$500 breakaway cable

Hi All!

The chances that what happened to us will happen to someone else is pretty small, but I thought I'd share a recent experience in case it might help someone else.

I'm pretty sure that before leaving the factory Cary or Craig had told me that if the breakaway cable was too long, to wrap it around the frame a time or two to shorten it up. But our first camping season in 2012 was short, and any memory of that had evaporated before the next camping season arrived.

We made a trip out to the Black Hills last May, and after driving down a long gravel road for many miles I noticed that our breakway cable had been dragging and was badly frayed (only a single strand was holding it together). We soon reached Custer, SD and looked for someplace to get it replaced. There was a trailer shop in town, but they were busy, so we agreed that I'd bring the trailer in the next day.

At camp that night it dawned on me that it wasn't necessary to take the whole trailer back into town, that I could just remove the pin from the breakaway switch. Being the forgetful type, I decided to put the assembly in our tow vehicle so that I'd be sure to drop it off the next morning when we went into town for coffee. That was around 6pm.

The next day I dropped it off, and we went off to hike while they worked their magic. We got back to the campground about 11 am. Soon after, the park ranger stopped by and told us that someone had seen smoke coming from under our trailer. I could not fathom a potential source for such an occurrence, so I thought perhaps he was bored and was just pulling our leg (the "Jolly Joker" routine). At the time everything seemed fine. Immediately after that, we picked up the new, beefier and shorter breakaway cable.

That evening our Dometic threw an error and shut down. I also noticed that when Alea had the galley light on and turned on the water pump that the light dimmed. There wasn't much to do about it, so we limped home by putting ice in the Dometic. We weren't able to power too much more than lights and the water pump for the rest of the trip. (We now own a small battery operated flashlight/lantern as a source of emergency cabin light that we can hang from the knob of our Fantastic Fan, which also is helpful in finding the latrine late at night:http://www.rei.com/product/878207/black-diamond-orbit-lantern)

We got home and called Camp-Inn. Cary suggested taking the battery to a local auto parts store to be tested. When we had pulled the breakaway switch pin the trailer's electric brakes were turned on, which put a HUGE load on the battery. Doing that for nearly 18 hours fried the battery. A new, self-installed battery set us back $230 (less the $8 or so that we got for recycling our old battery).

Things went well for a while, but then the same issues started popping up, most notably the Dometic shutting down. We called CI again, and this time it was theorized that the battery charger was bad. We had bought our CI from Poplar RV and it came with a good-for-nothing trailer hitch, and we discovered the battery charger was tucked away above the hitch. So the hitch had to come off and sure enough at the aft end of the charger were scorch marks on the underside of the trailer and some solidified silicone that had leaked from the charger. I removed the charger and found at the fore end of the charger that the underside of the trailer had been BADLY CHARRED.

I need to digress here for a minute. Talking with Craig, I learned that there is a design flaw in these chargers, that if they run continuously for 8-10 hours they overheat and fail. Usually this is due to the battery no longer being able to hold an adequate charge, so the lesson here is to have your battery tested at the start of every season. In our case things got REALLY HOT, due to the huge load caused by the brakes and the fact that we were on shore-power. So as fast as the brakes were being discharged, the battery charger was trying to recharge the battery.

In replacing our battery charger it was discovered that the original charger had been installed incorrectly, with an inline fuse being inaccessible because it had been installed under the water tank! That necessitated rewiring from the battery to the charger by adding a new wire through the cabin between the battery and the charger.

So after buying a new battery, new battery charger, new cable, various bits and pieces to reroute the charger wiring, having the brakes inspected and various other things, our frayed breakaway cable cost about $500.

So if your breakaway cable is too long, take up the slack by wrapping it around the frame or elsewhere to shorten it up.

And dump that silly receiver hitch from your trailer - you'll be dragging around about 25 fewer pounds. It was useful for holding our propeller hitch cover (which required me to create a wooden extension to clear the bumper), but little else.

-Steve

 

...And dump that silly receiver hitch from your trailer - you'll be dragging around about 25 fewer pounds.

Huh?
I'm not clear on what part this is. I don't suppose you have a pic or something cause right now I'm reading it as the "hitch to the tow vehicle"..

Or are you talking about the back one if you had one put on. To carry bikes or ??? behind the rear hatch....

I often wondered about the loose breakaway cable but figured if I started wrapping it, it would be too tight and on a tight turn it would pull out.

Thanks...

 

I'm referring to the optional hitch that can be installed on the back of the trailer. The battery charger is on the trailer (between the fresh water and gray water tanks), not the tow vehicle.

Yes, there is a balance between too much slack on the breakaway cable and too little. That's partly why I replaced ours with a much beefier cable. If the slack on the original cable is such that the lowest part of the cable is above the breakaway chains you'll have no worries, as it will be the chains that scrape along in the gravel, not the cable.

 

I got one of those springy break away cables from E-Trailer. Now I'm glad I did.

 

Oh, Ok, one of these hitches..
I used to use it to carry my "Trophy Mt Bike" heheh, never really got a lot of riding on it...



I guess if you don't need it, but there have been others that do use it but didn't have it installed on the build and regret it too. They are, i'm told, a real PITA to install after market.


Pat, not seeing the "Springy break away cable"

thanks...

 

If you plan to continue using the hitch, be especially diligent about having your battery checked. As soon as a drained battery causes your battery charger to be fried you'll personally experience the PITA of both uninstalling and reinstalling the hitch.

There were a few times when we used our hitch with our Yakima Rack, and we've also got the trailer roof rack option. Neither is a good option if you have an expensive bike and plan to use it a LOT (not so bad for shorter trips or trips with multiple days in one place). After we sell our house this spring we'll be getting a Ford Transit Connect Cargo Van with long wheelbase. There's more than enough room to store two bikes standing up inside the van, as well as a ton of camping gear, and we can actually bolt our rooftop Yakima Highroller racks to the floor of the van. (We're contemplating a tag team bike trip across the southern states this fall.)

That's the downside of most options for carrying bikes outside - lots of miles driven means lots of crud in the drivetrain, which equals either lots of not-fun or expensive maintenance, or an expensive drivetrain that wears out too fast. Options for covering the bike either increase drag and noise or obscure tail lights, and most covers wear out with much use.

I have a bike with carbon belt drive that gets around those problem (no chain to oil = no oil to attract dirt). But there is either the extra drag from being mounted on the roof, or the extra hassle to use the galley with a hitch rack.

I suspect most of those that long for a hitch wouldn't feel the same way after they experience the reality of using it, unless their intention is short trips/long stays. Especially when the costs and inconvenience factors start to pile up. But there are only so many ways you can haul a bike. For us, I think we've reached the point where we either won't ride on a trip, or we'll ride every day and plan the trip around our bikes. A lot of what falls in between doesn't make enough sense to us, either due to increased fuel costs (a roof rack) or frustration (a hitch rack).

 

Steve and Alea, I'm sorry to read about your trying experience. I cringed inwardly reading about the damage it caused to your trailer (let alone the dint it put in your wallet). What an ordeal .

Although I am sure what you experienced is a very rare situation, I wonder what Cary/Craig's advice would be should someone have the misfortune of likewise encountering a problem with their breakaway cable while on a camping trip.

I'm unsure just how critical the placement of the battery charger was to the outcome experienced by Steve and Alea. If the issues Steve and Alea encountered could happen to anyone with a breakaway cable problem (regardless of potential defects in the battery charger or where it was installed), would disconnecting from a power source and flipping the battery switch to the OFF position prevent overextending the battery charger? Or do Cary/Craig have other recommendations?

 

Sorry to hear about your experience.

My break away cable is fairly long but I loop it through the hitch on the truck and back up to itself. This leaves it just about the right length. It is shorter than the safety chains, long enough to maneuver the trailer around corners, etc. but not so long as to drag on the ground.

Therefore, if the trailer did come unhitched, the break away cable should break first and activate the brakes. Then the safety chains should keep the trailer from wandering off.

 

Hi!

Disconnecting the battery post would have prevented the problem, but then there would be no power to the trailer. Just about anywhere other than a tourist destination we probably could have had it replaced while we waited. Our problem is that we had an overabundance of luck, all bad (Murphy's Law at work).

I probably should have just cut the cable and tied it back together, but I'm a bit anal about preferring things to be in proper working order. Usually that saves me money in the long run, in this case though it was costly.

The key lesson is about that battery charger. Anyone who is prone to hanging on to their battery 'til its last dying gasp is going to have their battery charger fried. That is almost guaranteed. So you won't save money by doing that, it'll cost you. With a weak battery there's not much chance of the trailer catching fire because there isn't enough heat generated and that horizontal surface means that an oxygen supply for the fire probably won't be sufficient to let it burn. It sounds as though the battery charger isn't working too hard, just that it is working too long. In our case it worked too hard and too long because the brakes caused such a rapid discharge of the battery.

Because our battery was in good shape, we experienced more heat damage than typically happens when the chargers go bad. It still didn't catch fire, but it is pretty badly charred at the fore end, though obviously not where anyone will ever notice.

Craig's aware of the issue, saying that a simple thermal fuse built into the charger should prevent the problem. So he either needs to convince the present vendor to modify their product or he needs to find a different vendor. The problem occurs whenever that model of charger is run continuously for 10-11 hours. The typical situation where that happens is a battery that is no longer capable of taking a full charge - the charger keeps trying, but it can't get the job done and eventually overheats.

One design change that Craig was contemplating was to not cut off the battery charger's 110v plug in their installs, so that it is easier to replace the charger when one goes bad, or to upgrade when they find a more reliable model.

 

I use a minnkota 3-bank charger on my boat that has temperature compensation for charge rate adjustments. Minnkota makes a 1-bank charger with similar specs (MK 106d) for $99.95 MSP. I wonder if that might be a way to handle the issue.....

 

Question for the sparkies (electrical types) out there. Steve made the comment that the battery charger is susceptible to failure when charging from the tow vehicle. Am I correct that a solar panel could do the same thing? What about the controller that is part of the solar connection array? Could it fail for the same reason?

 

Cary is the best person to answer this but it is my understanding the solar has it's own charge controller. Therefore, it should not be using the charge controller that is handing the connection from the Tow Vehicle.

 

WHOA! I did not say that it was susceptible to failure when charging from the tow vehicle! We were parked and on shore power!

With the low wattage that goes through the solar controller I doubt there's much possibility of a similar problem, but I'm way out of my depth on that.

 

I don't know why I thought you were connected to the tow vehicle. Obviously if you went to have the cable repaired, then it wasn't connected to the car. My Bad!

 

Frank,

> Pat, not seeing the "Springy break away cable"

If you take out "Springy" the search at eTrailer includes this Roadmaster coiled breakaway cable.

I actually prefer the Fastway 4' coiled breakaway cable since the split keyring fits the hole in the
breakaway switch 'key'/pull-rod. I also like that when parked I no longer have to wrap the cable back and
around the propane tank to keep it out of the mud. The red helps remember it too.
My local RV dealer carries the 4' (when extended) version. Their 6' version seems too long for Camp-Inns.

------
Watching "Highway Through Hell" on Weather Channel during vacation, a runaway Teardrop seems less scary.
Seeing one semi chop another ice jackknifed trailer full of wine cleanly in half... brrrr

 

Oh, you took me too literally. Springy was just my word for describing. I'm just sitting here chuckling. Sorry, I just meant it coils up by itself. I don't know how long mine is but I have extended my hitch a little bit to be able to open the tailgate comfortably on my Element.

 

Roadmaster Coiled Cable. I guess coiled is their word for springy. lol

 

Heheh, thanks both... got it...
they just look thicker, like a 'cable lock thang'... not like the thin wire that is on there now..

 

Dang! Why don't they carry those at Wally World? It would've saved me no end of trouble. I'm tempted to trade in my $500 model...

But I think I'm more tempted to spray paint mine gold. It's beefy enough to last a lifetime, and at least with our current tow vehicle there's no need to wrap it around anything to keep it at the correct altitude. ;-)

 

Steve, what a horrible experience. Thank you very much for the warning! I empathize with your pain and the ding it made in your wallet. It's a very easy mistake to make.

Whenever the break-away pin is removed the trailer's battery immediately engages the trailer brakes and continues to keep them engaged until the pin is replaced. The battery and the charger aren't meant to be under this type of load for an extended period of time.

So, in addition to making sure your cable doesn't drag on the ground, also be sure not to remove the break-away cable for any length of time (unless you disconnect your battery).

Thanks for suffering through this for the rest of us, Steve.