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| Rusted Tongue Extender Pin SV HideAway |
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| Tongue Extender Pin or Hitch Pin? |
After some deliberation I realized that something made for a
trailer hitch located well up under the truck is an unlikely candidate for salt
water immersion. After all, if you’ve
got your truck in that deep, you have more problems than a rusted tongue
extender pin.
Something Galvanized Preferably Hot Dipped
A 5/8 x 6 inch hot dipped galvanized bolt and nut shall likely
replace the shiny orange handled creation of yore. Yes inches, I haven’t a care to know how many
millimeters the rest of the world envisions.
Besides, a millimeter sounds like a name for nasty bug with lots of legs
and sharp teeth.
A Wiggle – A Shake –
and A Break
Given that we hadn’t planned to launch the boat without a
pin in our extended tongue, the polite thing to do would be to retract the
tongue extender to prevent injury to patrons and or vehicles of guests coming
in hordes to our sailing club annual open house the next weekend.
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| A Jammin Tongue Extender - What Next? |
This good deed left
the tongue extender jammed in its carrier.
Of course no sailor can possibly resist the temptation to
pull and jerk a bit on the tongue in some vain hope of an easy fix. A crash and a bang and another project was
born.
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| One Good Jerk Did This |
In less than five
minutes a simple project became a triple threat
A jack and stand wrestled out of my over crowded garage
along with a box of anticipated useful tools to complement the ship board collection
and a found trailer jack, slightly bent, made up the kit for part one of the
project.
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| Floor Jack Placed Directly Under Tongue Support |
I never trust just a jack to keep anything up in the air for long. A sturdy jack stand(s) are a must. In this case I had to carefully place the jack and the stand beneath the tongue extender supports.
I use an automotive floor jack for jobs such as
this. My only complaint is that the jack
wheels allow the jack to move as the jack is activated. Sometimes several attempts must be made to
center the piece properly on the stand. Once set, I leave the jack under some pressure with most of
the weight supported by the stand.
Finally, all jacked and stable, I moved on to removing the
broken trailer jack to find the bolts holding it on the trailer tongue were METRIC.
Why can’t the rest of the world adopt good ole SAE
measurements?
Of course not one of my few metric wrenches or sockets came along
for the trip. According to my Garmin GPS MAP640 my dwelling is seven miles as the GPS flies from HideAways bow. In Florida
time, this is about 47 minutes of joy filled driving on crowded, tourist-infested
roads.
I knew the trip would be futile exercise in bad traffic
manners so a side trip was in order to look for the pin and also price trailer
fenders – Always have another project-You never know when you will need one. Yes, my venerable tape measure came up short
a couple of inches and no, I did not procure any fenders, long or short. Yet.
Relaxed from all the
slow driving and lost tourists;
I discovered NONE of my small collection of metric
tools fit the bolts
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| A Jim-Dandy Universal Bolt Removal Tool |
Using Come-A-Long Winch
To Remove Tongue Extender
After finishing these repairs, I gave a fearful tug or two on
the frozen tongue extender before resorting to the almighty Come-Along Winch and
a pick up truck to effect its removal.
You can see how well that idea worked out in this video.
SMALL BOATS ROCK!
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