area I'll be paying very close attention. In no way will I let damage happen to the car paint :cornut: . . . I'm quite particular about quality... That said, with anything I design I always vote for optimistic first and step back from there as issues arise. To me that's the best way to push the limits of the design as far as I can rather than getting too comfortable with huge clearances and overly strong and heavy elements right away and end up with a working but not that desirable solution. As you can tell I'm already planning for a full size wheel. Being the worst case scenario vs the spare that will give me a base line for weight. However I will use the spare tire for positioning since it is what will be more often mounted to the bracket. You can see on the drawing I'm positioning the spare so it is balanced between the stop light I want visible and the exhaust I want to stay away from. Keep tuned!