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None of the early models had this valve installed under the dinette seat. When they, all of a sudden, appeared a year or so ago, I questioned the need for it to the folks at Oliver. Nobody was ever able to give me a reasonable answer as to why it was being installed since there was and is a backflow preventer in that line. It made no sense to have both. Now, as I understand it, they have eliminated it. Now that makes sense.

Welcome to the Forum! I don’t think anyone can really answer that question. I used to worry about over stressing the hitch parts, but in reality after 6000 miles with the Anderson, I don’t think you will hurt anything while driving straight on a smooth surface. I have gone up a very short steep approach to a parking lot from the street that scared me, afterwards. The back of the trailer frame smashed hard into the pavement, but nothing else happened. When you do this, the hitch tries to lift the back wheels of the tow vehicle off the ground. If your TV has limited rear wheel travel and is not full time AWD, you may get tire spin or get stuck. (This is why a guy with a boat and an equalizing hitch takes the bars off before retrieving his boat, so he doesn’t get stuck on a slick steep ramp.) I don’t worry about normal driving with the Andersen...But I do worry about going onto really uneven ground where the trailer will twist east and the TV will go west at the same time. Because the ball wears so weirdly due to the heavy forward load of the chains, you end up with a small canyon worn into the otherwise smooth ball. When you get crossed up in an unplowed field, the coupler will snap out of that groove with a bang and do the same when it pops back in. This is disconcerting and I don’t think it is at all good for the coupler. With the chains loosened up the coupler can move around on the top part of the ball with minimal stress. My policy is to loosen the nuts so that there is zero compression on the bushings when venturing into this sort of situation. The trailer and hitch seem much happier. Ultimately I hope to get rid of the Andersen entirely by shifting my cargo tray to the back of the trailer to lighten the tongue enough to just use a dead weight offroad hitch like member “overland” has..... Carrying a ton of weight up front just makes the Andersen situation worse since the chains have to be much tighter. To those who must use an Andersen, I don’t recomment buying the tongue cargo tray for this reason. I think it is not a good combination.... Did this help? John Davies Spokane WA

I carry one of these in my tool kit for checking 110V AC lines. It will point out the most common issues. $5 at Amazon - link

Bill, Ollie's hangar companion, Vagabond, did the skywriting! :)