Steering Drift with Toad
My toad tracks nearly perfectly driving on a typically crowned road and so does my motor home. When the motor home is towing the toad, the combination tends to drift to the left. Any idea why this w...
Forum Discussion
Paul,
Your thought process in regards to the potential different length arms on the tow bar, is slightly off. By that I mean, the tow bars are pretty much a dead triangle. That is, the two legs, when locked, are exactly the same length. And, due to them being that way, it's quite often that, when the coach is parked and, the toad is driven up to the back of it, to be hooked up via the tow bar, if the toad is not "dead on straight" behind the coach, what will happen is, the tow bar can be hooked up without issue but, if you now back the toad up a bit to lock either of the two arms, only ONE will lock.
That's because as you're backing the toad to lock them, the longest attachment (of the attachment points of the two arms) will lock first. But, if the car is slightly angled of the coach, even a tiny bit, then the shorter one, will not lock because it cannot travel far enough to lock.
So, what I do in that case is, after everything is all hooked up and I know one is not locked, we jump in the coach and, start to take off. Since I always hookup with the motorhome having plenty of room for going straight ahead, I fire up the coach and put it in drive and, take off, very slowly. As I'm driving the first few feet, I turn the motor homes steering wheel from straight ahead to about 9:00 and let it make a super slight turn then, I turn the wheel to about 3:00 and do the same thing.
What that does is, allows for GARANTEED locking of both arms in the tow bar because you're applying maximum distance that both those arms can travel, and then lock. It works every single time. Just some info for you here.
Scott
Your thought process in regards to the potential different length arms on the tow bar, is slightly off. By that I mean, the tow bars are pretty much a dead triangle. That is, the two legs, when locked, are exactly the same length. And, due to them being that way, it's quite often that, when the coach is parked and, the toad is driven up to the back of it, to be hooked up via the tow bar, if the toad is not "dead on straight" behind the coach, what will happen is, the tow bar can be hooked up without issue but, if you now back the toad up a bit to lock either of the two arms, only ONE will lock.
That's because as you're backing the toad to lock them, the longest attachment (of the attachment points of the two arms) will lock first. But, if the car is slightly angled of the coach, even a tiny bit, then the shorter one, will not lock because it cannot travel far enough to lock.
So, what I do in that case is, after everything is all hooked up and I know one is not locked, we jump in the coach and, start to take off. Since I always hookup with the motorhome having plenty of room for going straight ahead, I fire up the coach and put it in drive and, take off, very slowly. As I'm driving the first few feet, I turn the motor homes steering wheel from straight ahead to about 9:00 and let it make a super slight turn then, I turn the wheel to about 3:00 and do the same thing.
What that does is, allows for GARANTEED locking of both arms in the tow bar because you're applying maximum distance that both those arms can travel, and then lock. It works every single time. Just some info for you here.
Scott
