pulling a airstream trailer with a hornet

It's a second attempt ... you don't wanna see the first one!

Now, I have to tell this really scary story: Making our first move with the trailer and the axle hitch, we'd traveled an entire day and into the night. At about 10 PM, in Atlanta somewhere, we somehow got off the truck route and I needed to reverse course. There was an empty supermarket parking area so I swung the Hornet in there and started a slow turnaround. There was a little strange noise from the rear, then a big "clunk." Egad, the trailer had separated! Stopping and inspecting, I saw what had actually happened --- the hitch assembly had separated from the car. Sounds like no really big deal, but my thoughts immediately went back to just a few minutes earlier when we'd been climbing a several block long hill there in the city. If that hitch would have separated then .... Yikes! OK, back to the hitch ... why had it come off? Contary to the depiction above, the two u-bolts, rather than going through holes in the heavy mount plate, actually straddled the plate and went through a strap-plate under the mount plate. With the day's driving, those u-bolts had stretched a little, enough that they simply worked their way off the end of the main mount plate (I noted that a few months later, ads for that hitch showed some little tabs at the end of the mount plate such that the u-bolts couldn't slide off the ends!). OK, so my hitch is on the ground, and it's 10:15 in January ... darker than a black hole. A police car came by to see what was going on and used its spotlight to let me see while getting everything disconnected. We lifted the hitch into the trunk and drove a couple of blocks to an all night gas station with a lift. They kindly let me put the Hornet in the air to reattach the hitch ... firmly!

It would take another three pages to tell about the rest of the trip. This was just the more exciting part. The entire journey held a few more surprises and was a real test of our six-week old marriage!

Ray, the main mount plate was clamped tight to the axle housing. I've drawn the drawbar bolting directly to the mount plate, but there may have been some arrangement where it could move vertically. I seem to remember that the "hitch ball end" of the drawbar would drop to the ground if it wasn't supported by the little chain from the bumper or by being hooked up to the trailer tongue.

PM500, are we acquainted? What's your job in the military? What branch?
Former Lifer!

See private personal msg. On the hitch, it occurred to me that a better design would be a wishbone-like structurre so the two main legs would attach to the axle out very near to the springs, so as not to apply weight in the center of the axle housing and bend it, which happened on my '55 Chrysler. The single leg of the wishbone would then terminate in a Class III receptacle. This structure would make the drawbar assembly more stable laterally without requiring really heavy attachments as needed on the original long drawbar to the heavy main mount plate. The whole thing could be made lighter.

Isfirth, there is NO weight on the bumper because there's no attachment to the bumper. All the weight gloes onto the axle housing. The little chain I drew is only used to hold the hitch up when there's no trailer attached.

Load on the chain? What chain? The one described is only used when there's no trailer connected, to support the end of the hitch. My text discusses that there must be load-leveler (equalizer) bars used. And the leaf springs are not involved ... weight goes directly on the axle.

Yes.