RE: Towing Tips & lessons, Near Accidents! ?

[Joe Gleason]

 
I fly a little ultra light, and one of the best thing I ve found has an accident database.. Mostly self reported.   Needless to say, it s unfortunate when peers in your sport have fatal mishaps... Especially when they could have been avoided by " hearing"  about that or learning from others!
 
 Is there a section on the board that covers this... Accidents or near misses.. Over time I ve seen some good posts...  Not talking about Non Dangerous ?blunders?? A topic in it?s own..
 
 If your interested in posting your :School of Hard Nocks Lessons..?. Please do so ? share your experience with all of us- reply to this post and change your subject heading to an example like " Lesson, Hitch Pin"  
 
 Lesson Hitch Pin
 In that example...A true story,  on my last trip I found the BIG pin that holds the hitch to the car had been removed... Not sure how, as my little kids fingers are strong enough...  Even stranger, was I found a pin on the camp road (2 days prior) and put in my pocket... Then checked my hitch and it was ok!    When leaving (a different campground)... I noticed mine missing!  - After I was connected and took a 2nd look to double check electrical etc..
 
 I could only imagine that coming loose how gut wrenchingly awful it would be! Has anyone ever heard of the Pins being pulled?  Or known anyone to have the hitch fall off because of it?
 

[Ab Diver]

 Joe Gleason
Joe, if you are talking about the pin that keeps the ball mount (sometimes called the drawbar, or stinger) in the hitch... yeah, I ve heard of that happening. It can be from someone else pulling the pin as a " practical joke"  or just plain meanness. You re right, it could ruin your day if you couldn t lift the trailer tongue back up to re-hitch the trailer or swing down the tongue jack.
 
 I never worried about it before, just made sure it was in place and locked with a cotter pin. But since I went to a dedicated ball mount for my Coleman, (4"  lift, left hand sway control, Couple-Mate fixture) I can no longer grab just any old drawbar and be on my way. I now use a " receiver lock"  instead of a regular pin. Costs about 12-15 bucks, and cheap insurance to avoid a ruined trip. Available at Wal-Mart, your local RV guy, or many catalogs like Cabela s and camping World.

[tlhdoc]

 Joe Gleason
I use the a locking bar to secure my draw bar in the receiver.  I also use a lock to keep the coupler closed.

[The Eagle and the Hawk]

 Joe Gleason
I think there was a thread on this board last year about an experience where someone (kids?) went around a campground pulling these pins.  I think the person telling the story actually pulled out and had his popup hit the ground.
 
 We use a locking pin on ours, just to keep it from getting taken in general.  We keep a " cover"  in the receiver when we are not towing and don t need the bar and ball, and use the lock to keep that from getting swiped also.

[AustinBoston]

 Joe Gleason

ORIGINAL:  Joe Gleason
 Is there a section on the board that covers this... Accidents or near misses.. Over time I ve seen some good posts...  Not talking about Non Dangerous ?blunders?? A topic in it?s own..
 

 We generally call them SPUT s (Stupid Pop-Up Tricks).  I ve had plenty of those...I ll choose one.
 
 Hmmm...why isn t she moving?
 
 We tow with a Reese Mini-350.  Depending on the circumstances, we use a couple of methods to connect before towing.  One time (summer of  01, near Carlsbad Caverns, NM), we were ready to pull out.  This time, I d pulled the rear axle of the Astro up onto some Lynx levelers to make connecting the spring bars a little easier.  It went fine, and went to pull forward to pull off the Lynx.  It should have occured to me to check things when I had to give it more gas than normal to move the vehicles.  Suddenly, there was gravel and lynx levelers flying through the air, and PJay (who was busy with something else) started screaming " WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
 
 I had forgotten to crank down and put away the tongue jack.  SPUT.
 
 Austin

[Gamecock Camper]

 Joe Gleason
I always use locks and now I m glad I do.  I can t even imagine the dangerous situation you would be in if your hitch came out of the receiver while tooling down the road.  The original reason I have the locks is that I have a fairly expensive hitch set-up that includes a double receiver for a bike rack and hitch.

[garym053]

 Joe Gleason
I m going to buy a hitch lock today!!!
 
 SPUT- One time, pulling out of Beach Acres CG in Wells, ME, I got this feeling that I had forgotten something, stopped got out to check the hitch, and sure enough, I d forgotten to CLOSE the hitch and put the hitch pin through to lock it! The hitch was just resting on the ball!

[Gamecock Camper]

 Joe Gleason
Gary, I ve done that before.  Thank goodness that I didn t go over any big bumps and have the camper come off the hitch.

[garym053]

 Joe Gleason
Thanks, Stopher! I SHOULD have mentioned that this was the same campground that I rocked the camper back and forth and up and down to make people who were cutting through our site think we were " having a really good time" ! (I posted this on the old board a while back!)
 I guess they would have had the last laugh!

[Gamecock Camper]

 Joe Gleason
You mean to say that " if this camper s rockin , then don t come knockin" ....  Too funny.

[garym053]

 Joe Gleason
Yep! It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud when I looked out and saw the face of some lady cutting through my site to the john!! But I had about had it with everyone cutting through the site by then!
 I even tried stringing up a clothesline and throwing towels on it to " dry" - They ducked under it!

[Starryart]

 Joe Gleason
How about this one....
 When Dh and I are setting up camp, we are doing a multitude of things at the same time to try and get set up as quick as possible. Once at the point of popping up the roof, we flipped the latches and Dh assuming that all was unhooked, began to crank her up.
 As you may have guessed, a cable popped when one corner of the roof was still latched down. Talk about ruining a camp trip and costing $$$ to fix![: (]
 The moral to the story, boys and girls, is - whoever cranks up the roof AlWAYS double checks the latches first.

[jackgoesthepopup]

 Joe Gleason
i was always worried about some one takeing the hitch pin. So I also bought a locking one. A couple of weeks ago i went to move the camper. And low and behold someone had taken the whole hitch reciever and hitch. I had a universal one And i ws going to weld it on also. But  ireally didn t want to. In case i got anther tv i could use the same hitch. So i just bolted i9t to the frame using grade eight  bolts. Who ever took it must have really wanted it.When i put the next hitch i am going to not only bolt it on I am going to weld it also.[:@]