Hyland Hitch

Geoff
I put a Hyland hitch on my off road camper trailer. It was the bolt on style and mounted it upside down. It was tight to turn in a rotational direction and the cup that covers the ball was free. Took it to the Cape and it freed up nicely. It may need some grease.
Cheers.

The ball socket is located in the yoke by 2 opposing threaded bolts, threaded into the socket itself.. This allows the fore & aft rotation.. The thing is never going to rotate the full 360º within the yoke, and nor does it need to..

When positioned correctly, there should be a small gap between each side of the socket and the yoke, with a (more or less) equal gap on each side.. This allows all the fore/aft articulation that is necessary..

Has the socket been turned so that it's hard up against the yoke on one side?
If so that will cause it to jam for sure, in which case some force may be required to turn it back the other way...
This more often than not happens when the socket is placed on the ball 'back to front'.. The 'latch' should be at the rear (trailer side) of the ball, and the 'notches' in the yoke facing down when positioned correctly..

If it's centred in the yoke and still siezed, then this is clearly the result of a lack of maintenance (It's fitted with grease nipples for this very reason), in which case the application of some penetrene (or similar) should free it ..I'd suggest removing the grease nipples and get plenty of your chosen penetrating fluid in there..


Where are you located?
If in the Brisbane area, give Darren Hyland a call on (07) 3200 6161, and there's a good chance he'll come to your house and fix it for ya..
If elsewhere, give him a call anyway, and I'm sure he'll do what he can to assist...

;)

Hullo Geofff

This may not be directly related to your problem, but it may help. We took delivery of our Boroma with a Hyland hitch in July, 2008. The Hyland hitch would not rotate either. The problem was that the grease nipples (wrong thread length) had been installed by some one at Hyland so that they acted like grub screws and locked the shaft in the barrell!! The unit would not rotate as a result.

I could not get grease into the unit as a result, so removed grease nipples to find they were "sealing" against the shaft. Correct size grease nipples solved the problem. I did advise Boroma at the time and assume they advised Hyland.

I have moved on from there and no longer have the Hyland hitch on the van. I have upgraded the hitch and coupling to a 70mm ball etc.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Jack