WetKitty42

Who has a pic of he crashed Little Ceasars Apache?

Tonto

All I have to say to all ya'll that tow, is spares, spares, spares.............

Robert

Surgin' General

I tow a Cafe Racer on a myco triple axle steel trailer with a drive guard. I pull it with a F350 crew cab dually
with a 460 5 speed. For the first year I used a Draw Tite solid receiver rated to 7500 lbs. It is solid and has a curved metal piece welded on to raise the ball from the receiver. At a stoplight last year in Annapolis I went to move forward and SNAP the trailer was on the ground.
The weld on the curved piece failed and the receiver and ball snapped in two pieces.

How lucky am I that this was it a stoplight! I went and got a 13,000 lb receiver and ball that day. The boat is 10000 wet, the trailer is 2500 so I am covered.

Audiofn

Bonnie as has been said measure your trailer ball with a pair of Calipers. I purchased a ball from a company and when I hooked up my trailer I could not figure out why the trailer seemed loose. Took the toungue back off and measured it and low and behold it was smaller then stamped. Second if you look under the toungue of the trailer you will see there is a nut. That nut adjusts the tension on the ball. I ussually set up the trailer on a slight incline so that the boat is pulling back, then tighten that nut up and then back if off slightly so that the toungue can pivot. You MAY find that nut is backed off. If it turns easy replace it with another nylocking nut. Yoiu should be able to hit the largest bump around and NEVER have that trailer pop off. I had one pop at a ramp and luckily the boat just went strait down the ramp and did not hit anyone. The owner in this case forgot to clamp the latch, said he thought I did it....

Jon

CigDaze

Luck doesn't even begin to describe it....That would have been nasty at any speed.

Tim G.

Nobody has mentioned anything about the actual adjuster nut that is responsible for how tight the "lock thing" holds to the ball.
Look under the coupler. You'll see the flipper that holds against the ball when you actuate the "lock thing". The nut that you see adjusts the tension of the flipper.
Properly securing the "lock thing" with a lock will do no good if the flipper isn't putting a good contact on the ball.
My money says this is the issue with the lady's mishap.

I learned this years ago when I was a lot guy at a marine/Rv place.... I had a 20' bayliner trailer pop off the ball on our yard tractor. The boss was pissed,until we found that the nut was almost falling off, therefore putting little to no contact to the ball.

Chris288

REFER to post # 25..



I too was going to suggest this.. went over a speed bump once and the trailer popped right off the ball,, swung on the safety chains and the bow went right through the cap window... Found the the lock nut had come loose..

Manuel B

I had a boat pop loose while crossing double sets of railroad tracks, it was in a 35mph area and I slowed way down while crossing but the second bounce got it,
it was almost midnight and I felt like an idiot until we put it back on and checked everything TWICE and never found the reason, I found this lock on the HotBoat forums that I think is a great idea and just to be real secure I'm getting one, http://trailerguardian.com/
"It's made by trailer guardian, and they have 3 models to select from. The
website does not list the prices so here they are as of last week, the
single arm ball mount is $39, dual arm ball mount is $49 and they also make
one called the equalizer. S&H is around $8. Someone saw them on ebay going
for $79, so I would buy direct and save. someone also said they saw them at WalMart ?

Tim G.

OK, I stand corrected...I didn't read all of Jon's post.

But..
Everything has a catch...
So you tighten that nut down... But just as Was said, be sure to have enough clearance for the ball/coupler pivot.
You can actually unscrew the nnut on the trailer ball if the coupler is too tight... That gets equally as ugly.

I bought a new ball mount for the work truck (F550). That ball and mount had a flat surface so that the ball can not turn, even if the nut isn't really tight enough. Pretty slick. And handy because my guys have a habit of keeping the coupler nut good and tight...

CigDaze

Manuel B,

That's a whole lot of piece of mind for little money.