Trailer hitches

[delicanuck]

I have an '89 Delica StarWagon Exceed 2.5 litre Turbo Diesel. I did some browsing around and found that there was only one place in North America that listed the official trailer hitch for my car and they were in Delaware. Well that can't be right. The folks at Burnaby Hitch suggested I check with E and H Hitch, http://www.eandhhitchshop.com . They, (well he actually,) made a beautiful hitch for me. $300 for the hitch, $65 for the electrics and some tax. 3000 Lb. load rating and 300 Lb. tongue weight. Its a thing of beauty!

[mark]

Cool!

I'm just wondering how did they afix the hitch to your van. Did the back bumber bar have to be removed?

Mark

[elbosque]

I also checked into this with VI Custom Car Importers in Parksville. They told me that the Delicas they had were rated to tow 3500 lbs and that they could build the hitch and do the wiring for 425 plus tax. He did not say anything about removing the bumper. The pictures I have seen of Delicas with hitches show the bumpers intact. However, I do not think I have seen such a high tonge rating anywhere else. If I get a Delica, I will save the extra cost and ferry ride and give E and H Hitch a call.

Have a good afternoon,

John

[BCDelica]

Hey Delicanuck,

Did the shop make a template of your hitch, if you know about that I would be willing to have two made.

Thanks

Kev

[lost1]

Count me in too for the template!

[elbosque]

Just had a custom 5000 lb hitch and wiring done for my Safari at Clearbrook Hitch in Abbotsford. They charged me just over $330 including taxes. I am not sure how they make money, as they spent 2.5 hours to build and install. They could probably do a good job on the Delicas also.

John

[delicanuck]

Hi folks,
Sorry about the slow reply. Work. Family. Home repairs. Driving into the wilderness for no good reason.
Ernst at E & H hitch did remove my rear bumber to install the hitch. (Does anyone need a rear bumper?) My spare tire sits under the back door so putting the hitch below the bumper would have significantly changed my ground clearance and would have made extracting the spare tire problematic, not to mention that stuffing the dead tire back in there might have been a non-starter. Re the template; Well I mentioned to Ernst that he might want to take notes because more Delis could arrive any minute. I don't think he did though. In fact, I don't think he owns a tape measure. I think he marks and cuts material in place because looking at mine, a tape measure wouldn't be accurate enough to get these results. Ernst bolted the hitch arm rails into the frame nuts where the bumper used to be and then he added two vertical thrust blocks to the arm rails to catch behind another frame member, just to distribute the load over more points. A piece of paper won't fit in there so I think he custom builds each frame for the car. 5 Delicas = 5 custom jobs. Having said that, if 5 of you got together and made an appointment to get all your hitches done at the same time, I bet that $300.00 thing would change.

[James@JDM]

Just had a custom 5000 lb hitch and wiring done for my Safari at Clearbrook Hitch in Abbotsford. They charged me just over $330 including taxes. I am not sure how they make money, as they spent 2.5 hours to build and install. They could probably do a good job on the Delicas also.

John

Thats seems quite light weight, Factory New in NZ they were rated at 3500kg (7700lbs), this was from Nissan NZ for any of the 60 series Safari/Patrol.

[elbosque]

He rated it at that because we did not have any "official towing weight" specs on the truck. I will check the hitch he installed to see what that is rated at. He just gave me the 5000 lbs figure based on the weight and dimentions of the truck. Do you have anything official from Nissan in English that proves the towing capacity? When I tried to check into the Safari, I was told that, as Japanese people rarely tow trailers, the manufacturer do not give towing capacity data for JDMs. If you have the Nissan sheet, it would be great to have a copy of it. Cheers, John

[samhill]

Hi everybody. New to site. Thought I might post regarding hitch.

Took about $500 but managed to get a custom hitch put on the back. Had to lose the "bumper" but now my van means business. It is a 2" receiver with a special modification on each end. I had a 4 ft box built so that it could fit on the outside of the Van. Being married and loving camping, you just can't have enough space. In any event, the guys in Parksville B.C. (on Vancouver Island) did the work. It is pretty bomber. As soon as I figure out how to upload images I will put a pic in. Oh and on the spare tire complication, no problem the hitch doesn't interfere with removal of tire.