How not to Hitch your caravan up!
This story happened on: 02/08/2012
Over the 25 years that I have been towing caravans, on two occasions I have failed to hitch the ALKO head properly with the result that the van has broken away on moving off but we were saved by the emergency brakeaway cable. The fault was entirely mine for not realising that the ball was not completely in the socket!
Just to prove how valuable this forum is, I discovered a simple trick to avoid this happening. Once the head is coupled on the ball, just wind the jockey wheel up a little and the coupling should follow, if not coupled properly, the coupling won’t move. SIMPLE as the meercat says!
The other thing that I learned from the kind person who gave the above advice was that you should remember to remove the dummy ball inserted in the coupling when using a hitch lock device.
So last week, we loaded up to go off and I commenced to hitch up, but try as I may, I could not get the ball to sit in the socket! A neighbour stopped to admire our shiny new van as I toiled away trying to hitch the damn thing up. Then it dawned on me! As the man had said, check that you have removed the dummy security ball which I hadn’t!
BOING!
Inali
Motorhomer