Quick catch-up from the last maintenance work some weeks ago at Glastonbury.

The current jockey wheel and assembly is some 8 years old. First problem was with a kind of pressure pad / shoe which locks the vertical shaft in place. This has a hook which locates on the assembly to stop the pressure pad from dropping through the mechanism.

In our case, the hook had become weak and broken off.

The pressure pads are a few pounds but ours definitely needed replacing.

At the same time, we decided to change the jockey wheel as the winding mechanism was becoming quite stiff.

The breakaway cable whilst still functional had a kink and tear in the plastic so we decided we would change all three items.

We headed to Taunton Trailers from Glastonbury where we found a healthy choice and a friendly / knowledgeable guy. The site appeared to be built out of shipping containers under a concrete bridge!

We bought the AlKo Jockey Wheel Plus, product code 122436 which we think is the direct replacement for the one fitted at manufacture, probably the 122434.

If we’d known earlier, matching would have been easier because the product code is stamped on the base of the wheel bracket. Both Jockey wheels seem to be rated at 150kg stationary and 90kg in motion which sounds about right, but also on the limit of our noseweight.

At the same time we would replace the break-away cable.

All of this was a straight swap-out with just a word of caution about the breakaway cable. The hooked end you can see needs to be opened on the old one and pinched closed on the new one.

I was just about able to open the old cable but despite a decent collection of tools I could not get any closure on the new ring. In the end a trip to Screwfix and a set of mole-grips enabled the wire loop to be closed.