Old style ratchet trailer brake

[gingerfold]

Punchy Dan:

gingerfold:
I don’t know if this thread makes me feel old having had experience of these trailers with mechanical handbrakes, and the various problems…but it does make me feel proud of the fellow TN members of our age group who still have the knowledge and wherewithal to explain with diagrams how the mechanism works.

Err which age group ,I’am only just 42

I know that you’re only a lad Dan, compared with some on here…me included, but you were brought up the right way in the job, so you’re an honorary oldie.

[chris_webb]

ramone:
I remember a new driver where my dad worked dropping a trailer on a hill behind the yard and didnt use the handbrake.The air dropped and with 22 tons of baled cardboard the wall of the premises and the car behind had seen better days. Mind the company then started parking their old van next to the wall thinking history may repeat itself. My dad always used the handbrake but also a couple of building brilcks behind the back wheels

I always took the red line off before applying a ratchet handbrake. If you applied it before taking red line off it went slightly slack again.

[lawrence_dunbar]

windrush:
Only trailers I ever worked on were the old Scammell coupling type but those diagrams a spider has presumably drawn seem exactly the same as the system on my Wessex trailer I tow behind my van and also most caravans.

Pete.

The old Scammell Auto Coupling type on the earley ones was just a lever sticking out the front of the trailer plus it wasnt even a ratchet it just pulled along sideways on sharp teeth and locked when pushed down, They were useless anyway IMO, Regards Larry.