nato hitch

someone wur looking fer one of these a few days ago.

CROCHET D ATTELAGE POUR 4X4 en vente sur eBay.fr (fin le 28-Sep-07 23:02:40 Paris)

that would be me! ta Slob its not the sort i wus finking of tho, i was thinking of one of these, Army Surplus - Hitch - Towing - NATO - Part No. NRC2051

ah you want the swively turny one?

That's the real McCoy, designed by a committee of retiring army officers, and truly the WORST possible towing hitch ever devised. It has NO merit whatever, and the only value in them is scrap steel.

Spot the split-pin on a chain .... an afterthought, because without that split pin in place the constant rattling of the trailer ring-hitch WILL unlatch the hitch which WILL come open and the trailer WILL come off ........ BYE BYE trailer on autobahn at 50 mph ....

We lost heaps of trailers in the 1970s because of those hitches, and I made it a capital offence in my transport squadron for a driver to go towing unless that split pin was in place and splayed. If the split-pin wasn't spread, it loosened and guess what? You got it - it fell out, and then the trailer started working on the hitch.

Some army trailers had NON-ROTATING RINGS for hitches, and in that case it is ESSENTIAL the hitch on the wagon is unlocked and allowed to rotate.

If the trailer ring CAN ROTATE, it is ESSENTIAL the hitch is locked upright because if it isn't the hitch WILL invert, and WILL stay upside down, that is, the side that opens underneath ..... can you imagine that? Madness.

These hitches were and remain disastrous, and I wonder how many people have been killed because of them.

CharlesY

but isn't it improper use that causes the accidents? i just want one so i can have a sankey and a better rear recovery point at the moment i have a D-shackle attached to my standard tow ball which is ok but not ideal

aye those rotating hitches were an absolute ****, i remember having it drummed into me about the split pin. i wouldn't have a nato hitch on a landy now if i were paid

G-man said:

but isn't it improper use that causes the accidents? i just want one so i can have a sankey and a better rear recovery point at the moment i have a D-shackle attached to my standard tow ball which is ok but not ideal

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Sure, I agree with you entirely, but for soldiers in warlike situations it's a horrible hitch.

How many times can a cheap skinny long splitpin be used before it breaks? Do you know they actually told us spares weren't allowed? We went to autoshops and bloody bought them with army money instead.

Unless you need a army hitch for authenticity, I suggest you get a combo ball/pin hitch instead. There are lots of them to be had.

The army ones stick out so far they are easier to rip off if they are pulled at an angle. When they wear a bit on the inside, the ring of the trailer rides up and works on the split between the two bits. Madness.

There are two sizes of trailer rings just to annoy you. The fatter trailer ring will not fit the smaller hitch.

Grrrrrrr..................

CharlesY

bastid turny things; one spun round while i wur hitchin up full water trailer.. result.. fooker hit the deck, well it would have if me foot hadn't bin there, me big toe burst like an over ripe tomato

slob said:

bastid turny things; one spun round while i wur hitchin up full water trailer.. result.. fooker hit the deck, well it would have if me foot hadn't bin there, me big toe burst like an over ripe tomato

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Yup ..... just the job for a soldier in a shooting war ... foot ****ed by his own trailer. One thing getting shot by an enemy - fair do that, but getting ****ed by your own badly designed kit is most certainly not a fair do, and one man knocked out that way could screw up an entire unit with dire results.

There should be (there very seldom was and even more seldom is now) a SECOND length of toilet-plug chain holding a steel pin which passes through one of TWO cross-drilled holes UNDER the hitch beside the split latch which is supposed to stop the whole hitch from rotating. The cross-pin should hold the latch UP (ring locked non-rotating) or DOWN (ring free to rotate).

These pins also tended to slip out, and would then be left dangling under the hitch ready to get ripped off by the first object (usually a branch fallen off a tree) that it caught on in your next forest location. This steel pin should have been "retained" in the hitch by a spring-loaded ball, but mud and rust and wear soon put paid to that bad plan, and in the unlikely event it did stay in that's because it RUSTED in place which meant a REME job to get the bugger out and that meant truck VOR for however long it took. Great design huh?

And in Slob's case, the stupid part is that the water trailer probably had a NON-rotating hitch, with a big warning plate on the trailer that you MUST let the towing hitch rotate. But no-one thought to mention to the driver to LOCK the hitch while hooking on the trailer, and only AFTER it is hooked on and shut, to undo the anti-rotation jaws. That's because no-one gave a ****, and no-one got off his arse to go out and TRY it properly before the damned thing was mass-produced by Dixon-Bates and others and bolted on to the arse end of every army landy and truck for 50 years

Another example of something being designed and put into service by a bunch of ignorant assholes who had no idea what they were doing, were too bog-idle to go out and speak to the working drivers, and who didn't give a **** anyway.

CharlesY

calm down charles ffs, take yer valium and have a nice cup of tea. yer past all that stuff now so yer can let it go

slob said:

calm down charles ffs, take yer valium and have a nice cup of tea. yer past all that stuff now so yer can let it go

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I spent YEARS trying to keep my soldiers alive and well, and it drove me wild when it seemed half the kit we had was designed to bloody wipe them out!

I never lost one all the same.

Where's the Vallium .... and a shot of Glenfiddich to wash it down ....

C ..........h .............. a ...............r.....................l..........e...........s.......Y

will a dixon bate tow jaw accept a sankey then? i didn't think it would

My ARMY NATO hitch shows in the casting letters "Dixon Bates".

That is not to say it is the same as the Dixon Bates civvy version with the 50mm ball machined on the bottom half.

If Mr Dixon Bates had a son, would people say he Master Bates?

CharlesY

yes he master bates! has anyone towed a sankey with a towjaw (the one with the jaw and pin?)
Dixon-Bate Web Site - Towing Jaws

there is no facking "S" on the end. its DIXON BATE, DIXON FECKIN BATE, NOT DIXON FOOKIN BATES

yella said:

there is no facking "S" on the end. its DIXON BATE, DIXON FECKIN BATE, NOT DIXON FOOKIN BATES

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You are right!

Please accept my profound apologies for upsetting you ...

Casting letters DIXON BATE CHESTER

CharlesY

kinell, charlesy, yer would have had me on jankers fer talkin ter ya like that 15 years ago, now yer apologising, i tek me at off to yer, even though yer still a rupert at heart

there a bloke at work called rupert...

does he wear checked troosis and a red pullover

na, but he does got the same ears