Hitch failure on a Diamond C FMAX 212

[LD1]

Wow, DC has a reputation for a pretty good trailer.

While this dont appear to be any fault of theirs, it certainly makes them look bad if the hitch they used from a 3rd party failed.
I gotta wonder what happened and how it broke? That would take alot of force to do that. Was the trailer in an accident? Or drag the landing gear across some railroad track? Or jacknifing into something?

 

[nisaacs]

Wow, DC has a reputation for a pretty good trailer.

While this dont appear to be any fault of theirs, it certainly makes them look bad if the hitch they used from a 3rd party failed.
I gotta wonder what happened and how it broke? That would take alot of force to do that. Was the trailer in an accident? Or drag the landing gear across some railroad track? Or jacknifing into something?

This guy has about the same year and model D/C trailer with two failures. He is a welder, fabricator, machinist and trucker. He has video's about it but you have to have a lot of time to watch them, he is old, lol, talks too much and repeats himself, however he is cool as hell.

At least he was aware enough he caught them before total failure. Good on him.

 

[Hay Dude]

It’s a Bulldog issue, unless the trailer was misused.

 

[Hersheyfarm]

That’s bad. Did i understand that dude right, he left his trailer 30 miles south of cinci and drove about 4 hours to Columbus and then back to pick up his trailer? He passed 100’s of places to get a temp hitch. Plus i wouldnt be using bull dog again.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

We break ours sometimes. Mainly because we haul too much and pull it with a Kenworth. I mean severely overloaded.

 

[Renze]

It broke right where the set-screw tightened into it....interesting. It looks like the screw focused the stress at that point.

One 3/4" pin perpendicular to the travel direction, and two bolts to tighten it along the travel direction, both higher than the height adjusting pin... this will never be tight, there will always be elastic deformation which causes fatigue.

 

[sd455dan]

I think if a set screw made that fail they used the wrong thickness of steel.

Wow,
Certainly does not appear to be mild steel, wonder if to much carbon or other materials were added.
That break did not distort much and the grain structure of the inner tube almost looks like a casting that failed. For both pieces to break Crazy, Glad an accident didn't happen.

 

[Renze]

... the grain structure of the inner tube almost looks like a casting that failed.

An incremental fatigue break looks a lot like a violent and sudden cast metal break. In the 1.5 years i worked in the spring steel plant my eye wasnt trained enough to distinguish initiation point, incremental fatigue crack, and sudden final break like the test engineer could...

 

[nisaacs]

Another D/C trailer failure. They need to rethink their step decks. You can get a lot of pin weight on them, unlike a gooseneck.

 

[Hay Dude]

I remember when pricing a trailer with another reputable company, the sales rep bashing DC pretty good. He said they were having troubles with trailer weld quality. He was prattling on about “the father retired and left the company to the son(s) and they didn’t keep up the quality standards” type of story.
Of course he could have just been jealous of Diamond C’s success.