When we got a pickup truck, our entire camping setup changed.  The ability to transport and store items in the bed is awesome and frankly something that we would never be without again.  A big challenge though has been accessing that gear while hooked up to the trailer as the tailgate hits the tongue jack when its lowered.

Thought the magic of the internet I set out to see if there was a way to solve this issue.  It quickly became apparent that for my specific tongue jack the easiest thing was to rotate the head 90 degrees.  This is actually quite easy to do and turns out to be a great quick DIY project.

We started off by removing the rubber covers on each side of the tongue jack head and then removing the exposed bolts.  Then, before lifting the head off, we had to make sure that the power cable leading up into the head unit was ree.  Ours was zip-tied in one spot and clamped with a bracket in another.  Once the power line is free, we were able to lift the head unit off and set it aside.

You will notice that the top holes on the sides of the pole, match the top holes on the front and back of the pole.  The only difference is that the top holes on the front and back are not tapped.  Why Lippert spent the time to drill the holes and not tap them I will never know.  Not being tapped simply means that they do not have threads embedded in the hole to allow a bolt to go in.

We first placed a rag into the pipe below the hole to catch any metal bits.  We then took a 5/16″-18 tap and inserted it into our cordless drill and very slowly tapped the hole.  With the front and back holes tapped we reinstall the head unit.  We found that you had to put it on facing forwards first so that it was fully seated and then twisted it slowly to the side.  Once it was in place we reattached the bolts that we removed at the beginning and replaced the rubber covers and the reattached the power cable with zip ties

Not only does this allow for us to more easily access the gear in the bed of the truck but we can now also drop the tailgate and run the generator.  Previously this was a bit of an issue due to the generator exhaust but now we can let that puppy run, which is super handy when we stop at a rest area for lunch and it’s really hot outside.