I've never really liked the way my tow hitch has drooped down after my body lift, but could never figure out a way to raise it up without possibly comprimising its load capacity. But I was looking at my hitch the other day and noticed it's a 3 piece hitch with two peices of flat metal on each side, and the square tubing in the middle. There looks to be just enough room to unbolt (or grind off the old bolts in my case), and move this center piece up 2-3", and drill 3 new holes for it to bolt back up. In theory, this shouldn't affect the hitch structurally right?

Heres the hitch I have to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. There'd also be a few inches of material hanging down on each side piece after it was moved up. This would just be cut off to be level with the center part of the hitch.

http://www.amazon.com/Reese-Towpower.../dp/B000RNW5SK

If it'll work, hopefully I can get this done this weekend and post some pics.

 

When I did my BL i took my hitch off and brought it to our local welding/metal shop and had them take 3" out of it. It fits tighter now than it did before.

 

Looks good!

 

it looks to me as if your center peice will have to move towards the front of the truck some in order to go up. other than that i cant think of or see any problems with doing what you want to do. i think your weak points will be and currently are the bolts holding everything together.

 

^x2

go to a welding shop like 31 Ynot

 

Ive been wantin to do this to mine for sometime now , i thank ima do it now.......

 

With my raised hitch, gap guards, and GM tow hooks (I stole Wandell's idea so they still go though the slots in the bumper) unless people really know what they are looking for no body ever has an Idea that I have a body lift on the truck, Ive had multiple people had to go out and look to see that it really was a BL and not a suspension lift.

 

Hopefully I'll be doing the gap guards and GM tow hooks soon if I do the '99+ bumper swap. Finally got around to getting this done though, big difference from the picture in my sig IMO. Just made a template, drilled the holes, then cut the excess material off.

btw, nice truck 31 YNOT

on to the pictures!







(few shots of the upgraded 9.75 too )

 

Nice and tight! I'm liking it. You got a really nice looking truck there guy.

 

Nice job!

 

Thats pretty much how mine is