Westfalia woes – your help please
Ok, here’s the problem…I have a new WF removable swan neck tow bar fitted to my Infinity FX….yes there is one out there !! The issue is that is becomes loose (won’t fall out) when you rotate the release knob maybe 2 or 3 deg. Here’s where it gets interesting
– Infiniti tell me they all do that - but I know they don’t – 1) as I had exactly the same basic WF system on my Cayenne & it did not exhibit a wobble. 2) because I design cars for a living & actually package WF products on OEM’s product (car manufacturers),
I do know the product & the engineering principles involved. I actually rang WF & they told me not to use it & Infiniti replaced the whole system. Guess what, the second one is the same. An Infiniti/WF engineer is now coming to inspect it with me to see
if it complies with their product specification.
My issue is that if you ever touched that knob leaving a field on the ground, the ball then has a float of maybe 5-8mm in every plane – effectively the ball centre can move relative to the car which will not help stability or loads in the hitch. The mechanism
is not powerful enough to rotate the Knob back to seated with 70 or 80 kg on it & so would only reseat when the caravan came up at the front taking the load off the ball. This could be immediately or a mile down the road.
Has anybody come across this before – If you have a WF removable tow ball, can you insert it, lock & remove the key, rotate the knob a very small amount & then, grasping the ball, give it a shake….is it ridged or does it rattle with a perceivable movement
in the ball?. I want to see if I am the only person with the issue, or do lots of people have this & I am the only one moaning because of my work & looking at what the failure mode could be!