Sankey trailer hitch.

[Matt H]

Those of us that have Sankey trailers, supposedly designed by the MOD to be pulled by standard 90's and 110's, may have noticed the eye of the NATO pintal hitch on the trailers is too high resulting in a 'nose down' towing condition that is not ideal for the trailer or the tow vehicle.

I also tend to use my Sankey trailer with other vehicles with much lower hitch locations than a standard 90/110 thereby making the 'nose down' trailer situation worse.

To add to this issue is the inhereant instability of a ring and pintal style coupling arrangement in light duty applications.

To solve this problem I removed the Bradly surge brake pintal hitch and welded an adjustable pintal ring track to the Sankey's 'A' frame. This has the benefit of being able to accept either a pintal ring or ball mount and be height adjustable to compensate for differing tow vehicle hitch heights.

Also the ability to use a 1-5/16" ball mount in on road situations adds significant stability and removes the noise /banging associated with a traditional pintal hitch. When terrain dictates the the ball hitch is unsuitable I can swap to a full NATO pintal hitch in moments.

Best of both worlds?

Down side is now I don't have surge brakes on the trailer.
No big deal. I never put anything in the Sankey heavy enough to warrant trailer brakes anyway.

EDIT. 1-5/16" should read 2-5/16".

[Matt H]

Some pictures of the finished product.

[binch]

good thread Matt, thanks!!!!!

One question.....why not go to the standard two inch ball  ???

[Matt H]

Because the pintal and slider are really designed for much larger trailer like an equipment hauler so if you were not towing using the pintal ring the larger 1 5/16" would be needed to handle the big loads on such trailers. The ring is rated at 7 ton!

I needed the adjustability and ability to swap from ball to pintal. The fact it is all big heavy duty stuff is just a result of this. Maybe there is a smaller ball hitch available for the slider? I just bought what was on the shelf as I already had several hitches and multiple ball sizes at home.

[Red90]

Just be careful off road.  The balls do not have as much travel as the pintle....  Driving across the creek into our spot near Sundre, I would expect the ball to break off.  The trailer comes close to hitting the spare tire as you drive in and out.

I've not noticed any noise from the pintle.  It is quite tight to the ring.  The surge brake makes some noise as it takes up the slack.  You do need to use a NATO pintle hook.  The ring size on a Sankey does not properly match any pintle hooks you can buy here that I've seen.  The pintle and ring should be a snug fit to each other.

These are the sorts of hitches used down under.  http://www.campertrailers.org/couplings.htm  Everyone and their dog tows trailers off road in Australia.

[Red90]

Because the pintal and slider are really designed for much larger trailer like an equipment hauler so if you were not towing using the pintal ring the larger 1 5/16" would be needed to handle the big loads on such trailers. The ring is rated at 7 ton!

Do you mean 2-5/16"?  1-5/16" is a very small ball.....

[Matt H]

For Off road use I can still make full use of the NATO style pintal as the ring portion is stationary. All I need to do is remove the ball hitch and fit the pintal hitch ring by just removing two bolts. Then I just swap out the receiver with one that has a NATO hitch installed. I'll take some more pictures as this may not be entirely clear from the existing picture I took at night.

Could be my NATO hitch and original Bradly surge assembly has some wear that is causing the noise? But either way a ball hitch works better on road as you don't encounter the dreaded "Pendulum of Terror" that can occur with a single axle Sankey. Not fun.

[Matt H]

Because the pintal and slider are really designed for much larger trailer like an equipment hauler so if you were not towing using the pintal ring the larger 1 5/16" would be needed to handle the big loads on such trailers. The ring is rated at 7 ton!

Do you mean 2-5/16"?  1-5/16" is a very small ball.....

Yes, it's a 2-5/16" ball.
My mistake.

[binch]

Oh, now that size makes sense now LOL ;D

[Matt H]

Few more pictures that hopefully better explain what I did.   

[Matt H]

The Pintel ring.

[Matt H]

The two interchangeable trailer hitch. 

[Matt H]

The bare slider.

[Matt H]

NATO hitch on a regular 2" receiver mount.

[Matt H]

Normal Multi ball mount.