Al-Ko Trailer Tongue failure

Hi Tom,

Very doubtful that the nut came off from vibration. Nylock nuts are used and they are not prone to this. My trailer is towed behind a motorhome with a large axle to tow ball distance resulting a bending moment on the tongue and shear load on the (front) bolt (in particular).

After my post, another motorhome owner checked his trailer and found that the same bolt on his trailer was broken - shear plane through the threads, bad design - but fortunately the rest of the bolt was still in the tongue so he was able to take pictures of it. It was certainly a failure due to shear.

I question why AL-KO switched from 1000 MPa bolts to 800 MPa bolts at some point. I checked several other older trailers than mine and they all had 10.9 bolts. Mine had 8.8, as did the other trailer that failed.