Remember last November when we found a crack in the Hensley hitch?  We took it to a local welder in Del Rio TX and got a quick fix on it.

Well, of course that wasn’t the end of the story.  For years I’ve been saying that the hitch was due for a complete overhaul, so I took the opportunity this summer while the Airstream is parked in Vermont.  I removed the hitch and toted it across Lake Champlain to Colin Hyde Trailer Restoration.

That poor hitch was looking pretty awful.  The orange paint flaked off a long time ago, and I’ve been patching it periodically with silver spray paint. It was a patchwork of rust, flaking paint and grease. From prior experience I knew it would have a broken internal bushing (the “binocular” part) and during inspection Colin and I spotted elongated holes in various places.

So I called up Hensley and ordered every part that was worn or which might fail in the future, which included 8 bearings, the “binocular” bushings, some new U-brackets, dust caps, spare zerk fittings, and even a full sticker kit so we could make it look like factory-new again.  That was about $250 in parts (they threw in the stickers for free).

Now, Hensley doesn’t have a recommended service interval, so owners are left to their own judgement as to when an overhaul is due. I think I waited too long. It has been seven years and certainly well over 70,000 miles of towing since we got this unit (itself a replacement).

Colin called me a couple of days later to say that mine was “the worst” Hensley they’d ever seen. Apparently the battered nature of my hitch was the subject of some amusement over at the shop.

The bushings were broken not just once as expected, but into three separate pieces.  The chrome had been worn off the hitch ball.  One of the lower bearings had rusted (due to water intrusion through the dust cap).

That crack we thought we’d fixed?  Now it was three separate cracks running across the bottom unit, hidden by a layer of dried grease.

Worst of all, the tubes that accept the binocular bushings and weight transfer bars had stretched. Now they are oval, to the tune of about 1/10 of an inch and they have separated from the main body. The new bushings won’t even fit in.

So, after Chris spent some time at the shop degreasing and sandblasting away endless layers of paint, it was decided that the entire lower section of the hitch needed to be sent to Hensley for warranty repair.  They received it this week, and have promised I’ll get it back well before it’s time to hit the road in later July.

Colin says they’ll take one look at it and decide to melt it down, but I think Hensley will repair it. It will be interesting to see what comes back.

Meanwhile Colin’s guys will continue working on the rest of the hitch. There’s really not much left of it, once we figure in all the new parts I bought, and the replacement lower unit.

We’ve decided to restore the famous Hensley orange paint (but a better, longer-lasting version, says Colin).  I have some suspicions about that too.  I figure it’s all a learning opportunity.

For now there’s nothing to do but wait. Assuming everything goes as planned, we’ll have the hitch reassembled and ready in late July, just in time for us to launch again across the country.  Our schedule calls for departure before August 1, in order to spend six weeks transiting the north country from Vermont to Seattle WA. It will be nice to take off knowing the hitch is back up to 100% again.