Wednesday, Mar 31, 2010 at 17:21
There's been a similar thread on one of the other forums just recently.
We have a Patrol, and as mentioned in one of the earlier posts there is a U-shaped bracket, that is mounted separately to the towbar, and we have always used that to attach the breakaway wire.
Just recently we had our van in for a bit of work with our maintainer and he assisted us to hookup when we were leaving. Normally I use a shackle to attach the end loop of the wire to the U-bracket on the Patrol.
He told us that was illegal and the way to do it was to pull out the pin from the breakaway unit, put the end loop of the breakaway wire through the U-bracket and then pass the pin through the end loop. The pin is then passed through the handle on the top of the hitch before finally putting the pin back into the unit.
This made sense to me as it means one less shackle to lose, and keeps the wire under control. However the thread on the other
forum was pretty disparaging about this approach, and starting quoting from all manner of legal and semi-legal documentation to show that what we had been told was incorrect/wasn't a requirement etc
Like many things to do with caravanning, you have to make up your own mind, and this seems to be one of them. At least with the Patrol we have a ready made attachment point.
Anyway this is the way we do it now.
LES
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