Outdoor Adventure USA

So I need to be able to carry all my gear including extra gas cans in my Jeep. Well, I do have a cargo rack that slides into the receiver hitch, but I'm afarid it hangs down too low. Its great for taking stuff camping but not for wheelin'. Like this picture shows...




So what I did was weld up another hitch that sets up higher. Still got add another support and paint it. Now I won't have any issues with my cargo rack sitting too low to the ground on our Mojave trip!

Nice, John! Do you have your own welder?

John what a coincidence. Im dealing with that same thing right now for Mojave. I want a reciever rack for my 2-5 gallon gas cans. I was thinking about finding a used one and just extending the height, and welding a 2 handles on it so i can slide the whole rack out so my rear hatch can open. Keep the pics coming.

BlueFJ wrote:Nice, John! Do you have your own welder?

It belongs to my brother-in-law. He helped me out.

big dave wrote:John what a coincidence. Im dealing with that same thing right now for Mojave. I want a reciever rack for my 2-5 gallon gas cans. I was thinking about finding a used one and just extending the height, and welding a 2 handles on it so i can slide the whole rack out so my rear hatch can open. Keep the pics coming.

That sounds like it'll work. I'll post up again when its finished.

When I was a Wildlife Conservation Officer (Game Warden), one of our duties was to pick up deer killed on the road by cars. Many times we had to dispatch the deer. In that case if there was good meat, we had a list of needy people where we could drop the deer off. Other times, the deer might have been there a week - bloated and full of maggots. If the meat was unusable, we took it to a rendering plant in the county. At the time, there were no bumper type racks on the market and we all made our own. The goal was to keep all that mess outside the vehicle and not have to lift it too high. I started with a rack that was level with the hitch. Later, when I started using as a "gear" rack instead as a 'deer" rack I added the lift to make it level with the tail gate. I also added the wood platform for gear. For deer there is just a few cross bars under the wood you can not see. After dropping off the deer, I could spray it down just a few bars. When there is nothing on the rack, I can open the tail gate without removing the rack. So far I have not had a problem with leverage and have not braced it.
BTW - in the spring we were each give a quota by the biologists to collect the lower right jaw bone of 6 to 8 road killed does and send it in. Part of the information we had to send was the number of unborn fawns the doe was carrying and the sex of each. I never had any feedback on any finding from the biologists.

toms wrote:When I was a Wildlife Conservation Officer (Game Warden), one of our duties was to pick up deer killed on the road by cars. Many times we had to dispatch the deer. In that case if there was good meat, we had a list of needy people where we could drop the deer off. Other times, the deer might have been there a week - bloated and full of maggots. If the meat was unusable, we took it to a rendering plant in the county. At the time, there were no bumper type racks on the market and we all made our own. The goal was to keep all that mess outside the vehicle and not have to lift it too high. I started with a rack that was level with the hitch. Later, when I started using as a "gear" rack instead as a 'deer" rack I added the lift to make it level with the tail gate. I also added the wood platform for gear. For deer there is just a few cross bars under the wood you can not see. After dropping off the deer, I could spray it down just a few bars. When there is nothing on the rack, I can open the tail gate without removing the rack. So far I have not had a problem with leverage and have not braced it.
BTW - in the spring we were each give a quota by the biologists to collect the lower right jaw bone of 6 to 8 road killed does and send it in. Part of the information we had to send was the number of unborn fawns the doe was carrying and the sex of each. I never had any feedback on any finding from the biologists.

Wow Tom kinda graphic! Hope you had a mask for the week olds, I woulda puked for sure.

I carried plastic gloves!!!

Before:



After:

Perhaps you can weld a triangular piece of metal on the inside of that first bend, just like the top. I see a possibility of bending or cracking without it. Nice work man!

big dave wrote:Perhaps you can weld a triangular piece of metal on the inside of that first bend, just like the top. I see a possibility of bending or cracking without it. Nice work man!

Thanks. I'll weld the other piece on later today after work and paint it.