Trailer Mishaps

[Neil]

Okay,,,thought this might be a bit funny,,,I'm quessing some will not be.

Before I ever owned a race car I had never really reversed or owned a big trailer. Yea sure the odd box trailer but not a car trailer with a car on board,,,Excellent learning curve indeed.

No Pics sorry

1st trailer (Fatz's) I repeately reversed into my letterbox thinking the trailer was stuck on the kerb,,,like really I'm rooted after having raced all day and just wanted to get it over with. The tree and thankfully the trailer Won,,,the poor letter box got well and truely munched. Down to Bunning in the morning for a new one and a bag of cement.

Cheers

Neil.

[R32 Stuart]

With or without beer neil ?

Okay,,,thought this might be a bit funny,,,I'm quessing some will not be.

Before I ever owned a race car I had never really reversed or owned a big trailer. Yea sure the odd box trailer but not a car trailer with a car on board,,,Excellent learning curve indeed.

No Pics sorry

1st trailer (Fatz's) I repeately reversed into my letterbox thinking the trailer was stuck on the kerb,,,like really I'm rooted after having raced all day and just wanted to get it over with. The tree and thankfully the trailer Won,,,the poor letter box got well and truely munched. Down to Bunning in the morning for a new one and a bag of cement.

Cheers

Neil.

[paulR32gtr]

Had a bit of a crash course moving my car around various workshops last year. No real mishaps just close calls and derppy moments. Had never towed before or been around them before.

First up while the engine was still in it and not running needed to get it out to Racepace on a sat morning in a bit if a hurry. I loaded it up facing backwards as it would have been impossible to turn around. So load was all the way at the back. I knew you are not supposed to do this but what was I gonna do. Soon as I hit 80km/h on the freeway it started swinging wildly left and right almost lost it had to wrestle it back under control. Drove at 70k max rest of the way and still wasn't too happy!

I knew it was a braked trailer but had paid no attention to how it actuallly worked (derp). So trying to back it up into the workshop the trailers wheels lock up and I am going what the he'll is going on.

Anyway became an old hand within a day got all the tricks down now.

[GTRsean]

I've got a good one!

Had to get a mates car to the workshop, so rented a car trailer, and hooked it up to a mate's VT SS. Put the car on the trailer myself as engine was stuffed.

Anyway only had one strap and fitted that to the car thinking that it won't roll back if I strap it to the front of the trailer. Kept the winch hooked up too.

Well, got 40 metres down the road to a speed hump, braked for speed hump, heard a loud crunch, so I pulled to the side and stopped.

The car had moved forward and the front wheels were over the front of the trailer, with the front bar pushed into the winch upright.

I was so pissed of with myself, got the jack out and had to jack under the tow bar to lift the front of the trailer back up then had to go get the texi basher VN v6 out, hooked it up to the back of the car on the trailer and yanked it off the winch, and back to where it was supposed to be.

Finally sorted the car out, got another strap for the back then got going, felt a bit weird and after 100 metres could smell/hear something was dragging. So pulled over again and found that in my rush left the jockey wheel down! The rubber wheel was mangled, so put the jockey wheel away and got going again. Made it to workshop.

So I ended up bending the front bar, number plate and reo bar on his R31. I always strap a vehicle down properly, but just this once I didn't, don't rush these things, is all I can say!

[jjman]

this is not mine but my best mate's effort- and what an effort it was...

In his excessively dumped (reallllly lowered) vt commonwhore he decides to hitch up the trailer n go down to bunnings and pick up a shitload of gyprock sheets n corrugated tin sheets for the house reno's.

He just piles all of these sheets in the trailer, straps it down n off he goes. Now i remember mentioning to him about trailer towing physics n also the extra problem of towing with his dumped car, does he listen? Noooo.

So of course the sheets are too long for the trailer n are sticking out the back of the trailer further increasing the weight point on the trailer backwards. So he hits the highway and at 100km/h he gets the mother of all trailer swerves going on. He was lucky it was 3 lanes wide n nobody in the lanes near him cos that shit was all over the place jacknifing and everything. Well at this point the extreme forces the swinging wieght of the load just bends the sides of the trailer out like a peeled banana. N now the straps also give way. I dont know what speed he was still doing be all these sheets of gyprock n tin shit starts flying off into the air, catching the wind and getting like 10-20m of air. Gyprock and tin is literally errupting from his trailer like a volcano letting go big time. There were even bits of tin that speared into the ground next to the highway and buried themselves in there a few feet like javelins- n you can just imagine what the gyprock sheets were doing as they came down on the road at 70-80kmh. WHADAf*kNMESSSSSS!!!!

All this means he shuts down this major hwy in perth for 15 minutes while he runs the 200m strip that is covered in debri and pulls it off the roads while every motorist heckles the shit out of him. f*kn gold.

I swear i laughed so f*kn hard i cried when i saw his trailer bent to shit with the edges like a peeled banana n the axles or hubs or some shit bent out so it looked like a cartoon trailer with the wheels pointing outwards with about 10 degrees of 'opposite camber'....

[GTRsean]

#$%@@ LOLZ!!! That would of been so funny to watch!

[Victory]

Back in my younger days (about 40 years ago) I had a number of trailer mishaps moving hotrods around on trailers and a few come to mind including:

• Looking out of the side rear view mirror and seeing a loaded car trailer attempting to pass our car at over 100 kmph - the tow ball nut had come off and the trailer was only attached to the car by the safety chain.

• Forgetting about the trailer and sliding the tow car around a nice corner on a dirt road and then looking in the mirror and seeing the car and trailer also sliding with the trailer taking out a series of white posts.

• Pulling over to the side of the road and bogging the car and trailer - we then found out from some of the many locals who stopped to assist that it had been raining in the area for the last week . It took that many people to get us out that it cost us a case of beer for their help to get us back on the road again.

After these and many other life threatenng incidents I developed the ability to actually tow a car safely - but I do admit that back in the old days when the trailer and car weigh about twice that of the tow car it could be difficult to say the least.

[R TUNE]

Was towing the 32 home from a motankan meet (is unreg) and was using a mate trailer. The type that the bed tilts and secures on the front A section.

Well i got 1/2 way home and had this weird felling that i forgot somthing. so pulled over, got out and noticed i had for got to put the safty pins in to stop the bed from tilting, was also lucky as the pins hadn't moved from were i left them.

[fatz]

i bought a trailer of neil

say no more!

[FLN75S]

Ages ago we had a car trailer that actually had mini hydrostatic suspension lol. Was good for lowered cars, had used it a fair bit with the 120Y and one day we were up the coast attending a Khanacross.

I was unloading the car when i suddenly thought, since when did this car trailer have a tilt function lol. It actually broke the frame in a couple of spots and bent the rest, it took Dad and i a few moments to work out what had actually happened lol. Turns out it had some bad rust issues that had been covered up by a previous owner.

Dad had to spend the rest of the day looking for a hire trailer so we could get home and just to add insult i broke the diff in the 120Y on its first run lol.

[nismoman]

I have an Uncle that had his caravan overtake him going downhill on a freeway! Not once but on two seperate occasions!!

Wrote off both caravans of course. He stopped caravaning after that....

[Beer Baron]

i haven't personally had any major f**kups as i'm pretty careful when towing cars but we used to lend our trailer a bit and literally half the time it would come back with a fked jockey wheel. we should have just bought a 10 pack of the bastards to save money. saw our mate rob with his porsche GT3 cup car on the back leave the jockey wheel down and pull out in a hurry. made a massive bang when he got down the driveway and it smashed into the road at the bottom. nearly sent the whole thing over.

i have had one pretty awful towing experience. back in 2002 or so I went down to wakefield for a trackday. on the track my car split it's turbo oil feed line. in hindsight it wasn't too bad, but being a small hole in a high pressure line it looked like a shitload of oil was coming out and not being able to easily see exactly where it was coming from and not wanting to start a massive engine bay fire I decided to tow the car home to sydney from goulburn.

so I drove into goulburn and headed for some hire place. they decked me out with this old half rooted trailer that was built like a tank. I would say it was well over 1000kg possibly even 1200. they then gave me a clapped out little ute, 5spd manual, from memory it was 2.4L petrol engine and I'd say had about 60kw max and nearly enough torque to pull the skin of custard. the other problem was I'd say it weighed less than 1,000kg. maybe 1200 tops. i then had to put my 1200kg car onto the trailer giving me well over 2,000kg to tow behind a piss weak, light weight ute.

i pulled out onto the freeway and started trying to get the thing going. you would have to wring it's neck in every gear as otherwise when you shifted up the thing would just not keep accelerating. you could get it into 4th and then rev the nuts out of it in 4th but it would just not go anywhere in 5th. with slight downhill you could kind of cruise in 5th at 90-100km but on a flat road or god forbid a hill it struggled. that was ok though and no where near as bad as the problems I had once the wind got up. with such a big load on the back and such a light pussy trailer I basically just held on and pointed in the general direction I wished to go. which lane I was in at any given moment was up to the trailer and the gods. having truckies blow past at 120km/h 2 inches off my mirror didn't help much either.

I was shocked to make it back alive and undamaged. the worst part was I had to drive that heap of shit back to goulburn the next day and then catch a train home.... fun times.

[benm]

Unfortunately I havent had any trailer issues *touch wood*

Bought my first trailer brand new 2.5yrs ago, first trailer i've ever towed, it tows dead straight no issues at all with anything and I use 4x 2500kg straps for a 500kg car.

I do have a backyard the size of most peoples suburbs tho so parking isn't an issue for me, hence no runover letter boxes or garden beds.....yet!

[GTR-N1]

LOL AT ABOVE!!!

In Chronological order...

Time: I was aged about 13.

Place: Coming down a long straight hill prior to Mt Ousley southbound on Princes

Culprit: Dad. He forgot to take the split pin out to operate the caravan's braking system + put too much weight in the rear of it + Fiat 2300 (6cyl.RWD) was front heavy.

Result: We could smell burning pads + caravan was lifting up the Fiat's rear end > car 'n caravan fish-tailed all the way down the hill. How we never had a head-on, I'll never know.

Time: I was 21 working my registration yr at All Night Chemist Ryde on Victoria Rd.

Place: Victoria Rd West Ryde

Culprit: Chemist Handyman "Dick" with double-digit IQ, was taking away rubbish in the box trailer

Result: He was going over a hill on Victoria Rd westbound and felt the car relieved of its load. He immediately stopped - looked in the rear vision mirror to see the box trailer coming down the hill and smash into his rear end.

Time: I was selling an old box trailer with hardwood floor boards and sh!tload of rust - but I told the buyer that - ummm, I think I did

Place: I lived in East Blaxland and the buyer came up from Cranebrook to buy it.

Culprit: The buyer and me I guess

Result: An hour after he drove off, I get this knock on the front door. Here's the buyer with just the towball connection & Y-piece in his hand.

I said, "What happened?"

He said, "The rest of the trailer went off into the bush - so I want my money back!"

I gave him half (of an amount that I can't even remember) and said "we'll call it quits"

Neil, you shouldn't start threads like this. > Terry gets flashback nightmares.

[Neil]

I had another incident with the new trailer that was a little embarrassing. We had driven down to Vic for some fun at Sandown raceway. Stopped off at Marks warehouse to help him out getting his car ready. Not a problem,,,I'd checked out where all his posts were positioned and started reversing up his long long driveway,,,trouble is I forgot about the one pole the stuck out further than the rest. Yep I hit it at 5/10 kays,,,got out and thought just a love tap,,,no biggy. cops rectum ,,,it took us 10 minutes to get the rear gate open,,,now I'm very worried,,,so I decide to test it by jumping on it. We now have half the massively heavy gate sitting on the concrete,,,three hours later we have it all welded up and basically fixed. Lucky he had a kick-arse mig welder there or I would have been in all sorts of crap.

If you look at the middle of his roof you can just see the top of said pole,,,it looks much closer and taller than it really is. Digi cameras have no depth of field.

I have since fixed it properly and funny enough it fits and works better than when I bought it.

Cheers

Neil.

[Neil]

I know what you mean Terry,,,but so far no-ones been hurt,,,well maybe some pride. Sometimes SAU gets just a little to serious. I laughed at some of the posts and I know theres more to come. Fatz hasn't regaled his death trailer story yet.

Cheers

Neil.

[MBS206]

I haven't had a single incident yet while I've been towing...

Although Dad has borrowed a car trailer before, and while reversing it into our industrial width driveway... Takes the brick letter box out... This was only a few months after he had freshly stencil creted the whole driveway... It left some awesome marks in the driveway...

His second incident in reversing in the driveway, was with a BRAND NEW plant trailer... He'd owned it for 30 minutes... Reversed it into the concrete wall on the other side of the driveway... Which had been freshly cement rendered and painted 6 months earlier... LOL

We've had some of our family companies plant trailers snap axles while driving. Brake systems fail. People do stupid shit in front of us etc ending in truck/trailer jack knifed...

Also one of the events I was involved in, was finding out what happens when a tow kneck wears, at the point where it goes onto the tow ball...

Loading one of the machines onto the trailer, machine weighs 1.5tonnes... Halfway up the ramps and suddenly we have a tilt trailer... And a tow ball through the back tail gate of the truck...

What made it "more fun" was being parked on the nice downhill run we were on... Basically had to lock the brakes on on the trailer, drive the truck forward, and VERY SLOWLY reverse the machine so the trailer came down slowly... Was an interesting experience...

[turboedsloth]

I had my 32 on the back of the local bp car trailer, towed it fine the 200kms to perth to get tuned . Was a nice tilt tray unit with a winch, anyway sitting in the carpark lowering the car down with the winch the rope decides to break. Then i look in horror at my car rolling towards some trees with a 6 inch wide pole sitting in the middle of it to stop cars running over the garden, ran as fast as i could to stop it jumped in through the window ripped the handbrake on about half a meter short of this poll. Absolutely shit myself with my tuner and his boys pissing themselves with laughter.

[Duncan]

ahhh....why have I not posted here yet....kidding myself?

I have done the jockey wheel down and drive off. I have also done the "not lock the towball in" and it popped off the car. luckily only moving about 2klm/h and just scraped the ute. And I lost a wheel one day due to old, overtightened wheel nuts, and had no spare...they handle great on 3 wheels. The wheel is still in a paddock on the hume somewhere I guess.

Also, after getting done by the cops for driving an unregistered and uninsured race car on the road (hey I was on the way to get it registered in my opinion.....)....I parked the race car where I was pulled up and went and got the trailer. It happened to be parked on a hill and raining hard. When I started to drive up the ramp onto the trailer the wheels started to spin...so I did the only sensible thing and gassed it.....leading directly to the car falling sideways off the ramps.

BTW baron I feel your pain about old utes....we towed the race car to Mt Buller behind the navara...2.4l and 350,000klm of carby power. About 30klm/h top speed up the hill in a pea soup fog....but I knew if I stopped I would not have the torque to start again....

But the good ones........sorry for the absence of pics.....

We were loading the race car onto a trailer. for whatever reason no car was hooked to the trailer so we put 2 chasis stands under the rear so it would not tip. The same mighty ute was parked 90o across in front of it, and Mark kindy volunteered to guide the car onto the trailer by standing at the front of it.

You guessed it....i started up the ramps, fronts about to hit the bed of the trailer and rears on the ramps too.....when the stands shifted and fell over. The trailer rear dropped, shot forward, missed Mark by about a foot and slammed into the door of the ute. The dent and scratch are still in the door about 10 years later.

But my best one....the usual night coming home from a race meet at Wakefield. The motor had died (as usual). It was raining. I was tired. Kel jumped out and was helpfully guiding the trailer through our front gate (very tight, about 10cm per side clearance, and over a busy road). However....she happened to be out of site and I couldn't really hear her.....screaming "STOP!!!". Yes, I misjudged, hit 2m high the brick wall that held the gate up, and knocked the whole f**king thing down. With about 4tonne of momentum your don't need much speed..... We spent the last 6 months before demolition with only 1 front gate.

OK that is enough from me....I'm sure there are things I've forgotten over the years

Other people who should be owning up in this thread:

* Dan who borrowed Neil's trailer and bent it

*John from UAS who borrowed my trailer and bent it. No offer to fix it.

* Pete who was using the same trailer....and drifted it on the hume highway at about 2am....causing the drift car to come loose and fall off. About 8 hours before writing off said drift car the next day at the first drift nationals...

[GTR-N1]

ahhh....why have I not posted here yet....kidding myself?

Kel jumped out and was helpfully guiding the trailer through our front gate (very tight, about 10cm per side clearance, and over a busy road). However....she happened to be out of site and I couldn't really hear her.....screaming "STOP!!!".

This navigator is never wrong! ^ ^ ^

In her genes.