Really, I'm not quite sure what happened. The plans consisted primarily of pictures with no measurements so between guesstimating lengths, not knowing what would work well, and my flea-like attention span, I ended up with a long towing arm. It still pulls fine but I definitely wish it were shorter. I guess I might could cut the arm short, make a new bend, and reattach the hitch adapter, but there are oak dowels reinforcing the conduit where it is bolted together at the hitch arm and I don't want to disassemble it that much. *shrug* :-)