Thor Forums

[Hikes in Rain]

I posted this a little while back over on iRV2, but wanted to get some opinions from here, as well. Hopefully that's not against protocol.

Has this happened to anyone else? We were driving our coach without towing, with our Alpha tow bar was in the storage bracket per the direction of the folks who installed the tow bar and base plate. Hit a rough patch of construction, and our tow bar bounced out of the storage bracket while under way. As best we can estimate, the tow bar was dragged behind the RV for about ten minutes, until a passing motorist flagged us down. The photos of the two triple lugs and the attachment ends of the telescopic arms show the amount of metal removed by road friction.

The photo of the storage bracket, in my opinion, shows how the accident happened. Note that there is a gap between the top of the pin holding the telescoping arms and the top of the bracket which is supposed to secure it.

The gap appears to be approximately the radius of the pin. This space provides more than enough room for the pin to vibrate and bounce sideways to the gap in the mounting bracket, where a bump in the road could bounce it out of the bracket, since there really isn't anything to stop it. The arms would then fall, and drag on the pavement. This seems to be exactly what happened to my tow bar. It's only about a year old, with a little over 6,000 miles on it, so I don't really think it's a lack of maintenance problem.

Both my installer and Blue Ox's technical service agent have confirmed that the towbar can't be repaired, and has been turned into finely machined scrap metal. Blue Ox asked for pictures, but since it's only been few days, they haven't gotten back to me yet. They did say that they’ve heard this has happened to others. Not really looking forward to having to replace it.