Tested: Hitch-Ezy 3.5T

The criteria for off-road couplings are greater than for those that simply have to haul trailers or caravans on a smooth sealed surface.

Articulation is one obvious thing. A regular 50mm ball hitch has limited movement, so it may not cope with severe angles, such as entering or leaving dry creek beds.

And when it reaches the limit of its side articulation, it may take the tow car with it – something you often see as the aftermath of a highway accident.

A well-designed off-road hitch should also be able to be released – and re-engaged – when the trailer is at an angle with the tow vehicle, rather than straight behind. This might be necessary in very sandy or muddy conditions, when moving forward is no longer an option and you might need to remove the trailer and pull it sideways or backwards to extract it

Ease of connection is a major factor here. You want to be 100 per cent sure that the coupling is right way up and securely locked before you move off. I’ve had three caravans jump off the ball or pin– fortunately all at low speed – so something fool-proof is a really good idea!

Finally, a good off-road hitch needs to be well-made, tough and able to survive everything the environment throws at it – from gritty dirt to salty water.

An easier way?

The new Melbourne-designed and made Hitch-Ezy promises all this and more, so after being impressed with the origina 5-tonne rated version, we were keen to have a closer look at its new baby brother, the 3.5 tonne version.

So, we unbolted our trusty Hitchmaster DO-35 from the A-frame of our off-road van (four bolts) and replaced it with the Hitch-Ezy (same holes, five minutes).

As anyone who has used a DO-35 knows, hitching is easy. You push in a sliding plate and lock it open with a small button, then locate its tow-tongue-mounted pin approximately under the hole and lower the receiver onto it. You don’t have to be dead centre, as the pin will find its way into the hole as long as it’s visible through it.

The important thing is then to press the button again to release the sliding plate that springs in to lock into a groove in the pin.

However, there are a couple of traps for inexperienced players here. The first, as it swivels through a full 360-degrees, is to make sure that the coupling is the right way up, or else it won’t latch properly. This has been addressed on the latest version of the DO-35.

The other is to ensure that the full weight of the A-frame is on the pin and not shared with the jockey wheel, as otherwise you can release the button, see the locking plate slide, but it might not engage the groove in the pin.

This happened to me once on a remote unmade road on Cape York when the caravan jumped off the pin at less than 10km/h because of my inattention to this. No damage done and with the aid of a jack, it was re-attached correctly.

Look Mum, no hands!

The reason why I mention this, is that two of the key features of the 3.5T Hitch-Ezy, which are shared with its 5t sibling, is that it can only go on one way and, uniquely, is self-locking.

Unlike its big brother, the new ‘baby’ Hitch-Ezy is hewn from aircraft grade alloys, rather than steel, by Heidelberg-Melbourne based Yann Engineering, and its lovely anodised finish is a talking point for fellow hitch ‘enthusiasts’ in caravan parks.

It’s also smaller and 4kg lighter than its sibling at 11kg, despite using the same aluminium bronze bushes and stainless-steel yoke pivot bolts. It’s still heavier than the more compact DO-35, but not excessively so.

More significantly, the 3.5t Hitch-Ezy retains the unique automatic double locking mechanism introduced on its 5t brother that activates as soon as the female sleeve is lowered onto the male tow-pillar, which is much larger than a regular 50mm ball.

Like the DO-35, the fat, phallic pillar, which is treated with oxy nitro carburisation, doesn’t have to be dead centre of the hollow hitch housing and you can even tilt the coupling’s spring-loaded head at 45 degrees towards the pin and back the tow vehicle into it.

You simply tilt the spring-loaded rotating cap towards the tow vehicle, reverse until the coupling’s dedicated ‘pillar’ engages and lit locks on securely without any human intervention, once lowered fully.

However, you really need a rear tow vehicle camera to get this right and my older Land-Rover D3 doesn’t have one, so it was harder to perform this trick.

The patented three-ball locking system then automatically secures the hitch into a groove in the pillar, which replaces the 50mm ball on a standard tongue. However, you need to ensure that the tongue is large enough to house the large coupling head, and the Hitch-Ezy comes with a template that fits under the pillar to show you the rotational room required.

De-coupling made easy

De-coupling is not automatic, but easily done.  You release a spring-loaded lever on top of the Hitch-Ezy’s cap, press the large hitch-top release button and wind up the jockey wheel.

An extension bar is supplied with the Hitch-Ezy to save you holding the lever open, but I found that this was a one-handed operation, using fingers for the lever and the ball of the same hand to hold the button down, leaving the other hand free for the jockey wheel. If you use the bar to hold the coupling open, you can devote two hands to the jockey wheel.

I must admit it’s very reassuring to see the coupling head rotate to the ‘lock’ position when hitching and remain in the ‘Open’ position when removed.

A dummy pillar is supplied with the Hitch-Ezy kit to keep the coupling head clean when not in use and it can be locked in place with a padlock as an anti-theft measure. Meanwhile, the aluminium cap that stores the dummy, slips tightly over the tow pillar when it’s not in use.

A good feature that was appreciated immediately is that the coupling head when lowered has a height of just 120mm, allowing it to sit underneath our Land-Rover’s lower tailgate when open, while it’s also low enough to avoid interference with ‘barn-style’ rear 4WD doors.

Works a treat

To give it a good workout, we headed to Inskip Point at the southern end of Fraser Island for some beach camping.

Hitching, as described above, was dead easy – so easy that I stopped a couple of times en route to convince myself it was all secured correctly. No issue about having the coupling the right way up either – I’s impossible to load it otherwise.

It was also pleasing to see that the change of hitch didn’t alter our caravan’s stance. I had taken some time in choosing tow-bar tongues to achieve this with the DO-35 and it sat exactly the same with the Hitch-Ezy.

Getting into our beach camp in quite deep sand was no issue once we had dropped the Disco’s tyres to around 18psi, and when we had gone as far as we could – about 50 metres from the water with Fraser Island beyond – we unhitched.

This can be a tricky with some hitches, as they ‘stick’ and are reluctant to disengage when they are loaded. However, the Hitch-Ezy came off easily and smoothly.

All went well until five days later when it came time to leave. Hitching up again was as easy as it was first time at home, but our van was reluctant to be pushed back in the thick sand that piled up under its tandem wheels, and it skewed off line.

We now had ourselves in a situation where we couldn’t easily go forwards or backwards, so we unhitched (again easy) and drove the Discovery around to approach the hitch at right angles.

The Hitch-Ezy dropped easily onto its pillar before self-locking, but then came the hard part, when we effectively pulled the caravan sideways through the thick sand before it was pointing in our direction of travel.

No complaints from the hitch and it all came out OK, despite some serious loads on the coupling.

Back home, it was an easy dismount again and I slipped in the dummy pillar and locked it in place, with everything still looking as good as new.

Should you get one?

Bushtracker, Kedron, Van Helen and Trakmaster are now either fitting the Hitch-Ezy as standard, or optionally on their caravans, where it’s usually offered as a $150 premium price add-on over a DO-35. Off-the-shelf versions will currently set you back just over $600, including shipping.

Is it worth it? It‘s beautifully made; it works exactly as described; it’s fail-safe; it’s easy to couple and de-couple at all angles and it attracts a lot of interest from bystanders. That’s probably a ‘yes’ in our book…