Pintle Tow Hook

If you have to jump on the vehicle it's catching between the coupling so if the vans handbrake is on you should move or rock the car a little to release or visa versa. Also there is a few different types of pintle hitches some have a towball some don't not sure what you have.

Humpback

I have been using a pintle hook and ring for years on a trailer that is not used off road. I have never had a problem with it and it would have to be the easiest coupling to connect that I have ever used. I also used plenty of them in the Army with no issues.

Having said that, I saw a broken one recently. The steel shaft connecting the ring to the coupling had snapped. I don't know why but I had a close look at mine and noticed the ring does not remain flat in the horizontal position when the car is turning. It tends to roll under the hook so if you reversed the trailer to the point where it was at 90 degrees to the car, the ring would be hanging down under the hook in a vertical position.

This should not be a problem providing it rolled back smoothly to the horizontal position as the car moved forward. If it started to bind though and the trailer could not swing freely back into line behind the car, it would place tremendous stress on the shaft and just about everything else.

That may have been the cause of the failure that I saw but I an not sure. These rings and hooks have been used since the earliest days of motoring so you would expect any problems to have been ironed out long ago.

As 671 said, the Army have been using these Pintle hooks for years(at least 50) and if there was a problem they wouldn't be using them. They (the army) use them for trailers starting at 1 tonne capacity and upwards.

Lots of people use pintle hooks.
Justa bout every heavy trailer that is not connected by a turntable hitches with a pintle hook.

Most of the power authorities, councils and roads authorities have pintle hooks hitching fairly light trailers.

There are two main issues with pintle hooks.

The first is cost.....pintle hook is far more expensive that ball hithes or polly block hitches.

The second is that they are noisy.....a well adjusted ball hitch or a polly block coupling has little or no play and is pretty well silent. Pintle hook has quite a bit of inherant play and can klunk and bang at every stop, start and change of direction.

Appart from that they are incredibly robust, long lasting and come in pretty high ratings.

cheers