Following a week spent at Bryce Canyon, Utah and after the American Adventure Southwest Caravan, we were on our way back east along I-70 in June, 1999, when a klunking noise began that sounded as if it were coming from the trailer hitch area.  We were towing our 34 foot Airstream travel trailer behind a Chevy Suburban.  I stopped to inspect, but noticed nothing out of kilter.  The noise was intermittent, but continued to be a bother.  When we reached Abilene, Kansas, we found a campground and unhitched.  That allowed for a more thorough inspection.  To my horror, I discovered that of the six bolts holding the hitch platform to the Suburban's frame, only two were still doing any good.  The platform had cracked and split away from the other four. 

After some checking with an RV shop nearby, it became evident that we were stuck through the weekend.  The closest place to get a new platform was Kansas City, and it would take a couple of days to get it shipped to Abilene.  We took advantage of the forced delay to visit the Eisenhower home and museum.  By the time the new platform arrived, I had the old one off and was ready to install the new one, thinking, of course, that with the new platform, we had solved the "klunking" problem.  Not so.

When we got back on the road, the "klunk" was still there.  Between Abilene, Kansas and Dayton, Ohio, I stopped at three different maintenance shops.  No one could find the problem.  By then we knew the noise had nothing to do with the trailer.  It was definitely in the Suburban.  Dayton was the locale of the WBCCI International Rally that year.  After getting parked at the rally, I headed downtown to the Chevy dealer where a mechanic finally located the "klunk."  It was coming from the four-wheel drive transfer case.  After disassembling the case, it was found that a small piece of plastic bushing and worn away allowing a lever arm to flop intermittently against the side of the case. That was the "klunk."  It was easily fixed.

BUT, had it not been for that "klunk," I would have never found the broken hitch platform - at least not before a major problem occurred.  Had those other two bolts given way, we could have lost the trailer.  Just thinking about the circumstances under which that might have happened gives me goose bumps.  So, it was with a thankful heart that I gladly paid the $600 repair bill to fix the "klunk."  God's angel had made that happen so we would find the broken hitch platform. 

At the rally, I showed the broken platform Doug Showker, to a hitch specialist. He was amazed.  Preparing for a safety seminar, he had put together a slide show to demonstrate some of the weaknesses in the platforms being used as original equipment on Suburbans.  His slides were line drawings indicating the weak points.  My platform had broken in the exact places his diagrams had indicated.  Now, he had something real to show at his seminar.  That led to safety inspections on a national level that revealed hundreds of defective hitch platforms.  No one knows the lives that may have been saved.

Later that year, I bought a new Suburban.  The first thing I did was to remove the original equipment hitch platform and install a heavy-duty platform from Reese.

That's my story of the Angel and Hitch Platform.

The Angel and The Trailer Hitch