Used Tow Bar Values
This is NOT an offer to buy or sell a tow bar. In that there is a current post asking about tow bars, I'm encouraged to ask how to determine the value of a used one. Somewhere between what the selle...
Forum Discussion
camper_ron wrote:
What did you do to bend the shafts both the same direction?
We just stopped. Yes, the bar was perfectly level between the tow and toad on flat ground, and yes we use auxiliary braking (Roadmaster Invisibrake) and tested that it was working after the incident.
One of the arms no longer locks into place, and has a rattle when you shake it - like some teeth sheared off.
The pivot point, if you look closely at it, is bent on the vertical axis. When it bent there, the Jeep dived under the bars pushing them upwards. It actually pushed them upwards enough so that the pivot bolt hit the grill/hood, which is what the damage to the Jeep was. The bars are both bent in the same direction and that direction would have been vertical, not side to side as it appears with the bars on the ground.
I installed a Blue Ox baseplate yesterday and am going to use an Allure 10K bar with pintle, which is better suited to the way we use this and will better handle the weight as our Jeep keeps gaining. We probably won't determine exactly what happened, but I think there were multiple contributing factors:
- Unknown use history prior to purchase
- Teeth or locking mechanism failure in one of the bars
- Metal fatigue at pivot point
- Soft front springs that made it easier for the Jeep to dive under the bar
- Jeep weighing ~5500lbs, getting close to the 6K limit
- Bar has been used to tow the Jeep off-road on some fairly gnarly terrain
