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im not sure but i dont think they do swivel on newer ones.

im sure someone else will know exactly

enjoy it

cheb

You don't say the age of your caravan, or the make of hitch.

But newer hitches don't swivel in the way older ones did.

 I thought they all swiveled round to stop the caravan fliping the towing vehicle, but I only have an old rig and i dont know anything about the new ones yet.

  Steve..

  WoW y not?  Im sure there is a very good reason for it? Isent there?

  Steve

Our previous caravan's hitch swivelled but Dolly's hitch doesn't..........this seems to be common to newer 'vans and trailers.

There is no real reason why a hitch should swivel - if it is fixed then the stress on the locking pins is equally distributed whereas it will be biased towards a single pin when the hitch is rotated.

 I found a realy useful site that could help anyone new to towing, here is the URL If anyone would like to take a look.

 I must admit I read all of it however its not a uk site but most of the stuff is still very useful.

 I especialy like the bit about holding the bottom of the steering wheel to reverse a trailer (Im ok with that bit personaly but its good) anyhow here is the link.

 http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl648/dl648pt12.htm

  Steve. ... . . .. . .

Quote: Originally posted by Smeecaravan on 20/05/2005

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 I found a realy useful site that could help anyone new to towing, here is the URL If anyone would like to take a look.

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Quite a bit of the information in that article is very wrong when applied to the UK......including the bits about being able to carry people in a caravan providing the door is unlocked!!!!    That is illegal in the UK except for authorised test personnel.

I also think the hand on the bottom of the steering wheel stuff is misleading.   Whilst it is right it doesn't go on to talk about following the trailer round to correctly reverse it.    It is also bad practice to reverse with your hand at the bottom of the wheel - it should be at the top so that you have an equal swing in both directions.

Quote: Originally posted by DMCL on 23/05/2005

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Interesting topic as I was wondering about this myself. I have just bought a new van and the dealer fitted an Alko 3004 stabilizer hitch - this has some movement (or swivell) - from nearside to offside - I did wonder if this was correct as I would have assumed for the stabilizer to work correctly that the hitch should not pivot at all - I could be wrong though!

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Whether the hitch swivels or not will have no effect on the action of a stabiliser!

The stabiliser attempts to damp out oscillations between the tug and trailer which occur on a horizontal plane and will happen in just the same way regardless of the orientation of the actualy hitch.