Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Yeah ... I remember going to a ride a long time ago - has to be 18 or  
20 years ago by now.   I had  my old horse Shadow, and another horse  
in back, towing with a Ford F250.  The trailer was an old aluminum  
type with surge brakes that I inherited from my ex-husband.

Those in this area know the Pine Valley Bridge .. the road goes  
downhill towards the bridge, and is protected from the wind until a  
little bit before you get on the bridge -- and the wind blows there a  
lot.  When we hit the wind, the trailer started fishtailing.  I could  
see it whipping back and forth behind me, and it was sure yanking the  
truck around.  I didn't hit the brakes, but I did take my foot off  
the gas, slowing us down.  I didn't know about speeding, and with  
surge brakes, using just the trailer brakes wouldn't have been an  
option, even if I had known what to do.

Whatever I did - it worked, and things settled down before we  
actually got to the bridge.  The horses didn't seem any the worse for  
the exciting ride.  The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than 5  
- 8 seconds, but it was an exciting few seconds.

I think it was later that year, as we were changing a tire on that  
trailer, we found the front axle was unstable ...  I bought a new  
trailer that weekend, and sold that one to a guy who worked on race  
cars, and knew how to fix it.

On Mar 29, 2008, at 5:18 PM, rides2far@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> > The stability of a towed load depends on a bunch of things.

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