Talk:Tow hitch

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Tow hitch article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

That is NOT a "towbar"[edit]

Towbars consist of metal bars that attach to the front end of a vehicle to be towed, with a standard tow hitch at one end. These are often used by RV’ers to tow a secondary vehicle behind, and by offroaders to tow disabled vehicles back to camp where they can be repaired (or towed away to a junk yard completely). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.210.206.195 (talk) 04:52, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Towbar Wiring" section is rubbish[edit]

This section is very poorly written with lots of exclamation points and bias POV.

It also needs to be rewritten and retitled, since "Tow Hitch" is the proper term as the previous commenter stated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.91.147.56 (talk) 05:19, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Being an electrical novice I find this section both interesting and confusing. If you think you can do better then have a go. Re using proper terms, we who never use the term 'tow hitch' can live with it, so why not just put up with the occasional use of 'tow bar'? Downsize43 (talk) 23:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology outside the US[edit]

I know this section hasn't been commented on in 2 years, but here in the European part of the world, it's universally known a towbar. Vive la différence, as they say. a_man_alone (talk) 07:27, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was Towball, after all it looks more like a ball than a bar. See this instruction leaflet http://www.caravanclub.co.uk/media/21535/Coupling-Up-a-Caravan-to-a-Car.pdf from the Caravan Club. MidlandLinda (talk) 19:13, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Australia it's called a towbar, or sometimes a towball, but never a tow hitch. I think the article title is fine as is. Dallas (talk) 00:41, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In Canada the rectangular "tow bar" is mounted on the front or back of the vehicle / The removable "tow ball" goes on top of the bar, on a bumper or in the bed of a truck / The "trailer hitch" describes a wide variety of ball connecting devices on the trailer tongue. There's no standard for bar, bolt, ball, hitch or height. To mount a bar and ball, the popular class one two and three receiver tubes are the standard and it is no longer common to find a permanent tow bar on domestic cars or trucks. Dougmcdonell (talk) 22:46, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Across Europe around 25% of vehicles have tow-balls fitted - Citation??[edit]

Is there any citation for the statistic "Across Europe around 25% of vehicles have tow-balls fitted"? Jcardwell88 (talk) 16:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcardwell88 (talk • contribs) 16:45, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seems unlikely, 60 times as many towed caravans as cars in the UK and most goods vehicles don't have a tow bar. Stub Mandrel (talk) 16:40, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If Wikipedia is going to redirect here from Tongue Weight, it would be nice if a definition of tongue weight were included in here somewhere.[edit]

I don't know if wikipedia automatically redirects to a random article that happens to contain the term sought, or if someone had to specify the redirect. It's not a bad idea to include a definition anyway, since the idea of tongue weight is referenced in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.50.104.6 (talk) 21:37, 5 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"...or paired main gears"[edit]

I just removed this from the end of the first sentence, since it makes no sense that I can see in this article. Huw Powell (talk) 15:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tow Hitch[edit]

The article doesn't include any description of the bit that fits over a tow ball, no mention of friction pads, locking mechanisms etc. Would also be useful to mention anti-snaking devices. Also the 'popularity of caravans in the United Kingdom' bit could be interpreted as an insult. Seriously though it is wrong, caravans are not especially popular; Industry figures state that there are 550,000 towed caravans on the road in the UK^[1] compared to 30.5M cars ^[2]. That's one caravan for every 60 cars; this is not a nation of shed-draggers! ;-) Stub Mandrel (talk) 16:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bumper mounts & Farm equipment[edit]

I decided to "be bold" so I've just cleaned up some content added in 2009 by 70.128.172.243. It included no citations and made questionable claims. (1) "Many pickup trucks without frame-mounted receiver hitches often use the rear bumper, especially if the pickup truck is a light-duty model." While this isn't really untrue, this sentence seems to conflate 2 ideas. Primarily older trucks (20+ years old, those made well before the year 2000) have bumper-step mounts for hitch balls. As far as I know, this has much more to do with age than it does with whether a truck is "light-duty". (2) Claimed that farm equipment could be towed at an offset using bumpers with 3 ball mounts. In reality that type of bumper places the balls very close together. They are offset by no more than roughly 6 inches and it doesn't really move that big farm equipment around any. (3) Claims were made about the towing capacity of bumpers vs frame mounted receiver hitches. I can't speak to that, but there's no citation and I don't think it adds value to the article. 63.146.1.126 (talk) 02:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ [[1]]
^ [[2]]

[1] [[1]]

[2] [[2]]

[1]

[2]