I’m going to stick this here. It’s my first attempt at welding something for my Cherokee. Actually, it’s my first attempt at welding anything, ever. I thought this would be something fairly simple to do and would be a decent learning project.
I had a receiver on my XJ when I bought it. It had a weird (2 3/32″) hitch in it. I was never able to pull the hitch out. I wound up just swapping the ball on it. I decided I wanted the ability to remove the receiver hitch because I kept hitting myself in the shin. Parking is tight at my apartment and the ball would stick out over the sidewalk. Getting the receiver off was a giant pain in the ass. I broke four bolts on the passenger side and all three on the driver side. Once the receiver was out, I heated the receiver up with a torch and beat on it to get the hitch out. There was a lot of rust that was falling off. A lot of rust. I can hit the receiver with a 20oz hammer and leave dimples in the steel. I am not sticking this back on the XJ to tow with it.
This is the receiver I pulled off the XJ.
So I hit up the local steel yard and bought some stuff.
Using the receiver I pulled off, I took some measurements and cut some steel and laid it out.
First weld I ever laid down.
Second weld looks much better.
I did go back and grind down the bad spot in the first weld and redo it.
Ground both sides down.
Welded a plate over the top for strength.
All the way around now.
I cut the mounting ears off of the old receiver since they were pretty solid and hadn’t lost their original thickness.
I neglected to get photos where I welded the bottom plate on the receiver where the chains will hook and the ears prior to painting it.
I did everything with some help from my uncle who is a better welder than I using his arc welder. This was done with 7014 rod. I had some fun doing this and hope to do more welding in the future.
I even managed to get it installed today.
I know the blues clash, but I’m hoping that a few weeks of road grime will mellow the blue out and make it clash less.