Dropping neck on mechanical DD

Think he's out on patrol with the federal marshals...lmao

 

I've pulled a talbert most of my career and I never have a problem hooking up but I hear that a lot, maybe I used to it. The actual first thing I noticed is the dowels where square cut instead of tapered.

 

We had a Dynaweld before we got the Talbert. It had the same neck design as a Fontain. You could be way out of alignment on it and it would still hook up, just drop it wherever you wanted. The Talbert isn’t bad, you just have to pick your spots if you wanted a smooth unhook/hook.

Another thing our Talbert lacks is that it doesn’t have much neck adjustment. Sure, you can add blocks to the pins to raise the ride height, but with the pins sitting on the neck, that’s as low as you can go. Again, our Dynaweld had the ratchet type stops and had 6 or 8 positions, from pretty much dragging to way high.

The Talbert is a good trailer, and we have no intentions of getting rid of it, but their neck design could have been better IMO.

 

The new Talberts have a ratchet neck available now, the new one in I'm specincg will have it.

 

Rather than having to worry about the board sprouting legs, why not make some steel end caps, put a 90 degree bend in it to run along the bottom beam flange of the neck, cut the board to the right length so it’s flush with the outside edge of the beam, bolt the end caps to the ends of the board, then just slide it into position when needed, slide down the neck out of the way when it’s not?

Excuse the rudimentary sketch, but may help visualize it.

 

That is definitely a big improvement over the pins against the neck.

 

I was told today that it might not be an option for me.

 

On ours, with the pins right against the neck, the front of the trailer is still a good foot off the ground. It sure would be nice to go lower on tall loads. Truck that is normally hooked to it ('94 W900) is running on 24.5 rubber but has one of the lowest 5th wheels you can get.

Another local heavy haul outfit with Talberts actually cut and fabricated a pocket in the neck to allow the pins to recess into the pocket. They also made blocks the same shape of the pocket to raise it back up to normal height when needed.