Message Forums

I don't believe any of the suggestions above really provide a reason for a catastophic unhitch. My trailer came off once. It came off because I didn't close the hitch handle down. I was distracted in conversation as I was doing it. Fortunately I was just pulling onto the road.

I would get yours checked but I would be confident that it was not properly hitched.

As in the car over the cliff picture I have witnessed a caravan overturn where the car was lifted about 3 feet off the ground but never became unhitched.

Top gear have jumped & flown car & caravan combinations. They don't detatch. Banger racers crash them, they don't become detatched.

Hi,

I do not wish to sound blunt but when it comes to towing, lives can be put at risk if you are not 100% sure the caravan/trailer is safely attached.

I have not towed a caravan before, but have towed many other combinations of trailers for the last 15 years including a 28ft long sailing yacht weighing in at just under 3.5 tons with the trailer, so with good experience behind me I am quite certain that the caravan was not hitched correctly.

As stated above many of the other replys do not provide a good answer for the caravan to come off the towball, it certainly has nothing to do with the stabiliser pads as these are quite different from the hitching mechanism.

There are many good guides in magazines, or on youtube to show how to hitch up correctly, and I really do think you need to look into this before attempting to tow again, or perhaps you may know someone who could check the hitching up procedure with you?

One big tip that has already been mentioned that I use every time I tow a trailer is once the hitch is secured onto the towball, then wind the jockey wheel back up again as if trying to lift the hitch off the towball, if it is correctly attached you will lift the back of the car up (I would lift it about 3-4" at least to make sure it is properly secured), if it is not correctly attached the hitch will lift off the ball.

Regards the breakaway cable for what they cost I would certainly replace this as it could be hard to see if it was damaged or not. Again as you mentioned this also came off the ball, I presume it did not apply the caravan brakes, which could also mean this was not correctly attached to the car (it is not recommended to loop this over the towball unless there is no other option).

I really hope I haven't come across as being rude, but I really would suggest this incident was a clear case of user error that could be avoided with a bit of guidance.

Regards, Tim.

Hi,

I have just looked at the photos you have added, and can see that on the caravan hitch photo it looks like the drawbar is fully retracted even though the car is not hitched.

It looks like the caravan has been reversed in and then unhitched, the drawbar should then fully extend itself again to reset the brakes, which it hasn't, I can tell this from the fact that the big rubber gaitor behind the hitch head is quite compressed.

This could be a case of a worn damper (this is not linked to the un-hitching episode!) which could make the brakes quite snatchy in operation ( not a pleaset experience - quite often experienced when using poorly maintained hire trailers!).

I am only mentioning this as it caught my eye on the photo, do you know when the caravan running gear was last serviced?, if it is due you could get this checked along with the hitch head.

Regards, Tim.