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Sunday, March 01, 2020
Tow Woes
They say that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. But my experience having back-to-back episodes of towing failures put myself and others in life threatening situations.
The first nightmare came about in dealing with my son’s broken car, which he had recently bought without my knowledge. Because he lives a day’s drive away he didn’t have me around to help him choose a car and he wound up buying a real hulk that had a lot of hard miles on it.
By the time I saw it and went to check it out, the hood wouldn’t even open—a foreshadow that stirred a pang of fear. With some coercion I got the hood unlatched and saw under it a tired old run down motor. It was covered with oil and dirt, and looked as if it had been leaking oil for a long time. He informed me that when he tried to get the oil changed at the local oil quick-change place, they turned him away. I could see why. It was a real mess, it looked like oil was leaking out of everywhere.
A little spray lube fixed the hood latch. But not knowing how bad the oil was leaking was my immediate concern. Maybe it needed a little tender loving care. Some fresh high-quality Mobil-1 oil and a good filter might do some good, at least it would be a start. And sometimes the seal swelling agents in good motor oil will actually help swell tired old seals and the leaks will disappear—or at least diminish.
I planned on having my son keep track of how fast the engine drank the oil in order to learn more about the extent of the consumption problem. I needed this information in order to assess the extent of the leak and make a plan.
There was no service history and the ticker showed way over 150 thousand miles on it. But that’s still not unreasonable for an 8-year-old car. A quick check with the VIN number on the Internet showed no record of odometer tampering. At least that was good.
And then the nightmare reared its ugly head. What had started out to be a simple oil change turned into a lifter failure. Shortly after the fresh oil and filter had been changed the engine began to give out a new sound, a faint rhythmic tapping. The tapping grew in intensity until it had the full-blown noise of a collapsed lifter.
I reasoned that the detergent in the oil had caused some crud to cut loose, and the crud had found its way into one of the lifters tiny passages. The lifters have the smallest passages in the entire engine, and if a piece of crud is going to get lodged somewhere, a lifter is the most likely place.
I said a prayer that the high-detergent oil would clean out the passage and the noisy lifter would clear up and quiet down. I’ve seen it happen many times. You simply drive in low gear at 3,000 rpm for a few miles and the lifter clears out and pumps back up again. Been there, done that.
I hopped in and ran some errands around town. But no, it’s never easy—the rattlesnake kept on making its ominous sound! I was leaving the next day and would have to turn the car back over to my son with an engine noise that wasn’t there before I had worked on it. There was little else I could do. I briefed him on the situation with the lifter noise, and told him to drive it. Hopefully the lifter would shut up.
If it didn’t I would deal with it the next time I returned. Dealing with the lifter would mean having to pull the cylinder head in order to fish out the lifters from the block. While the head was off, I would have a valve job done, which would be prudent on a high mileage engine.
But before I could return, the engine blew a head gasket! Now the nightmare was in full bloom. And because I had worked on it last a huge burden of guilt hung around my neck. Every seasoned tech knows how working on a family member’s car can easily turn into a nightmare! Now all I could do for my son was to start making arrangements for another engine.
The quandary of living in a distant city made the situation even more difficult to deal with. To start with, his car really wasn’t worth fixing. By the time I paid a local shop to install a used engine, I could buy another hulk just like it. The only way I could make it work out would be to find a good used engine and then take the car back home to do the engine swap.
After spending an afternoon on the phone, I discovered that he wasn’t the only one with a blown engine. It turned out that all the other cars in wrecking yards which had his engine were in similar shape. Engines were far and few between. But I finally found an engine, and began making preparations to get his car back to my home town.
A fellow shop owner had a trailer that was just the ticket for hauling a car over the mountains that lay between the busted car and home. The trailer was fitted with drive up ramps, tandem wheels, an electric winch, electric brakes, and a backup battery. The battery powered an emergency system that was supposed to apply the brakes to stop the trailer all by itself—in case the hitch were to break. Supposed to. But it didn’t!
Loading the car on the trailer went smooth with only one bugaboo. When I started to pull it up the ramp and onto the trailer the hitch popped loose from the hitch ball. The latch didn’t hold the tongue of the trailer on the ball. When the weight of the car pressed down on the back of the trailer the front popped loose from the hitch.
That was strange. I thought I didn’t get it to latch properly on the first try. So I reinstalled it, not comprehending that the ball latch mechanism wasn’t functioning properly. But I was unfamiliar with this kind of hitch—and after all it had held just fine on the first half of the trip.
Once loaded, the trailer towed just great. The tandem wheels took most of the weight off the hitch so the tongue weight was very light. The electric brakes were very powerful, and it didn’t tax my tow vehicle brakes very much coming down the mountains. And because I had to cross several mountains, I was really glad for those electric brakes.
Everything went well all the way back home. Then the bugaboo happened again when I was unloading the car from the trailer. There was a “bang” and suddenly the hitch popped loose from the ball—and the front end of the trailer was bobbing in the air above the trailer ball!
Had I somehow failed to secure the hitch to the ball? Was the hitch lock defective? No time to trouble shoot the hitch problem, I would tell my buddy about it when I got there. It was getting dark and I hurriedly hitched the empty trailer back up to my tow vehicle and took off. I had less than a dozen miles to go and needed to return the trailer before I got caught in rush hour traffic.
With the trailer empty it seemed like my tow vehicle suddenly had developed 100 more horsepower. It’s like a free feeling, not being bogged down with all that extra weight. In fact, the weight of the trailer was so minimal that it was easy to forget that it was back there. Merrily I flew along as I headed to my final destination to drop off the trailer. My thoughts were of dinner, and being home again.
I was only about a mile or so from my buddy’s shop when I went over some railroad tracks. I heard the trailer rattle as it bounced on the tracks, and checked it in the rear view mirror. Everything looked and felt good. Then all of a sudden, in an instance, it happened. The trailer came loose!
It felt like a tug. A sideways tug—a sudden pull to the right. I glanced in my rear view mirror and I could see the trailer listing over to the right. I immediately knew something was wrong. Somehow the trailer had come loose!
Looking in the mirror I saw it veer first to the right, then to the left. It was like a big fish fighting to get free. I watched in the mirror as it swerved back and forth and instinctively let off the gas and coasted. I was thinking it would coast to a stop behind me. I was wrong.
The sideways jerking of the trailer caused the right hand safety chain to pop free. As the trailer continued flailing back and forth it was only restrained by one safety chain. Then in a blink of an eye the second safety chain sprung loose and the trailer was a loose cannon!
In horror I watched in the rear view mirror as the trailer took off on its own. It somehow reminded me of a huge shark gliding along. Maybe it was the way it had a pointed nose and glided low against the ground. Like a giant fish that had freed itself from the fishing hook, it now zoomed along on its own.
Cars behind me were slamming on their brakes and diving in all directions to get out of its way. In horror I saw it take off to the left going across the centerline and into the oncoming traffic lanes. Fortunately, as the trailer zoomed along, the oncoming traffic was caught at a redlight and the road was empty.
I turned my head and watched it out the side window as it went onto the shoulder and plowed into the weeds and thicket where it finally came to a stop. It was a miracle that it didn’t hit anyone and there wasn’t a guard rail in its path. The thicket and underbrush brush brought it to a safe stop without causing any damage. I was blessed as a little angel must have been sitting on my shoulder.
So much for that fancy emergency break-away safety stopping system! The break-free pull-pin worked just like it was supposed to, but the backup battery was too old and weak to operate the electric brakes. Once free, the trailer was sailing unfettered all on its own. I shudder to think about what would have happened if the hitch popped loose when the car was still on the trailer!
I turned around and headed back to the trailer which was no where in sight. I spotted the back end of it sticking out of the thicket. I got out and walked over to it and found that it had come to rest against a sapling—which was bent over causing its final stop.
I was surprised that no one had stopped to offer any help. But I had some rope on board and figured I could pull the trailer back out of the underbrush and up onto the shoulder. This was going to be a risky maneuver because there were only a couple of feet of pavement. And the shoulder embankment had a pretty steep slope.
And worse yet the trailer was facing the wrong way—into the oncoming traffic and I wouldn’t be able to turn it around. I figured I’d wait for the light to change and make a break across the oncoming traffic lanes onto to the right side of the road. Not a good situation, but no other choice—just hope there’s no more problems!
By now darkness had fallen and I had to work by flashlight. The front of the trailer was on the ground making it impossible to get the trailer tongue pole jack in place. Since the trailer was facing slightly downhill, the weight of the trailer tongue was too heavy to pick up. So I grabbed the jack from the tow vehicle and managed to get it hitched to the tow vehicle once again.
I plugged the break-away pin back into its socket to make sure the trailer brakes wouldn’t somehow activate and plugged in the trailer taillights. When the traffic light turned red and the road was clear I made a break across the road and was on my way again. But I only got two blocks when the trailer came loose!
This time I was going slow enough to safely stop before anything else happened. The crossed safety chains had caught the tongue of the trailer as they were supposed to, and I brought it to a peaceful halt. But why had it come loose this time?
Fortunately this side of the road had a turn lane and the trailer tongue was up high enough for the trailer pole jack. Then I reached my fingers inside the hole for the ball hitch and discovered dirt packed inside! In my hurry to get it hitched up I had failed to check it out for debris which had gotten inside when it traversed the underbrush. The dirt kept the ball from hitching properly.
I grabbed a stick from the side of the road and cleared most of the packed dirt out of the hole. I finished the job with my fingers and a rag and once again hitched the trailer to my vehicle. The last few miles went without incident and I was glad the nightmare was finally over as I finally unhitched the trailer.
It was truly a miracle no one was hurt. I realized how blessed I was. But that was only the first episode of my trailer double failure woes.
My nightmare was not over yet. There was still one more monster waiting to rear its ugly head. It had to do with the fallout from the engine bought from a local salvage yard. The engine was worthless scrap metal, essentially a boat anchor.
After it had been dropped off and the delivery truck had driven away, we discovered the engine block was ruined because both of the lower bellhousing mounting bosses were destroyed.
It looked like the bosses had been broken off when the tech at the junkyard yanked out the engine. And those two bottom bellhousing mounting bolts are really easy to miss if you aren’t looking for them. They’re buried way down there where the sun don’t shine. And by the way, you need a special socket to fit them.
I called to complain and the guy at the yard said no, the engine was just fine when it was delivered, that we broke it. But there were three of us standing there when we lifted up the engine and we saw the broken mounting bosses. The ensuing telephone conversations were awful. Culpability and finger pointing continued over the several phone calls, but in the end the wrecking yard coughed up another engine and that nightmare finally ended.
Then, less than two months later I experience a second hitch failure and had another towing nightmare. It was just getting dark and I was pulling my small motorcycle trailer at 60 MPH going up Mitchell Hill, north of Pittsburgh. I had just started up the hill when it happened.
I heard a loud metallic ripping noise and felt the vehicle jerk. The jerk was reminiscent of the feeling when the trailer had come loose the previous month, and I my heart welled up with fear. Looking in the rear view mirror took away my breath. The trailer was moving away from my vehicle and the air was filled with sparks coming from the front of the trailer.
I slowed my vehicle hoping that the safety chains would contain it. But it was fruitless. The trailer was skidding along on the front jack stand and no longer connected to the car. I continued to slow down in front of it, hoping to prevent it from slamming into anyone else on the road.
The cars behind the trailer were slamming on their brakes and veering out of its way as it continued to shower the night sky with sparks. Again blessings were with me as the gentle upswing of the hill brought the trailer to a fairly rapid stop in the middle of the road.
Two men pulled over and got out with flashlights and began directing traffic around the trailer. It was a blessing that it broke loose as we just started climbing Mitchell Hill—a half-mile further and the errant trailer would have rolled backwards down the mountain and into harms way.
I turned on the 4-ways, got out, and surveyed the situation. The welds for the hitch assembly had torn loose from its mounting plate and the safety chains were still attached to the hitch. I backed up and connected the safety chains to the undercarriage so I could drag it out of the road and safely onto the shoulder. The only damage was to the trailer tongue jack post, and the broken hitch welds could easily be rewelded.
Once again, angels had surrounded me and kept a disaster from happening.
Lessons Learned
· Always test the trailer ball clasp. Jack up the tongue of the trailer and make sure it will not let go of the hitch ball.
· Always install the catch safety pin or lock. This will insure that you have latched the catch.
· Do not rely on the safety chain S-hooks to stay attached. Replace the S-hooks with a D-ring fastener with a screw-down type of clasp.
· If the trailer has a backup battery and break-away system, test the break-away switch and the battery power to see if it will operate the trailer brakes.
· If your trailer ever does come loose, immediately apply the brakes hard enough to keep the tongue of the trailer up against the back of your vehicle until you have safely stopped.
· If the ball hitch fails and the trailer is only holding on by the safety chains, steer straight ahead and do not try to steer off the road. Wait until you have stopped, then slowly drag the trailer to the shoulder.
· Be prepared to have a backup system to jack up the tongue of the trailer in the event the trailer pole jack fails. In most cases, the tow vehicle jack will suffice.
· Always have a flashlight and safety flares handy in case you need them in a panic situation.
· Always have wheel chocks within quick reach in the tow vehicle in case you need to quickly stop the towed vehicle from rolling.
· At every rest stop inspect the hitch, hitch ball and hitch welds for potential problems like bending or cracks.
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