athenscj5

OK did a search on this and didn't find anything. My hitch is appearantly welded or rusted on. The Hitch mount is bolted to the unibody with 3 bolts on each side. But there is no hitch pin holding it in and it will not come off.
So I tried to unbolt the damn thing from the unibody and the nuts on the nut strip must have broken loose, because they just turn and don't loosen.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the hitch if the nuts are loose? I am tired of the hitch being on there and sticking out for me to kick with my shins.

muddeprived

If you have a cut off wheel, cut those bolt head off and let the hitch drop off and out. Remove your bumper and fish the broke bolts/nutset out of the frame (easy to do once you remove the bumper).

MasterShakeXJ

with the bolts loose, strap it to something and yank it off haha.

but really, i think mudd has a good idea with that. how long has the thing been on there?

athenscj5

This is the route I thought would be easiest. I tried using my dremel with the cutoff wheel on it, it just doens't have the power to do this job very quickly. I guess maybe I was hoping there was another way to do it, or maybe some one had a creative way to do it.

MasterShakeXJ

could always yank it off, might not be the safest thing though haha.

athenscj5

I have had the Jeep since November and it was on when I bought it. I am not sure if it is factory or not because all of the tags and marking have been painted over by undercoating.

It was pretty frustrating when I decided to take the hitch and ball out and realized that there was no pin. I beat the living s*%t out of it trying to get it out, and it didn't budge. I have no idea how it was welding in the reciever, but it is in there for good.

athenscj5

I have thought about that already too. I was going to tie it to my Ford and pull it off, but my wife would kill me if it flew off and hit the truck.

muddeprived

I never seen anyone weld the hitch ball mount into the receiver. Interesting. Can you see the welds? If you can, the dremel can cut through the welds. If it's rusted, go get some PB Blaster and start spraying it every day for a couple days and keep wacking it till it breaks loose.

mark's91-XJ

Use a cut-off wheel on an angle grinder (air or electric) like mud said.
if you dont have one I'm sure your neighbors have one.
if you want to be really fast use a torch

athenscj5

Well I finally got it off!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9917174@N05/3265427106/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9917174@N05/3264605393/

I don't think that it was a factory hitch. And I got a new tool out of it too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9917174...n/photostream/

Sorry for the links, but the pictures don't seem to want to load for me.