Hooking up to van/trailer tips

[TACA]

Hi all, just thought I would ask how others(without the luxury of a reverse camera) hook up their rigs. We have a trigg hitch, so I reverse up to about 300mm or so away, then my wife slowly reverses while I help the block into the tongues and put pin in. We have even had several comments from others on how easy it looked, 'no arguments' they said.

 

[mbr37746]

It's a good feeling when you can disappoint the audience with a perfect hook up. We've got a Triton GLXR ute which has a wind down centre in the rear window. So the wife can stand near the hitch, talk to me normally and I can hear, "left down, right down 100mm to go....". We sometimes also use an app on our iPhones called Remote Live, which uses bluetooth to sync both cameras, like a portable reversing camera.

 

[Colsar]

we have a camera, but help a few boaties n trades a bit, as i hook a truck and trailer a lot for work.

i find the best way to guide back is put one arm directly up over the coupling vertical with a flat hand as a guide for the driver and the other hand out to the side creating a distance measure and as the car comes back the distance between the two hands slowly gets smaller , i.e. when ur 300mm from the ball the two hands should be 300mm apart. The driver can watch the guide hand and see the measure hand getting closer to the point they touch and thats it ur there.

Simple but effective !

 

[paulie484]

My wife reverses the car and I direct...we tried the other way but I never listened and did my own thing (as usual in life) so this is much better for the relationship

Had a guy watch us hook up in Coral Bay in a real tight spot..he was most impressed

 

[TACA]

It's a good feeling when you can disappoint the audience with a perfect hook up. We've got a Triton GLXR ute which has a wind down centre in the rear window. So the wife can stand near the hitch, talk to me normally and I can hear, "left down, right down 100mm to go....". We sometimes also use an app on our iPhones called Remote Live, which uses bluetooth to sync both cameras, like a portable reversing camera.

Ah to disapoint an audience. Don't you just love wiping the smirk of their faces.......
Those rear windows sound handy, and I do like the idea of bluetooth cameras.

 

[TACA]

we have a camera, but help a few boaties n trades a bit, as i hook a truck and trailer a lot for work.

i find the best way to guide back is put one arm directly up over the coupling vertical with a flat hand as a guide for the driver and the other hand out to the side creating a distance measure and as the car comes back the distance between the two hands slowly gets smaller , i.e. when ur 300mm from the ball the two hands should be 300mm apart. The driver can watch the guide hand and see the measure hand getting closer to the point they touch and thats it ur there.

Simple but effective !

Hi colin&Sue, this is a great way to guide someone on. I have used it before. My wife has tried this once, I will let you imagination think of why it was only once.

 

[TACA]

...we tried the other way but I never listened and did my own thing (as usual in life) so this is much better for the relationship

Sounds very familiar paulie484