Al-Ko Trailer Tongue failure

Very informative, thanks!

How about this for the use in question: Drill the holes in the trailer
tongue oversize and use a steel bushing the exact length of the outer
tube of the tongue. Then use a high strength bolt to hold it together.
Or simply a trailer hitch pin with a spring clip or lock to hold it in
place.

On 7/21/2016 10:23 AM, Craig Funston wrote:
On Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 7:43:44 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
A question for the mechanical engineers on this group:

Isn't it true that the load rating of a bolt is an indication of the
tensile strength of the bolt and not its shear strength? Is there any
indication of the shear strength of a bolt? Can anything be inferred
about shear strength from tensile strength?

On 7/20/2016 8:31 PM, Dave Springford wrote:
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.

--
Dan, 5J
For typical steels used in bolt fabrication, shear strength correlates pretty well with tensile strength. Current guidance from the American Institute of Steel Construction use a shear strength equal to 60% of the tensile strength (ultimate values, not yield). This is for a bearing type (not friction) connection with threads included in the shear plane. High strength bolts are allowed shears up to 75% of tensile if the threads are excluded from the shear plane.

Craig
7Q

--
Dan, 5J

On Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 9:45:47 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Very informative, thanks!

How about this for the use in question: Drill the holes in the trailer
tongue oversize and use a steel bushing the exact length of the outer
tube of the tongue. Then use a high strength bolt to hold it together.
Or simply a trailer hitch pin with a spring clip or lock to hold it in
place.

On 7/21/2016 10:23 AM, Craig Funston wrote:
On Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 7:43:44 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
A question for the mechanical engineers on this group:

Isn't it true that the load rating of a bolt is an indication of the
tensile strength of the bolt and not its shear strength? Is there any
indication of the shear strength of a bolt? Can anything be inferred
about shear strength from tensile strength?

On 7/20/2016 8:31 PM, Dave Springford wrote:
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.

--
Dan, 5J
For typical steels used in bolt fabrication, shear strength correlates pretty well with tensile strength. Current guidance from the American Institute of Steel Construction use a shear strength equal to 60% of the tensile strength (ultimate values, not yield). This is for a bearing type (not friction) connection with threads included in the shear plane. High strength bolts are allowed shears up to 75% of tensile if the threads are excluded from the shear plane.

Craig
7Q

--
Dan, 5J

Drilling oversize holes in the tongue for a bushing just makes the bushing the bearing member and takes away any possibility of developing clamping force on the tongue which is where it's needed.

The bushing could be welded into the tongue or shorter bushings that are fed in from the end of the square tube to brace the sidewalls against compression from the bolt could be used

Craig

Not so good, better would be a "reverse fishmouth" on a steel bushing that fit INSIDE the inner tube and aligned with the bolt hole. Then, properly torque the bolt (depends on grade, diameter and length) so the bolt loads a "solid structure".
Currently, the design allows for some "crush" of the tongue thus losing some of the clamping force. Threads in shear are also not a good thing for strength, but may be fine for "torque limiting" as in a snowblower auger.

Note: you could also use a length of bar stock inside the inner tube rather than my first thought.

Another note, I was describing a fix for the round tube tongue, square tube would be similar. Another thought, whatever "internal spacer" you get should have a larger diameter/size than the area under the nut or bolt head, NOT a thin tube.

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 10:31:52 PM UTC-4, Dave Springford wrote:
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.

Rather than put a lot of time into the bolt specification, why not "simply" drill the holes out to 5/8" and get 50% more strength?
I'm going to look at doing that on mine.
UH

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 10:31:52 PM UTC-4, Dave Springford wrote:
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.

I just checked my new trailer (delivered this year), it has bolts 10.9.

On Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 2:59:28 PM UTC-6, Andrzej Kobus wrote:
On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 10:31:52 PM UTC-4, Dave Springford wrote:
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.

I just checked my new trailer (delivered this year), it has bolts 10.9.

To follow up on my earlier post. My trailer, as many know, is towed behind my motor home. Its on a 6 foot tow bar which goes under my motorcycle lift which then attaches to the bottom of the lift. This whole system does allow for movement as its subject to bouncing/flexing around when traveling. But I never have seen the trailer sway thru my rear view camera.
I again checked my bolts(10.9) and their is a washer then self locking nut installed. I did take my torque breaker bar to check. The head of the 2 bolts are really tight( I never went for a max torque reading), but both nuts had less than 25 pounds of torque applied.
I did tighten both nuts down and it appears the nylon used in the nut has worn allowing them to loosen(become looser or maybe that is what they were originally torqued to?).
My trailer is a 2006 and has around 80,000 tow miles on it. Have gotten new bolts,washers, nuts to carry with me.

Thanks again to Dave for bringing this to our attention.

Best. #711.

The bolt which sheared on my trailer was also a 10.9. As Howard noted above and I have stated earlier in the thread the threads were in the shear plane which I believe is the starting point for the troubles as the threads become distorted due to trailer tongue stresses during towing allowing the bolt to loosen which creates move movement which eventually ends in shearing.

David Martin
ASG29E BV