I shall do my best to explain the issue I have with the design of this on the bailey pageant we have.
The van end of the cable has a sort of hook arrangement on it so that it can be put through the eye which connects to the brakes. On our van the gap on the hook end of the cable is wide enough for the hook to come off the eye given the right circumstances i.e. the hook gets pushed the wrong way round so the gap is facing outwards. You might say ok close the gap - ah but then you couldn;t put it onto the eye part. Are you still with me??
Now you might ask how I discovered this could happen, well unhitched (peeing it down with rain) site owner standing there waiting for us to put the van on the pitch by mover not car as grass very wet - ask my wife to drive the car forward about a foot or so. Thought I'd disconnected the breakaway cable but hadn't - car moves cable goes starts to tighten wife stops car and then pop off comes the cable complete not broken. The brakes were on via hand brake.
O know people will say I should have checked but to err is to be human in the dark and the rain and with someone watching and waiting and getting wet. The brakes were already on and maybe the action of pulling up the handbrake moved the cable but what if the cable eye had stayed in that position when we packed up to leave. How many of us check the breakaway cable routing?
Surely there should be some way to close the gap - most similar cable and eye arrangements had a ring that sits inside the eye after its installed, i assume, and closes the gap.
Comments please.
The van end of the cable has a sort of hook arrangement on it so that it can be put through the eye which connects to the brakes. On our van the gap on the hook end of the cable is wide enough for the hook to come off the eye given the right circumstances i.e. the hook gets pushed the wrong way round so the gap is facing outwards. You might say ok close the gap - ah but then you couldn;t put it onto the eye part. Are you still with me??
Now you might ask how I discovered this could happen, well unhitched (peeing it down with rain) site owner standing there waiting for us to put the van on the pitch by mover not car as grass very wet - ask my wife to drive the car forward about a foot or so. Thought I'd disconnected the breakaway cable but hadn't - car moves cable goes starts to tighten wife stops car and then pop off comes the cable complete not broken. The brakes were on via hand brake.
O know people will say I should have checked but to err is to be human in the dark and the rain and with someone watching and waiting and getting wet. The brakes were already on and maybe the action of pulling up the handbrake moved the cable but what if the cable eye had stayed in that position when we packed up to leave. How many of us check the breakaway cable routing?
Surely there should be some way to close the gap - most similar cable and eye arrangements had a ring that sits inside the eye after its installed, i assume, and closes the gap.
Comments please.
Facebook
Twitter