Richard,
I also note upon looking at the setup again, that the safety chains would
attach to the same piece of metal that the hitch resides upon. If the weak
link here is the strength of the bumper material, having the chains attached
to the frame will help.

A while back in the thread, Mike painted a scenario where you might be
rear-ended and the trailer tongue shoots through the Jeep's tub. I have
actually had this happen to me. I have a pop-up camper towed by a Sienna.
While waiting to make a left turn, a van hit the back of the trailer hard.
Both the other van and the trailer were totaled. The tongue was indeed
pushed into the back of the Sienna and the force vector was straight in line
with the car's direction and also upward a bit. The upward tilt of the
hitch ball surprised me a bit, but there it was. I had to unbolt the whole
hitch and drop it to disconnect the trailer from the ball, as it was buried
up in the upper bumper. The combination of the Class 2 hitch and then the
frame of the Sienna absorbed it all, about $2500 worth of fixed damage to
the Sienna. I speculate that if I had an equivalent of this hitch design,
it would be likely that the trailer tongue would, in its upward vector,
pierce the rear of the tub and head for people in the seats.

At least safety chains attached to the frame instead of the part that is
(connected to at least) part of the failure might mitigate this. The chains
need to be of plenty of girth as well.

In other words, if the bumper is the weak point, and the chains are attached
to the metal attached to the bumper, the chains provide zero additional
help. They would only help if the trailer jumps off of the ball. I
advocate attaching them to the frame.
Tomes


"Richard J Kinch" wrote in message
. ..
Here is my design for a bumper-mounted Jeep Wrangler TJ trailer hitch:

http://www.truetex.com/jeep_trailer_hitch_bracket.htm