The 6:00 sounds good! Will give it a whirl.
Works like “Clockwork”…almost no mental processing time required…its infallible…
LOL, where have I heard THAT before!
I guess I'm not a believer in "crutches" in lieu of learning!
Me either. Unfortunately, there is nothing to compel people to learn the correct way. Calculators in school? That they can control. Morons at the boat launch? Not so much.
I have watched people UNHOOK their boat trailer and have a bunch of people help walk it to the water to manually launch it after dozens of failed attempts. I have seen the same people again months later with similar results. So they are not going to learn on their own.
My favorite I wish I had recorded was this dude trying to load his full up cruiser onto the trailer to haul out. He screwed up so many times trying to power load, he was yelling at everyone. At one point, he was perpendicular to the trailer and powered across the wheels/fenders/frame. When he finally got it loaded, he was so flustered he forgot to lift the motor and dragged it all the way up the launch with everyone screaming at him to stop.
Mythbusters heard about somebody launching the boat leaving the trailer attached, they tried it, it worked but top speed was down!
PS Don’t forget the safety chain
Well . . we always advise about having good brakes when towing !
I am guessing the light pole was the stopping force.
Well, at least the pole seems to be okay!
I enlarged the photo… anybody want to buy a good hardly used truck? A boat? A trailer?
He had to be moving at a normal traffic speed to do that much damage to the front of the truck. He probably had straps holding the boat down… and they probably popped like rubber bands when the truck suddenly stopped. You can see where the front members of the trailer buckled. If they hadn’t the boat would probably be nose-first into the pole, having left a keel mark right over the truck’s roof.
I have to wonder of alcohol was involved… a day on the water with a case of beer perhaps?
I guess I'm not a believer in "crutches" in lieu of learning! Me either. Unfortunately, there is nothing to compel people to learn the correct way. Calculators in school? That they can control. Morons at the boat launch? Not so much.
I’m not quite so anti-calculator. I know more than a few people who can multiply, divide, add, and subtract as well as anyone, but can’t apply the skill to practical problems. Give them the measurements of a foundation and they have no idea how to calculate the number of yards of concrete needed for the pour. Just like there are people who never misspell a word yet can’t compose an essay to save their lives.
Just looking at the picture and the way the trailer buckled, I wonder if the boat wasn’t secured and launched itself pushing the truck into the pole? Maybe not. Hard for me to understand how the trailer buckled like that though.
a 6' is harder than an 18' for me,
The shorter the trailer…the harder it is to steer going in reverse. MUCH HARDER.
Yup…Geometry has its revenge in Trailer Reversing… Shorter is more difficult than Long… Things happen much faster in a short trailer…again…Geometry.
But ever since I use the 6 o’clock “trick” my father mentioned…things got a lot easier. When reversing any trailer…put your hand at 6 oclock and wherever you want the tail of the trailer to go…just move your hand in that direction. Pretty hard to mess that up honestly.
Blackbird
Interesting trick. I never heard that one before. Sounds like your dad had a good head on his shoulders.
He did…sure do miss him…
Our neighbor had a little utility trailer that had a single wheel in the rear of the trailer and attached to two points on the bumper of the car. The single wheel swiveled, so backing the trailer was the same as backing the car.
Thats Cheating @Triedaq LOL… Im envisioning a 3rd wheel in the middle of the trailer rear end…Didn’t it Teeter Totter.
Speaking of 3rd or even 5th wheels…Its hard to out-do thisa one… haha
Blackbird
@Honda Blackbird I remember reading about this 5rh wheel invention in a magazine, probably Popular Mechanics, when I was in junior high school,. I suppose it never caught on because of the complexity and the weight of the system to raise and lower the spare,. As I remember, didn’t Chevrolet and GMC have some sort of rear wheel steering mechanism where the rear wheels turned in and out to aid in cornering and parking,. I think this feature cams along in the 1980s or 1990s. Of course, there are fire trucks that require two drivers–one driver sits in front and steers the front wheels while another driver sits way up high in the rear of the truck and steers the back wheels. I used to mow for a neighbor who had a three wheeled push mower. It had two wheels in front like a conventional mower and one wheel in back in the center that swiveled. If took a,while to get used to the mower, but once I got the hang of it, it was easy to use. That was 60 years ago and I haven’t seen a mower like that since. I think the brand name on the mower was Eclipse, but I am not certain about that.
Haha…Yeah @Triedaq several mfg’s released AWS over the years. They were always interesting to me but for my money they weren’t worth the extra weight, cost, complexity…and just more crap to go wrong or wear out…if you ask me. Never had the need for AWS personally.
The way many if not all of those systems worked was that at very slight steering wheel input the rear wheels would Follow the fronts up to a certain degree…then at more steering angle the rear wheels would go opposite the fronts… Neat…but gimmicky and not needed IMHO.
I think mfg’s are still playing with this idea…who knows…
As far as that 5th Wheel Caddy above… Boy the “inventor” is lucky he had a “6 Body Count Sized Trunk” to install all that extra hardware that was surely needed…
Blackbird
^I would think–with ABS and Stability Control already mandated to be on the car–differential braking to assist in cornering would do most of what rear-wheel steering does, cheaper and simpler.
Love the “fifth wheel”! An ingenious idea.