As we were driving through Bossier City / Shreveport, we experienced some of Louisiana's incredibly rough roads. We hit a place where the rig started porpoising pretty wildly (I think we were just past exit 22) - I was able to keep control of the coach... but... evidently the stress on the tow bar was too much and we must have popped the locks that we were using in place of the linch pins on the quick-connect bar on the Jeep. In my normal checking of the mirrors and rear-view camera, I noticed that the Jeep was not quite following along as normal - it was following, but was zigzagging back and forth on its own. Uh oh - let's look for a place to stop... there were no shoulders where we were, so I drove a bit further and pulled off at exit 20.
The wonderful thing was that the safety features of the Roadmaster tow bar system worked just as they should have. The Jeep was still attached to the bus by the blue safety cables, and the air braking system was still attached, as was the safety emergency brake (which would have engaged if the Jeep came totally loose to stop the Jeep immediately). The blue safety cables kept the Jeep pretty closely engaged to the bus, and the air braking system ensured that the Jeep braked when the bus was braking. When I pulled off on the exit, the Jeep followed me to the shoulder of the exit ramp, and as long as I was holding down on the brake pedal on the bus, the Jeep was stopped. Dwayne got out and went back to set the parking brake on the Jeep so I could set the parking brake on the bus and we could both get out to assess the damage.
I anticipated that there would have been contact between the front of the Jeep and the back of the bus, but there was no evidence. The tow bar had been dragged for a ways, so the curved receiver of the quick-connect base was scraped, and of course, the locks that we had been using instead of the linch pins were broken off.
See page 5 of this manual: http://roadmasterinc.com/pdf/85-3326-18.pdf
We decided to disconnect the Jeep, and then drive the vehicles separately to a safe place to assess further corrections. We were going to go to the Texas State Welcome area, but thought as we were driving that it would make more sense to go to a parking lot where we could purchase whatever we needed to complete repairs, so we found a Home Depot via the Garmin and headed there.
We got new locks, and also a bastard metal file to clean up the place where the tow bar attaches to the quick-disconnect base.
Some pictures:
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| My view of the Jeep - this was after we had disconnected and Dwayne was getting it out of neutral - but I can keep an eye on the Jeep as we are going down the road with the rear view camera. |
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| The exit where we came to a stop. |
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| This is the new lock in place - the previous locks sheared off. |
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| You can see where this part of the quick-disconnect bar dragged - Dwayne had to file the inside (between the two rounded parts) as that is where the tow bar attaches, and it wouldn't attach due to the metal that had built up inside there. |
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| The right side didn't have as much drag damage. You can see here the safety cable anchor that allows the safety cable to hook in under where the tow bar attaches. |
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| This shows the quick-disconnect bar across the front of the Jeep. |
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