Wow....this is crazy.

Appears to be after market tires and wheels ?

 

Agreed. Bigger and wider tires. Offset too big and wide, changing the forces on at least the spindle and maybe other parts.

Back in the early 1980s, I went to our fleet manager to get the OK to have the spindle bearings serviced on a full size Cherokee. It wasn't a difficult job, but almost always overlooked. It required pulling off the caliper, rotor and hub, and then removing about 20 loose needle bearings for cleaning and re-lubing. The Cherokee had about 70K miles on it, and did not have unlocking hubs.

I apologized to the fleet manager for my emphasis on PM, and he replied that I was doing the right thing. He then pointed at a tire and wheel next to his desk that I had sort of noticed. It was actually the tire, wheel, rotor, part of the caliper, and about half of the spindle. That had come off of a Ramcharger with the circa 1978 Dodge version of full-time 4 wheel drive that had never had the spindle bearing service. It came apart at low speed, fortunately. At freeway speed, it could have killed someone.

A week later, I was given the collateral duty of looking after maintenance of our office's fleet. That was a relief to our staff.

 

Or the aftermarket wheel failed at the spokes? Looks like a wide rim and tire.

 

Hitch failure on a Diamond C FMAX 212, GVW 25.900k I think. I think the hitch is rated 30k, based on their web site. You can see it has been broken for a long time with the wear marks. Crazy it broke in the first place.

I just modified my Lamar hitch, Bulldog 25k, appears to be about a 3/8" wall. My Ram hitch's are 20k and about 5/16" wall. I dinged my tail gate once with my PJ, not enough clearance. I switched to my Lamar with more clearance and still dinged my tail gate again. So, not wanting to raise it the 2.750" per adjustment, I drilled a new hole at 1.375". Should be enough now and still level enough to satisfy me. Hate a non level trailer.

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@NIsaacs , I don't know much about this kind of hitch, but your last photo shows a bolt used with a jam nut to hold two tubes together. By design, that looks to me like it would put an extreme amount of pressure on the wall of both tubes. It is interesting the the separation occurred right at the center of the end of the bolt.

Is that bolt and jam nut one of the two bolts and jam nuts shown in the first photo?

I assume this is your trailer?

- John

 

Not my trailer, some random hotshot guy. Yes, the set bolts keep the slack out of the two tubes. There is a 90 ft tq value. It looks like it might have been too tight and damaged the hitch tube.

All mine use the same system. Some 20k rated and some 25k.

 

Also alot of stress can be placed on that joint (interface) by driving style.. Think about how much flex can occur at the toe of that 12" I beam, albeit one would think it would hold, broke right at the upper hole in the coupler tube.. But the stress in that location is almost zero in fwd / rev loading. Assuming no defects, its hard to design something to survive everything.

[edit] My GN is 20k rated, (square tube) but same design and very common.

 

This guy has about the same year and model D/C trailer and has broken two hitches. At least he caught them before total failure, good on him. He has since converted to a fifthwheel insert so now the hitch is all the way inserted. I think that will really help the leverage applied with the hitch half way extended. Still shouldn't break.

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Can this only happen in TN?

In the first pic, they'd already pulled the flat bed out some. It went in all the way to the rear wheels. The fellows inside were trapped till they pulled it out far enough to get the doors open....

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Another D/C trailer failure. They need to rethink their step decks. You can get a lot of pin weight on them, unlike a gooseneck.

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That looks bad! Are they warranting it?

 

Don’t get me wrong that is certainly not good and am not meaning to defend DC

however both of those skids are over 10k weight the sticker shows gvw of the trailer is 30k and it’s empty weight is 11600lbs so at least in that pic it is overloaded. May not get much warranty coverage with that

 

Those booger welds look awfully cold to me. Also, you can see they've been cracked for a while since there's rust present. Better welding, and more gussets would solve this.

 

Yes, and no. Most trailer manufacturers, including D/C, allow some pin weight, over the trailer gvw axle ratings. It has (2) 16k axles, so very under rated, I would say. For $1500 you can up grade this exact trailer to 40K. I don't think there is $1500 worth of strength that will add 10k gvw. My guess is, they mostly add pin weight and re-rate the gvw to 40k.

That is a serious trailer that should not faulter with those skid steers.

Per Case, the operating weigh is 10.6k each for the TV450B.

 

Even bumper pull trailers often allow some hitch weight over the GTW (or GVW) axle ratings. (I prefer to specify higher capacity axles, though.) I am not a welder, at least not professionally. But seeing an electric weld fail in the center of the bead is odd. I would have expected failure at one of the martensite layers adjacent to the bead. From the factory, it seemed as if the vertical bead was a nice-looking one but it didn't get enough penetration and heating.

I don't know the weight of those skid steers, although I have used variations.

 

Which one failed in the center? Every one of them peeled away on one side. If you save the pics, and zoom in super close, you can clearly see that the welds didn't have much penetration at all.

 

I doubt it, it is 4 years old, or over warranty by one year.

 

Copy, unless it was grossly overloaded, that's pure crap!

 

This one looks like a center failure. #ad

 

The only place the weld remained attached to both sides is near the very top. The rest of it looks like a broken arts & crafts piece where the hot glue only stuck on one side.
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