Trouble Unhooking Toad

water witch wrote:
Please excuse the lack of expert/correct terms in this post. I am DW of a newly disabled DH so I'm taking on all kinds of new RVing things never before in my purview. But I am learning :)

We are newbies to towing a toad behind our new-to-us MH but have been rving in a 5th wheel for 8 years.

We have a shiny new Blue Ox tow bar and are towing a Saturn Vue. The pins that attach the car to the tow bar are often very hard for us to remove when trying to unhook. They are simply stuck, cannot be pulled out by hand. We have resorted to banging a similar-sized pin with a hammer against the attached pin to get it through the hole and forced through enough to remove it.

I have never seen others doing this! Surely there must be something we're doing wrong or some easy solution that we're not aware of.

Any tips would be most appreciated, as we feel like idiots getting out our hammer to unhook our car :o

have the toad be as straight and level as possible when you begin the unhooking process. if the pins won't release try this: start the toad's engine and turn the steering wheel back and forth. turn off the engine and see if that hasn't loosened one or both pins. that usually works for us but when it doesn't I re-start the toad's engine and carefully, very carefully, nudge the toad forward about an inch or so. that will take the pressure off and allow the pins to be removed.