An Ingenious Reversible Trailer
Page 48
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WE have received from Reversible W Trailers, Ltd. (P.O. Box 34), Levin, New Zealand, some photographs and a description of two interesting trailers, one having two wheels and the other only one. Their outstanding feature is that, although the wheels are not castor-mounted, the design enables an outfit, consisting of one of these trailers and a towing vehicle, to be driven backwards with the same degree of facility with which a four-wheeled vehicle can be reversed. Alternatively, the reversible trailer can be coupled to the front of a motor vehicle and pushed along before it.
B38 As can be seen from the accompanying illustrations, the wheels are enabled to swivel—on the single-wheeled model in a fork, and on the twowheeled trailer on stub axles, these being coupled by a tie-rod.
The design is patented, and, in addition to its present application, could be adapted to semi-trailers. During normal forward movement no mechanism controls the trailer wheels, these remaining parallel with the axis of the frame. In reverse, 'however, an arrangement of rods and levers, incor
porating a quadrant, the details and working of which are not made clear by the company's description, is brought into operation, and results in the trailer wheels automatically moving ,exactly in unison with the steering wheels of the towing vehicle.
It is fairly obvious that a connection is made between the mechanism of the trailer and the steering gear of the motive unit, because the single-wheeled trailer is attached at two points across the rear of the tractor and is -free to move only on a horizontal cross axis.