packard8

I’m considering a front mount hitch receiver for my ’06 3500 (4x4 with the tow hooks).

I see several brands available…Hidden Hitch, Curt, Reese etc. Some say “no drilling necessary”, some don’t…. others mention you have to either remove or cut a hole in the plastic air dam below the bumper.

Anyone have any real world experience with what is available? Pics would be great if anyone has them……what do you do with the front license plate?

TIA

bigdogtruck

I am looking to put a font hitch receiver on my 2001 Ram, did you ever put one on your truck. What kind did you choose? Any advice?

Bluedually4x4

I know min is not the same year, but the original owner installed a home made one and had to trim the plastic trim for it to work. Never used it with a trailer myself but he used it to push his boat down a ramp when he had his slide in camper. Works great for a pull point yanking the truck out.

AlCorr

This one requires drilling, but it's cheap.

http://www.hitchesonline.com/dodge_front_end.htm

vrj

I put one on the front of my 2001 Ram. No drilling was needed. It connects under the bottom and on the sides.

I have a Draw-Tite front hitch which is works great !

1-2-3

I'm helping someone put on on his 05. I don't recall his brand but it's probably one mentioned. It has a tab that slip under the lower bumper mount bolt then req. 2 holes to be drilled in the bottom of the frame tube, THEN, it comes with a spring with a long tail and you either drilla giant hole so a carriage bolt and tab with a square hole in it can slide in the frame, and use the tailed spring to pull it through, or our option, was we found a hole behind the wheel and snaked a wire thru the hole we drilled then out of the bigger hole. Then we tied it to our wiore and pulled it all thru. It work flawless for the drivers side. he passenger side seemed to have something blocking our path. we almost made it but at the last moment, the bolt and tab pulled off the spring and we lost it forever inside the frame. We still might drill a large hole on the passenger side for those bolts.

His does not have a air dam, so it really looks like it's too low. I think were going to study how to modify it to raise it up. If he gets an air dam, he will have to notch it. We may even make a door to go onto the front of the air dam to hide the tube. he only uses his to park his RV. About a 25 foot path is all it takes.

When we get back to it I'll take some pics.

1-2-3

It's FunFinder5. I'll pm and ask the brand

1-2-3

He said it's a Draw Tite

1-2-3

Got some pics of the Hidden Hitch installed. it's on my webshots. Search cattzap and you'll find them.

When you see them, you'll notice that his from plastic air dam is missing. It really makes the hitch look low, and it is. As I said above, we're going to look into modding it so it has more clearance. if he had the dam, the 2" tube would be just under it. One pic shows it pulled into a parking space and about 1" clearance over the curb

vrj

The front hitch that I have is a Draw-Tite #65003 which has a 2in receiver opening. No drilling was needed. Pretty simple to install.

I've included the link to the instructions below:

http://www.draw-tite.com/fitguides/pdf/N65003.pdf

Hope this helps.

FunFinder5

The frame on the 3rd Gen must be much different. My frame doesn't drop down then back up like that. It's straight all the way to the bumper supports.

Attached are some pictures showing how low this thing is. I now have the ground clearance of a Honda Civic. I've already scraped it a few times.

1-2-3

Well we just rebuilt FunFinder's front hitch. he'll post some pics of the rebuild soon.

We cut the hitch into three pieces, and flipped the center piece over then welded it all back up. Also, we completely removed the bumper this time, and found that the spacers stuffed into the ends of the frame tubes are clipped in there, and we were able to snap them out with a screwdriver and open up the end of the frame. This allowed us to reach in and place all the bolts right into the holes without any difficulty.

We were able to tuck the hitch tube up high enough that we actually trimmed a notch out of the bottom of his bumper. he's got about 22 inches of ball height now. Plenty for getting his rv moved around as needed.

Drawtite really needs to change it's front hitch design to what we built and reprint their instructions to open up the frame tubes like we did. it will make it all work 1000 times better and the install method is so simple and easy.

BMH95

An RV is going to put the front end of a 2X4 on the ground. Did you have the springs replaced to eliminate bottoming out already? Or was your truck one that didn't need it?

I bet the reason the hitch sits so low, is to clear the air **** on the 4X4 trucks. Those have lots of room under them due to the stronger suspension.

1-2-3

"I bet the reason the hitch sits so low, is to clear the air **** on the 4X4 trucks. Those have lots of room under them due to the stronger suspension."

From what I can tell, it's so low due the the assumption that only folks with 4X4 will use it, and the front end will be higher due to it being 4X4. The air dang is the same on both vehicles.

I'm not sure if the load will smash the front down or not. I'm not sure it's been tested yet and if so, i wouldn't have been there when it does get tested. FF5 will need to fill in that report. It only takes one quick peep to see that this product is just about unusable on a 2wd, although it is advertised and sold for it. I would think that anybody's front hitch will yield the same results. Probably just a standard industry way of building these things.

After working with this particular DT hitch, DT really needs to rethink what they are doing with it. It wasn't that big of a deal to change it to make it usable and if they would take 5 more seconds to review their install instructions, they would find a whole lot easier, simpler, safer, and faster way to install it.

Pics of the finished rework job should be uploaded soon. I'm expecting this mod to have made it into a real good addition and really do a good job fulfilling what FF5 needs.

FunFinder5

Here's the pictures. The first one shows the hitch cut up into three pieces. The second is a pic of the end of the frame with the spacer pushed up out of the way to access the hitch bolts, much easier than drilling an 1 1/2 inch hole in the side of the frame to "fish" the bolts through. And the last picture is of the hitch installed on the truck and finished. It's pulled up to a curb/sidewalk were I work. This is the same spot were I was 1/4inch from scraping with the hitch unmodified.

Regarding the front end "slamming" to the ground. Are you kidding me! Compared to the weight of the Cummins engine my camper (see sig ~700lbs hitch weight) should be a walk in the park. I just stepped out of an '06 Tundra DoubleCab that I also had a front hitch installed on to move this same camper. I'd like to think that if that truck handled it just fine... so will this one.

The front axle rating is like 4750lbs.... what do the front of these things weigh empty?