Detachable towbar

[Mortblanc]

(4 October 2016, 09:28)Shaysdad99 Wrote: What about having a way where the whole towing frame can be ditched ?

You have quite the fantasy going on here, and apparently a load you can not wait to ditch.

Have you ever crawled under your vehicle and looked at how that hitch frame is attached to the vehicle?

Mine have always had two rails and a cross bar with the slide in attached to the cross bar. The rails are bolted into the frame at four places, sometimes six places, using self locking nuts on 8mm-12mm bolts. On my Jeep the assembly is welded.

If you are this concerned with being able to ditch a load you need to either trim down your kit, find another rig which will do the job, or like the squirrel, protect your nuts.

When attempting to bug out with a trailer you might get the best results by leaving before the horde clogs the highways or riots begin. That is especially true when you have already made the decision to abandon the load rather than defend the load.

If you are in a SHTF bug out everything in that load should be a life saving necessity, therefore abandoning it is abandoning life itself. If you need the items to stay alive you are committing suicide, and killing your family, if you abandon them.

If you do not have the means of defending those life sustaining articles, or eluding with them, you were simply deluding yourself in accumulating them.

[Skean Dhude]

The only real way to do this is explosive bolts and like anything we really need I doubt we can buy them. You could make them but then you run the risk of the bolts shearing while you drive along the road and that wouldn't be good. Not good at all.

[Mortblanc]

Add to that the fact that most of the hitch engineering is done in the area directly adjacent to the fuel tank and the explosive bolts fantasy goes boom and disappears in a fireball.

[Lightspeed]

Some of the removable tow hooks are held in place by slide pins, like the ones on the Dixon Bates units Dev mentioned.

These pins are awkward to move when unloaded, once they have the weight of a trailer bearing down on them they are pretty much locked in place by design.

A cable arrangement to pull the pins in their loaded state seems implausible.

If you are intent on this craziness the only ways I can think to move the pins while on the hoof I can think of would be to rig up some sort of mechanical press: Electric motor driving a screw, Hydraulic press driven by a pump, Pneumatic press driven by a pump.

It'd be interesting trying to explain away an installation like this to plod, MOT station, or even your mechanic...

[Mortblanc]

My Lord what kind if hitches are you folks using?

Ours are a simple hollow box with a solid slide in which holds the hitch ball. There is a hole drilled through both units and a pin secures the slide in inside the tube.

I can remove the pin from my rig with finger pressure!

Even on the move one can feel the load shift a little inside the slide in, applying pressure on and off the retaining pin.

[Lightspeed]

This is what a Dixon Bates looks like:

http://cdn1.fast-serve.net/cdn/stigfaste..._1203Q.jpg

Just the nose weight of the towed unit tends to lock the two pins in position.