Is this unsafe to do this?

The often overlooked issue with the break away cable is length. If the cable is longer than the out stretched chains the likely hood of the emergency brake being pulled is slim.

Never Never Never hook the lanyard to the hitch. As mentioned. IF the hitch breaks, the brake pin will not be pulled. Will be useless.

I put a I-bolt thru the step bumper where there is a place for chaines to be hooked if using the bumper to tow. I hook the lanyard to that. So that even if the hitch fall off, the brakes will still be pulled on.

I loop my cable under the license plate around the bottom of the bumper then D-ring it back to its self. This is a straight un obstructed pull from the breakaway switch. This way it is still on the truck if any part of the hitch fails and it is just a bit shorter than the chains so it should activate the brakes if the trailer comes off the ball.

horton333 wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

......
It's a nice theory that it should attach elsewhere but hitches don't fall off very often and most vehicles, even those with factory tow packages don't have a good alternative location to attach it.

Sure it doesn't happen often, but it does happen and it's a big problem when it does and following this way of thinking why bother having this 'last line of defense' at all if you defeat it's purpose cause you don't take the 5 minutes to find a proper mounting point. The force required to pull the link is trivial, all you require is a small bolt or even a decent sized screw with a clip attached.

As you say, the force required is trivial. If the entire hitch assembly breaks free, it's heavy enough that it's likely to pull the pin anyway. Odds are it's going to break away in stages anyway as the bolts give way. (and if the bolts are giving way, you likely have far more important safety issues you've ignored)

Could there be a situation where it makes a difference...sure. The back half of your car frame could fall off too but I'm not going to get paranoid over it.

Again, not ideal but not a big issue either.

A little angle iron will fix that right up. :D

Well, to really blow everyone's bubble, I'm reposting the photo below. This happened to us some 10 years ago on our previous trailer. We hit an expansion joint going over one of our wonderful Indiana bridges, and I suppose the massive bounce was just too much for the poor thing.

Anyway, in this situation, we had safety chains, break-away cable, and weight distribution bars. I think, no matter where that break-away cable was attached to the truck that day, it would have never helped! I know the safety chains were useless under this situation too. We do all we can to be as safe as we can, and then the unexpected happens.

Fortunately, total separation never happened. I was going only about 40 mph and came to a stop very quick. What you don't see in the photo, is the drop off embankment on the side of the road where earth meets bridge. We couldn't even pull over off the road, there was not enough room without rolling over a 30 foot cliff!

Yup, in this case, all the safety "stuff" in the world would not have helped if total separation would have happened!

This is now all in our past, but I look still look at the photos and shake my head every time! (Truly the "Man Upstairs" was watching over us that day!)

To all of those that say it looks safe, after the coupler becoming disconnected or the ball/nut becoming unthreaded, the pin holding the hitch in the receiver is just about the only other possible failure point causing loss of trailer. If the cotter pin comes off of the pin and the pin slides out, what is going to activate the brakes?

I wouldn't do it this way either, but then again it might have prevented the biggest bonehead mistake I ever made (so far). That would be forgetting to put the hitch pin in. FWIW, the safety chains did their job and the emergency brake did activate. I also left 2 healthy sized grooves in the gravel of our storage lot.

I would use it. It won't come off the hitch without pulling the pin.
And the paint job looks fine!
Enjoy, Brian

horton333 wrote:

BroncosFan wrote:
horton333,in Ontario,
what do you mean by not legal. The owner in the first photo is in BC Canada and his RV trailer manufacturer, in BC, told him to do it this way. I would not do it this way. Thanks.

Ontario regulation requires a 'separate attachment point' for the cable. Dealers say lots of things, if they recommended this I would explain how useless that is and then not trust them on much if anything else. That's just my opinion of course.

It's also not legal here in Pennsylvania. Must be attached to the vehicle frame.