w/d hitch on van

Peter, that is what I did with my Hayman reese hitch into a Kaymar. From memory I cut about 20mm of the end. Did a lot of towing with no ill effects.

I used a 1mm thick cut off blade in a 125mm angle grinder and cut in from all sides until it was pared off.

Thank you for you answers I was a bit worried as the patrol had 120mm before pin in the tongue receiver i will only now have 50mm. I guess they wouldnt put the tow bar on car and rate them if not safe. The hitch is solid steel so still strong where the normal tongue is tube

Peter

Shouldn't need a WDH if you tow vehicle and vans suspension is setup correctly and the load is distributed correctly as well.

If you read your manual, ford specifically state to not use weight distribution hitches on the ranger.
Yes, I cut the backs off my towbars to suit my px setup. Best thing is no more rusted in hitches up the beach anymore.

Technically speaking the WDH ball mount should be supplied to suit the particular hitch for the particular Make, Model & Year of the tug to suit its respective receiver depth. Before you go carving off whatever amount you need to remove to make it fit, and effectively changing the engineering design characteristics, I would make call to Hayman-Reece, the inventors of the WDH. Having said that, if your modified Patrol ball mount square section is the same dimensions fore and aft of the pin bore of the 'off the shelf' unit to suit the tow hitch fitted to your vehicle, then you shouldn't have a problem. Re the WDH not being recommended by Ford I cannot comment on that and can only surmise that it is to do with a chassis strength issue. As regards the comment that you shouldn't need a WDH, these vehicles can tow up to 3500kg and ball weights vary markedly due to caravan engineering design and the weight distribution of its payload. If the tug was loaded to its maximum GVM and you add further weight through the tow coupling when you traverse dips, spoon drains, etc. a WDH will assist greatly by adding weight to the tug steer axle and moving some weight from the rear axle to the front axle on the van assuming it has a tandem axle set up. This will improve the towing fidelity of the combination thus improving safety and will in all likelihood improve fuel consumption as well.