she aint heavy

[Ray III]

Hi,

I've pulled my 420/62 all over the place with a 10,000# GWR 2-axle trailer.

But, all four wheels have electric brakes and the tow vehicle is an F350.

I don't think I'd want to try it without brakes, for sure. Nor with a smaller tow vehicle, either!

Now, using the 420c as the tow vehicle, I recently pulled an old Ford F5 2 1/2 ton flatbed truck out of the spot it was sunk into for 50 years. The truck wheels no longer turned, but the crawler didn't care one whit. I got it up out of it's final resting spot so it could be pulled onto a large rollback and taken off for a restoration.

I'm glad *I'm* not the one that has to deal with *those* rusted bolts!

Anyway, I did that as a favor for a buddy in our local antique farm equipment club and I towed the 420 over on my trailer so it could become a tow vehicle in turn.

Later!

Stan

Speaking of towing with 420s and Cherokees and large pickups, last summer two buddies put a Jeep on a concrete pad and a newer 4WD Chevy 2500 in the dirt to see who could pull who. The result was a stalemate.

I then offered money to have them chain both trucks together and try to pull the 420. They wouldn't take that bet.

[pop pop]

these are all good points and i dare say have been taught by experience,,, one more bit of info is,, using your trailer brakes can correct a dangerous situation,,, they can "drag you straight"
such as in a bad sway condition, which is usually the beginning of the wreck.
you should keep all tires fully inflated,(matched tires help too),, those brakes are the only control you'll have.
road conditions can change from mile to mile,,, think ahead.

or do what scared men do and ride the brakes until useless,,

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

It's a danged shame about that accident. Avoidable deaths are always that much more tragic.

In the one I had, no one was hurt. A little crinkled tin (on the car), and a flat tire (on the trailer). The guy zipped up the ramp, looked over the flatbed and under the tractor, saw daylight, and came on over.

He got the citation, but my rig was checked three times before they wrote him up. One little thing wrong would have me found at fault, even though it would be obvious to a 5th Grader who did what wrong.

Remember, majority rules, and the cars are in the majority in this case.

You are allowed to have all the accidents you want as long as you're on your own property.

Once you leave that, though........

I'm near the end of a 1200 mile pull this morning. It's the last sports race car I had and the 24 foot box trailer it lived it, not a crawler or a tractor. But, it is a long pull.

In any case, I spent an entire day before I left making sure that everything was 100% on the truck and the trailer before pulling out, especially that all four wheel brakes on the trailer were working properly.

And, they weren't. I had one bad connection on each side, so only two were working. I re-did all four connections to be sure that the two that were working, stayed working.

It would have been all too easy to just pull out of the yard with only two of the four brakes operating. And, then, it would have been all too easy to only fix the two bad connections and have the other two fail from a bump in the road.

I even put four new wheels and tires on the thing, since it was eight years ago that I last replaced them. It has had very little use in the past five years, so the tires look just fine. But it sits outside in the sun, so I bought four new ones just to save any potential old tire problems .

Later!

Stan