SpeedyJ

I'm about to do the flip hitch mod but am worried about the pin cleanance for my sportworks bike rack. Its a bolt style pin that stablizes the rack by scewing into the rack piece that inserts into the hitch reciever. I also have a key lock on the non threaded side of the pin that needs room to fit. And then theres the other issue which I brought up in a thread a while ago about drilling another pin hole in the hitch that sits farther towards the front of the car by about an inch. From looking at pictures of flipped hitches it looks like moving the pin hole back an inch on a flipped hitch would put it behind the bumper. Has anyone tried this? Any opinions?

Heres a picture that Scottiac posted a while ago that shows the pin hole

Scottiac

I had one of the Yakima 4 bike racks working on the flipped hitch for quite some time. Now there was a clearance problem with the factory supplied tool for tightening the bolt that went through the hitch pin.

I switched to using a 7/8" socket, and everything was fine (and faster anyway.) The problem wasn't room for the bolt and lock; it was just room for the tool they provided.

You would NOT be able to drill another hole and have room to mess around though. It would definitely be in the way of the bumper itself.

(and if ya ever need to know, BruceTS bumper works with the yakima rack too! )

SpeedyJ

The reason I want to move the rack forward into the hitch is because it has that top stablizer bolt that pushes up on the inside of the top of the reciever. Right now with the "stock" pin hole location the stablizer bolt mechanism barely doesn't grab. To temporarily fix it I wedged a washer (or any other piece of thin metal) on top of the top pin and in between the rack and the reciever.

Another question, for towing trailers and such are the loops for safety chains still usable?

Scottiac

Can't help ya with the stabilizer bolt question, I'm afraid.

re: hoops, the way I did it, the hoops are still there; others have ground them off. Technically, you could still hook the safety chain up, and it will still do its job, BUT the hoops are behind the tin foil bumper, so if your trailer hit the chains because of a hitch failure, you're going to be rearranging some chrome on the bumper. It'll hold, but tweak the bumper to some degree.

SpeedyJ

Okay, thanks. I think I'll go ahead and do this mod. Just a little scary cutting up an almost perfect bumper. Gonna go buy some paint and I'll take some pictures of the final product with the Sportworks T2 rack and all.