Your help with coverting to drop-down tongue please!

[lookin4fish]

I am in the process is making my yearly changes to my drop-down shack. One of the things I want to do is convert to a drop-down tongue so I can leave to hitched to the truck. I know there are many people out there that have had problems with them and I was hoping to learn from you. I know there are many different systems out there, but I was wondering if you would share what is working for you.

Currently I have a two-piece tongue as you can see in the picture. I know I will have to take a 45 degree cut off the back of the top tongue to make it able to pivot up. I also plan to mount the winch towards the hitch on the top tongue because there is too much stuff in the way to mount it towards the rear. Soooo.... What is the best system to do? I can put one pully on the top tongue and run the cable down through the tongue down to the lower tongue to an anchore point. I fear this will require a lot of effort to crank it up. I thought about mounting another pully on the bottom tongue and running the cable back up to the top tongue and anchore it, thinking this would reduce the load. I know there is a lot smarter people out there with this kind of stuff, hoping you have some input. If you have pictures of yours, that would even be better.

and thoughts????

Shot at 2009-09-10

[Eric Kruger]

if your tounge jack is attached to the bottom piece all you shouldhave to do it pull the fron bolt and lower the shack and the back bolt should pivot the top piece while the trailer jack takes the weight of the house

thats how mine is set up

[McGurk]

I agree w/ Eric; just round off the back of the tongue, leave the back bolt in, and use your existing jack. If the angle of the tongue while attached is too steep when it's down, you will need a longer tongue section.

You should be able to check that out by measuring the height to the center of the rear bolt hole to the ground when it's down. Then hook up the loose tongue section to your truck and see if the rear bolt hole will pivot down to that measured height. If so; cut off what you don't need, and round it off with a grinder until it's clear!

I'd recommend beefing up that rear pivot bolt, and you can use quick-release high-strength hitch pins (you may need to enlarge your bolt holes to get that to work) in place of your front 2 bolts. Good Luck!

[lookin4fish]

thanks for the sugestions. see it pays to have it looked at from someone elses eyes. call me stupid but i never saw it that way. i still would like to consider adding a winch for second/backup system. so if either fails, i am not stuck. I am open to some more input. thanks guys for sheding light to this point.

[bak2MN]

Look at the ones on the Ice castles. Thats what I have and it seems to crank up ok. It has a anchor point and two rollers up to the winch. And I leave mine hooked to the truck as well. Mine is a 8X18 tandem axle.