Why is the trailer being overlooked in the Landrover debacle??!!

helen75

helen75

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I'm posting in reference to this which has been done to death already.....groan....

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news...etowbar&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

BUT....Without detracting from the detachable tow bar/Landrover issue, people are completely overlooking this statement.... "the breakaway cable, which was correctly fitted to the car chassis and not the tow bar, failed to pull the trailer brake on”

Surely this is a fault/issue with the trailer but why is no one is mentioning it...... ?? they just want to bad mouth Landrover! If your breakaway cable fails to stop the trailer this has nothing to do with the car!

Or am I missing something?
 
Agree that the trailer breakaway cable didn't do what it should, but it's a 'last ditch' safety device, hopefully mitigating, but never avoiding a catastrophe. Failure of the tow bar was the cause of the accident.
 
It wasn't clear to me if it was just the tow ball part, or the whole tow bar assembly that came adrift. The breakaway cable was apparently correctly attached.

Agree that the trailer should have been stopped by the breakaway cable. Since it wasn't, I was assuming that the whole assembly had detached, which wouldn't have triggered the trailer brakes.

Frightening stuff, whatever happened.
 
I think the trouble with breakaway cables is that they will only haul the brakes on if the trailer falls back away from the vehicle, as it would if the tow ball was under load (such as up hill) when it broke with the tension.

If the Land Rover ones are wriggling free the trailers have apparently been overtaking the tow vehicle, and as such the cable is not at the correct angle to pull the brakes on. The cable itself is only strong enough to have a good pull on the brake lever, not to take the weight of the trailer, so they are snapping.

I think it is because these particular tow bar arrangements are wiggling free rather then snapping under load that is the issue.
 
The tow bar on a Defender is the ball hitch bolted to the rear cross member. I don't know about Discoveries. As has been said, the breakaway cable is meant to pull the handbrake on if the trailer becomes detached from the tow bar. That, of course, is dependant on the wire being attached to a solid part of the vehicle. If the trailer becomes detached, it will usually be going slower than the vehicle, tighten the wire, and the brake should come on. I say "should" because the linkages and brakes need to be properly adjusted. I don't think ball hitches come off very often as the bolts will be special high tensile with narrow threads and a locking mechanism if done professionally.

I had a trailer jump off the tow ball when I was travelling at around 50mph, not a horse trailer thank goodness. The ball had got worn and there was too much weight on the back of the trailer. The linkage and brakes were not properly adjusted so the hand brake did not come on. The trailer sped across the road and demolished a fence, ending up in a field. Fortunately, no damage was done. The ball needs to be measured occasionally to check that it is within tolerance as well as checking the linkages and brakes. If the brakes are out of adjustment, they can lock on when reversing. Regular servicing is essential.
 
This is why we had the detachable tow bar on my mums VW Touareg changed to a fixed one (at great expense) - did not like the the thought of the detachable ones and I'd never tow with one again. Our Freelander luckily has a fixed one. My worst nightmare!
 
I have read about that particular incident where the cable didn't operate as it should, but I have also read about numerous incidents where the cables did put the brakes on and therefore saved further damage and possible injury.

There have been far too many accidents like this to call it 'bad mouthing Landrover' OP, (I assume you work for them) though to be fair while the majority have involved LR, other manufacturers using this type of tow ball are also affected.

My friend has an Audi Q7 with a detachable tow bar, and previously she and I would share journeys, but after this has come to light I will not risk using her car with my horses again.
 
LittleBlackMule said:
There have been far too many accidents like this to call it 'bad mouthing Landrover' OP, (I assume you work for them) though to be fair while the majority have involved LR, other manufacturers using this type of tow ball are also affected.
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No I don't work for Landrover!!

I'm just a bit health a safety OCD (or paranoid!) when it comes to towing and I thought the H&H article that I posted a link to was biased against the car when in fact the trailer had a part to play too.

I also have just purchased a Disco3 and having a permanent tow bar fitted to it on Thursday :-)
 
Bonkers2 said:
What exactly is a detachable towbar,, does one remove it for some purpose?
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Landrover (and clearly some other makes of car now) make a detachable tow bar for the Discovery 3 onwards and I think Range Rover and Range Rover Sport from about 2007 on. Every car has a socket at the back into which you can lock a specially designed towbar like this one. http://www.jyautoparts.co.uk/land-rover-discovery-3-4-range-rover-sport-thule-towbar-p-21581.html

I had a Disco 3 with one of these and (due to my extra security conscious/paranoid husband, who was convinced someone would steal it) would take it off and put it on as necessary, although some will remove it when it's not being used just for aesthetic reasons. It was very heavy and difficult to do and I imagine it's quite easy to think you've done it properly when you haven't. I hated it and had a permanent one fitted pretty quickly.
 
We always had an anchor chain which was wound round the A bar of the trailer and the rear chassis member of the tow vehicle and joined together with a heavy duty bolt and nut.. That way if it detached it would not work loose of the tow vehicle.
 
Annagain, was that the type of tow bar fitted to the vehicle involved in the accident? I've just been to the Thule web site and there is no way I would use that hitch for anything larger than a small car trailer! I am not an engineer but it looks all wrong to me. The site does not give any technical specifications for loading that I could see which is highly irresponsible. A heavy load on the bar would act like a lever on the points it is attached to any vehicle. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole! For goodness sake, if you have one of these, get it checked out by a qualified engineer….or maybe the AA….and tell them what you are going to use it for! I am not surprised it became detached from the vehicle.
 
I have no idea, although this is a standard type detachable tow bar. I think Landrover have their own so it wasn't necessarily a Thule one, but I couldn't find a decent photo of a LR one.
 
Whether the tow bar is detachable or not, the trailer breakaway cable should be attached to part of the chassis, not any part of the tow bar. Discos have a sort of triangular arrangement (well mine does) that attaches to the chassis. The breakaway cable shouldn't be attached to the 'triangle' in case it pulls away from the chassis.
 
We tow much bigger trailers, generally with more horses onboard, over this side of the Atlantic and what we have are permanent tow bars bolted underneath to the trucks. The bars can be interchangeable so you can use different types of towing attachments. We have huge heavy duty chains which also attach to the trucks. Our breakaway cables loop around the permanent tow hooks on the trucks and when they detach they pull on the electric brakes on the trailer wheels (we don't have handbrakes on trailers here). The chains haul back the truck and all comes to a halt pretty quickly should the whole sequence be initiated. I've never heard of detachable tow bars, don't look very safe to me I'm afraid.
 
Whichever of those tow bars is used, the weak point is going to be where it is bolted to the Landrover. I know nothing about Disco's except that I have no ambition to own one and I wasn't aware that they had a chassis! In fact, that is my main prejudice against them as when the rust sets in, they cannot have the chassis replaced as can be done with a Defender. I've had four Defenders so far and rebuilt the back end of one of them after a lorry had done it's worst. They are pretty solid.

Off to do some research….
 
We belt and braces ours and have a length of steel chain connecting the trailer to the disco chassis so if for any reason the trailer becomes detached it can't roll off unless the chassis detatches from the car. Cost around a tenner plus the safety shackle. Cheap for peace of mind. Tow bar is of fixed type not detachable so nothing should happen but better safe than sorry.
 
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We have two Discovery 3 vehicles which spend 90% of their life pulling horse trailers (Richardson Supreme Trebles). The first one was supplied with a "plug in" hitch. We had to change the hitch from the plug in to the heavy duty "three point frame attached type" after two months.
Firstly, the plug in type had a single height setting - too low; you need a height of 17.50 inches (445mm) at the flat top of a 50mm ball to tow a horsebox level, the Discovery "plug in" is at about 15 inches (380mm) +/- depending on the "normal" suspension setting. So it will pull "nose down", making braking "difficult", linear stability less than optimum and reversing in a straight line a further problem. All this apart from the horses standing with their front feet lower then their rear feet.
We had no issues with any failure of the plug in type, but there was early evidence of wear in the fitting and it never gave confidence regarding structural soundness.
We know of three incidents in Ireland where the plug in type failed on Discovery vehicles; all were ones where the tow hitch was permanently fitted, not stored inside the vehicle when not in use; and we have seen several more with serious wear to both the towball unit as well as in the receiver.
Also, whilst the Land Rover Discovery has a 3,500kg towing capacity, there is "small print" from Land Rover which "hints" that the plug in unit "may not have a 3,500kg limit", possibly based on the "nose weight" of the trailer being towed. The Discovery "plug in" unit has a particularly low "nose weight" limit compared to the conventional type (three point) of towbar.
The Land Rover OEM conventional tow bar does appear to be of excellent quality and we have had no problems with our two, which have a total of 430,000km (90% towing).
That being said, we have now purchased our first Toyota Land Cruiser, which is proving to be a very successful vehicle; whilst not as comfortable overall as the Discovery, it is a better towing vehicle on and off road and a lot more economical to maintain.

Also, on a Discovery it is imperative to fit the breakaway cable from trailer to the steel ring beside the electrical sockets, it is part of the rear cross member.
 
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the detachable tow bar is mainly because trailers vary in size and height so when you attach the trailer you can adjust the towbar to the correct height to stop the trailer from tipping back or forwards.
we had an isuzu trooper which was bought with a fitted towbar, when we mot'd it they said that it needed to be welded better if we were going to use it and if not then remove it as it wouldn't have been able to hold a decent weight for any length of time. we took it in and got it welded professionally then re tested and all was ok.
 
I have a query for those using chains.. Is the chain longer than the breakaway cable - ie the brakes come on and it stays attached by the chain other than the chain stopping the breakaway cable acting - I presume so but was just pondering!
 
ester said:
I have a query for those using chains.. Is the chain longer than the breakaway cable - ie the brakes come on and it stays attached by the chain other than the chain stopping the breakaway cable acting - I presume so but was just pondering!
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Is it really a good thing to be driving a vehicle with an unhitched trailer still attached by the chain with it's brakes locked on? Again, I don't know, but if it was, wouldn't the manufacturers be recommending the chain? I think I'd rather have my trailer stopped on the road without any attachment to the vehicle which is what the brakeaway cable is designed to do.
 
That's not what I was picturing the last time this came up. I have a height adjustable tow bar on my defender which has done 75k towing miles in three years. It's not like that thing tho which I would not be happy to use to tow a milk carton.

If the breakaway cable was correctly attached it would have been damaged if it had failed, surely. Ie the clip would have had to have failed before the brakes were engaged. Was it clipped on or was it clipped round back on to itself.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/3310...f11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108&ff19=0
 
LittleBlackMule said:
My friend has an Audi Q7 with a detachable tow bar, and previously she and I would share journeys, but after this has come to light I will not risk using her car with my horses again.
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I tow with a Q3 and I don't know whether the Q7 has the same arrangement, but the towbar on mine is retractable rather than detachable. You can swivel it up so that it tucks away out of view, but you cannot remove it. I tow 2-3x a week so have mine out permanently anyway, but I don't feel the sytem is as vulnerable as the one described on the Disco.
 
Chains and Breakaway cables

A very short chain, from a ring fixed to the front of the "A frame" of the trailer, under a foot (300mm) long, with a 60mm ring which will fit over the tow ball is often a very good idea, especially to resolve "failures to engage the hitch and ball properly incidents". However the problem with a chain as a safety device is that A - if the hitch fails and the chain takes over then the back of the vehicle is the brake, and the stability of the towing vehicle will be compromised. B - the breakaway cable cannot engage the trailer brakes.

Chains are really only useful on "unbraked" trailers, off road and slow speed trailers such as on quads, tractors etc.

A breakaway cable should never be just looped over the towball, it needs to be fixed to the vehicle beyond the towbar. When it engages there should be enough strength to engage the trailer park brake, and then the end of the cable that looks like a key ring will unravel and "break away". If the trailer is serviced properly it will brake in a generally straight line and slow down quite quickly. The Discovery has an ideal recovery ring beside the electric sockets.

From our experience with Land Rover Discovery vehicles, the plug in towball is too low for most horse trailers, which means that the rear wheels of the trailer are not "engaged", it causes swaying and very poor braking performance from the trailer brakes, and often a "push on" effect to the vehicle when braking, very noticeable in the wet, and in our experience an odd scary moment when braking in the wet on a curve (roundabout entrances etc.). The plug in is really only suitable for caravans and small domestic trailers with a hitch height of about 14 or 15 inches, as against the 17.50 inches (across flat top of ball) required for most horse trailers. For horses you need to bolt on type adjustable tow hitch. Land Rover's OEM unit is actually very good. Trailers must tow level!

Also, horse trailers have their axels behind the notional centre balance point of the trailers, because horses are heavier behind than in front, so an empty trailer has a different nose weight than a loaded trailer, and a loaded trailer is better balanced. Caravans and other goods trailers are balanced in the centre. It is even more important that the tow ball height allows a horse trailer to tow level, for comfort, safety and reduced vertical load on the hitch assembly.
 
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