Vehicles To Tow

QUOTE(JDOLLEN @ Mar 8 2012, 08:39 AM) [snapback]28980[/snapback]

I guess we have it down to a fine art. My wife drives the Jeep while I direct. We have a SOLID tow bar (not a blue ox type). Once the tow bar is connected to the hitch my wife positions the Brake Buddy while I connect the wiring cable and safety chains. By the time I have completed that the Brake Buddy's compressor has completed it's charge. I bleed it then shift the Transfer Case into neutral, Drop the shifter into park, shut the engine off and we are gone. Pretty simple. The longest wait is for the Brake Buddy. I don't know how the Road Master sets up but my Brake Buddy just sits on the floor with an arm to the Brake Pedal. It rests against the front of the driver's seat. It seems to work very well.

The Jeep does not require any special modifications to tow four down. Shift the transfer case into neutral and thats it. You must leave the steering wheel unlocked but you have to do that with any other vehicle as well unless you use a dolly.







Beautiful Camping park..

 

How did your wife train you? Mine stands behind the toad and tells me if the turn and brake lights work.

 

QUOTE(Lindsay Richards @ Mar 13 2013, 06:28 AM) [snapback]32791[/snapback]

How did your wife train you? Mine stands behind the toad and tells me if the turn and brake lights work.



Hey Lindsay,

I'm not sure if your question is directed at me but I'll answer anyway.

I'm pretty sure that my wife trained me by letting me think I was training her. Having said that, we make a pretty good team. We get things done with a minimum of fuss and as long as things go her way, life is fine.

Darrell

 

We also make a good team and check each other's work. I once miss installed a pin on my tow bar and lost one arm of it at highway speeds. The towed tried to pass me (In the Everglades) Whoops. Another time, she forgot to take the towed out of gear and we dragged it for a bit. We now check each other's work. We are a great team and someday she will let me be quarterback.

 

I haven't chimed in on this one yet, but I figured I'd mention what we tow as I haven't seen it mentioned. When we first started RVing, we had a SUV that wasn't towable per the owner's manual, but by adding a Remco lube pump we were able to tow it. If you really want to tow something that the owners manual says you can't, check with Remco to see if there is a solution.

The tow vehicle really depends on what your doing, how many you have traveling and stuff like that. Eight years ago we ditched the SUV as a toad, although we still have it and it's still outfitted for towing. We researched and decided that since we didn't already have a pickup truck, and we wanted to take some toys camping with us down the road we opted for a Dodge Dakota 4-door 4-wd pickup truck. We have a removable rack for kayaks to go on top, typically all the mountain bikes and kayaking gear are stored in the back of the truck. It has the M&G brake system like John mentioned he was using in this thread. With the M&G, you simply plug an air hose into the motorhome for supplemental and emergency braking on the toad. On the SUV we used the brake buddy, but it was something else to move around and store. The M&G is much simpler, and nothing inside the truck. I have always used the Demco Excalibar tow bar, but have just retired it after 10 years of towing. It's has been replaced with a Demco Excalibar II tow bar I purchased from http://www.adventurerv.net, although I haven't been anywhere yet to try it out. The locking mechanism looks much improved, I just hope it serves me as well as the Excalibar did on those trips through the Canadian Rockies and Alaska. I did have a problem with the battery running down, so I added a disconnect switch under the hood. I also had one of the dummy keys previously mentioned cut for it to use while towing, but I had to go to 5 different stores to find one that would cut a non-chip copy of a chip key. I have tried starting it with the dummy key, and it won't start and hasn't caused any computer problems with the engine computer.

Connecting and disconnecting the truck takes less than 3 minutes with the old tow bar, and I imagine it to be much faster with the new Excalibar II. Sometimes I had to get the tool to
break loose the latches on the old one, but the new one needs no tool.

This year we considered getting a new toad, but opted to put better tail lights (LED) on the dakota and get replacement carpet for it. Maybe we will get another 8 years out of it, it has around 40,000 driven miles and 40,000 towed miles on it.

 

QUOTE(Webmaster @ Apr 13 2013, 12:53 AM) [snapback]33057[/snapback]

I also had one of the dummy keys previously mentioned cut for it to use while towing, but I had to go to 5 different stores to find one that would cut a non-chip copy of a chip key. I have tried starting it with the dummy key, and it won't start and hasn't caused any computer problems with the engine computer.




I had my dummy key made at a local hardware store and no one even asked why I would want a key that couldn't start my car. :lol:

FWIW I'm pretty confident that this stuff about a dummy key messing up your engine computer is nothing but internet "urban legend". Your car is designed not to start if it encounters a key with the wrong chip (or no chip at all). That's all it needs to do; a key with no chip can't even interact with the engine computer to mess it up!

 

I tow a 2004 Toyota Corolla behind my 2012 Coachman Freelander 32BH Class C.
It tows great, you really cant even tell it is back there.

 

QUOTE(fasteddy64 @ May 11 2013, 02:56 PM) [snapback]33369[/snapback]

I tow a 2004 Toyota Corolla behind my 2012 Coachman Freelander 32BH Class C.
It tows great, you really cant even tell it is back there.




I assume your Corolla has a manual transmission since the automatic is not supposed to be towed 4-down without installation of a transmission lube pump.

 

We towed a Chevy Avalanche for a while, which can be flat towed.
Then we got a Golf, which can't, so we had a tow dolly. What a PITA.
Now we're setting up our '14 Sierra since it's so versatile. Flat towing is the way to go if you can.