Do you cross your safety cables?

Hikerdogs wrote:

pulsar wrote:

Hikerdogs wrote:
I 'll be the first one to say No we don't cross the safety cables. The original intent of crossing safety chains was to capture the tongue of a 2 wheel trailer should it pop off the ball hitch. In the case of a trailer the coming loose the tongue would drop to the pavement. It could either gouge into the pavement and flip the trailer or cause it to swerve into oncoming traffic.

This practice may apply if you use a ball mount tow bar. However most stinger mounted tow bars don't have that problem. There would have to be a catastrophic joint failure before the tow bar became disconnected. Even then bars like the Roadmaster Sterling All Terrain have the cables contained inside built in channels.

http://roadmasterinc.com/products/towbars/sterling.html

The tow bar is contained regardless of whether or not the cables are crossed.

RoadMaster recommends that the cables be crossed under the hitch for the Sterling All Terrain tow bar.

This helps prevent the tow bar from hitting the road and "pole vaulting" if the tow bar separates from the hitch receiver.

Admittedly, the tow bar separating from the receiver is much less likely than with a ball hitch. But if it did, the stinger is going to pivot down, unless the cables are crossed under it.

Tom

I guess I'll have to revise my practice of not crossing the cables if it's possible. We had to add a 6" drop hitch to get the towbar connections into the recommended range. The drop hitch extended the distance between the motorhome and the toad so we also had to purchase a longer set of safety cables. Hopefully the new cables are long enough to allow them to be crossed without binding on tight turns.