Hello and welcome back to Here we Tow something a little bit different this
week have you ever had this fallout when you take your tow ball off your hitch
when you arrive on site well it's happened someone we know so today we're
gonna have a look at how to replace this what you need and what you need to do
and see exactly what happens after this
we'll get away
with no distractions just quickly what you'll need nice ground sheet to keep
yourself off the rubble some drivers pair of pliers a little bit of patience
so there you go that's all you need to be able to do this quick and simple
little job and obviously what I failed to mention is you also need the new part
which is a friction lining front and back this is for the Alko 3004 chassis
comes with complete instructions in the packet so there's two sides to these
instructions and this is to help you fit both the front and the back part we
obviously didn't need the back part because it was only the front that was
broken so I'm just showing you these so you've got an idea of exactly what we
needed to do and here exactly is the problem it snapped off at the front as
you can see here leaving that screw in so what I've done here is I'm showing
you just the part that's actually fallen out this is the bit that was actually on
the tow ball and you can see here clearly it's sheared off at the top and
that's the screw part that's left into the hitch so as part of the
instructions this part the outer sheath needs to come off first for that you'll
need the t30 driver for that to go in for the head to be slipped off
so what the instructions say here is the front part is quite rubberized and all
you need to do is just roll it down from the top as you get a bit further down
you just need to make sure these lugs come off the casting at the front so
it'll just pop off in your hand so what we found we had to do now was unscrew
the part that was broken inside as you can see here it's just spinning around
so what we need to do is isolate that by using a pair of pliers just to grip the
inside so that then as you can see we can neatly unscrew it from the outside
and keep the broken part inside and here's the broken part the lining so
this was the final bit that we needed to get out before we could fit the new part
and this is how it should look once you've removed all the offending parts
what we found is if you lift the stabiliser arms it gives you a little
bit more movement to be able to play and then what we're gonna do here is just
offer the new piece up just to make sure that it fits and it's the correct piece
so here you can now see the new part has been fitted what we've had to do is this
part which is your topside indicator is spring-loaded you can actually take the
pressure off with your thumb pressing that back up that then allows you
to fit this part where the screw is and then you've got this flush and outside
as you can see here through the middle of the hole what I've done here I've
just frozen the video if you were changing the back friction plate as well
you would before putting in the front one use this hole to access the T30 torx
bit to be able to unscrew the back part to get that off as well so I just
thought I'd add that in you can see this is now fitted correctly all we need to
do now place the screw back in and tighten it back up so as you can see
there now once you've got it so it's just nice and tight because it's self
tapped into the plastic of the new friction lining in front that is now held
in place and the back of the pad is nicely seated where it should be
that's job done all we need to do now is fit it all back together so simply to
put this back on as you can see here the lugs on the side they go round this part
and then simply goes back up and over onto the top
so then what you can do for peace of mind is you can fit whatever security
device or dummy ball you've got and as you can see there it's still engaging to
show the green to show that the tow ball is in place afterwards just a little
check that you can do either that or you can simply press the button underneath
is quite a powerful spring that will push up that will also show you that
you're checking device is still working and in order so there you go so that's a
quick and easy how-to guide is how you can change your friction line in front
and back if you have the problem as we've found so hopefully that will give
you the confidence to have a look at it and do it yourself if not you've seen on
the video how to fix it these parts are available at most caravan accessory
shops give them a ring first make sure that they've got them in stock the part
numbers on that screenshot right at the start the screen so you can
always give them ring maybe even carry one as a spares up to you but hope that
helps you and hopefully we'll catch you in the next one thanks for watching