Ok sitting hear thinking of a way to fab up a cheap trailer coupler for a offroad trailer and it dawns on me to use a section of a dive shaft with the u joints but im not sure if it would be strong enough to handle the pulling force since a divedrive shaft isn't really made to handle that type of load. Has anyone attempted something like this? Am I crazy?

 

That sounds dangerous!

look at something from locknroll.com or MAX Coupler from Kilby

 

It sounded a little dangerous at first to me but the more I look at some drive shafts and think about it. Seems like it would work for a little offroad camping trailer. I not saying it should be used on a car hauler or travel trailer but a trailer like the one Im building fully loaded will weigh under 1k #. I'm not talking about using the entire drive shaft but just cutting the CV section out of it and welding some adapters to the hitch and trailer. You would obviously want to use a heavy duty drive shaft (as my luck would have it I just got rid of a drive shaft from a gm dump truck I used to have) would probably have worked perfect. I think as long as you didn't have a section that used those little straps to clamp the U joint it would be pretty freaking strong backed up by some heavy duty break away chains with hooks that close on the car side so they couldn't pop off. I've looked at the lock n roll before and that thing looks scary to me. I haven't seen one in person so only speaking from online pics but looks like some of those parts could get twisted if anything got bound up. Not trying to knock anyone's hitch just trying to look at it from all view points. Can anyone give any reasons why this is a bad idea other than its not a common application and a little out of the ordinary?