Hensley Arrow: How does it REALLY work?

Since I'm always willing to throw gasoline on a fire, I've put on my flame suit, so here goes. One thing I don't recall seeing in this Odessey of a thread is that the strut bars are actually adjusted by placing them under a compressive stress. And when the TT trys to yaw, that places yet more compressive stress on that side of the hitch assembly. Since the four bar linkage is not square, the force applied to the yaw-ward side of the linkage is effectively trying to collapse a rigid acutely angled assembly from the top of the angle, which is real hard to do. That's one of the reasons I think the hitch assembly instructions have you place the strut mounting brackets at 25 plus or minus 1/2 inch from the ball coupler. That sets the length of the lever arm working against the four bar linkage. Conversely, when you make a turn with the TV you're not trying to compress the linkage, but rather "pulling" on the top of the acute angles, which much more easily collapse and allow the hitch head to translate laterally.

All that prattle aside, I do think that Milt's obsequious (sp?) photo of the hitch with the come-a;ong has it backwards. The TT doesn't "pull" on the linkage when it trys to sway, it actually "pushes " on it (I think).

Just my $.02

Andy