I flat towed my '60 "Vette up and down the East coast without ever having a problem. I tried to use a dolly on the NJ turnpike and they threw me off......said tow bars only. Had to use back roads to get around NJ. Wonderful state!!!!
You can flat tow a vehicle that has the front suspension in good condition. Towed our drag car in the 50's and 60's without issue. I've towed a couple of old ones home in later years and almost lost the car and my truck when the front end on the car being towed bound up during a turn. I won't use one anymore because I can get a dolly or trailer so cheaply and guarantee a worn front suspension won't put me in the on-coming lane.
We see a lot of cars on tow bars down here when the Snowbirds come and leave Florida every year in their motorhomes with a car behind. Prior to the 80's I towed a lot of cars on a tow bar and the only problems I ever had was that the tires would sometimes get goofy on gravel roads and you would have to get out and straighten them back out. Also, if a car had no motor it woudn't tow as well as one that had the weight of one over the front tires. Aside from those things, no problems, but I wouldn't do it today, a trailer is just so much nicer IMO. Don
If you want to use a chain to tow, Slip a tire over your trailer hitch ball and fasten the chain to the tire. You will not get that bang everytime the chain gets tight.
@Mr48Chev - Isn't that the truth? Hell, my Dad used to flat-tow all the time, taking his little Datsun pickup behind his 3/4-ton Chevy truck with a cabover camper on that! Later, he did the same, but with a '76 Toyota pickup in tow. Never, ever had an issue. On both mini-trucks, he removed the flimsy front bumper altogether and welded up tow tabs to the frame. Too easy. We had a Willys CJ-3B we'd tow to southwestern Colorado and go four wheeling. Since that Jeep had a top end of 50 mph, road trips in it were brutal if we had to drive it there! Personally, I did it, too. Had a beautiful '69 Dodge Dart GTS 440 in 1988, that I flat-towed behind my '66 Dodge Coronet 500 to Ardmore a couple of times, to do a little drag racing. Again, no sweat! Had the Dart taillights wired so that they'd work with the Coronet's lights, just like a trailer. Flat-towing with a tow bar seems to be a lost art these days, except with the RV crowd. They do it all the time without drama. Towing a front-engined car minus engine and trans with a tow bar is NOT recommended!!! You'll need someone in the towed vehicle to keep the car in line to steer it. With no weight over the front axle, it will not track otherwise. Laws of physics apply.
i still own, and use oldschool towbar, in fact i towed my 51 home 100 miles with it, however you can only tow old cars with mine, its the one that has the adjustable chains that wrap around the front bumper, so the car your towing has to have a metal front bumper strong enough to be towed by, towed my first car home 90 miles in 1982 with it, (1965 satellite), and i've used it on hundreds of classic mopars since then
In the 70's I flat towed my race car to the track (50 mile round trip) every weekend. When I moved to Oregon from SoCal in the mid 90's I towed 3 cars (1 at a time) for a total of 3000 miles. Never had a problem unless you need to back up.
How many of you built your own tow bar? We got a section of rusty 2-1/2" x 2-1/2" x 3/8" angle iron and a coupler from a salvage yard and built an A-frame tow bar.
The original questions mentions nothing about flat towing however he did mention using a TRAILER. So what are you on about mate?
The topic is; Do you still use a tow bar? In the US, a tow bar is a link between two vehicles that allows the towed vehicle to be on it's own wheels and follow the towing vehicle. He mentions using it instead of a trailer.
Not just a front engine car, I tried flat towing my v8 vega with no engine and it was the same problem, front wheels turned the wrong direction at every corner. I prefer a trailer now, too many pucker issues with flat towing in the rain and having the pulled car push my ass sideways on corners and trying to top two cars with one trucks brakes can sometimes be fun. I sold my tow bar a few years ago and now of course I need one, need to move my 67 caddy hearse that is not on the road and it is too big for my trailer.
Towed my 57 wagon all over the NE and Canada using a NMW tow bar and towing hubs,Worked great and still have them. Only problem was the front wheels of the wagon would sometimes cock off in the opposite direction if you made too sharp of a turn in dirt. Plan to use it again.
I built mine from 2-1/2 inch box steel, 1" box speader, made up the fixtures to bolt it to the 'Vette frame using aircraft bolts, welded everything together. Made up a wiring harness with aircraft connecters. Not a bit of trouble since I made it in 1968.......
I used a towbar to tow a '36 Ford coupe "D-Altered" in the early '60's. I had to be careful not to make too sharp of turns or else the wheels would go to full lock and stay there. I got real good at finding large areas to turn around in. In 1967, the MSRA went to Donneybrooke (now BIR) for the weekend. On Sunday, it started to rain like crazy. A friend of mine had an el Camino, and I had a tow bar with me. The T-bucket I was driving had a lot better steering box than the old '36, so there were no problems there. We hooked the bucket up to the el Camino and took off. I remember passing a Triumph sports car at 80 in the rain on a two lane highway. Young and dumb. Talking about towing with a chain; we had a piece of well pipe about 10 feet long we ran the chain through and then used a couple of long bolts to tighten the whole thing up. As long as you had someone you trusted in the car being towed, it worked real well. We even towed a couple of cars without brakes with that setup! I am sometimes surprised I survived the '60's. (No, i didn't use drugs either.)
Sorry, I'm not sure what "on about" means, but I see Engine man answered it for me already. I thought perhaps you misunderstood the tow bar use/term over here, that's all I meant.
Aussie slang again!!From Urban Dictionary meaning "what do you mean?" it is a shortened version on "what are you going on about?" or "what are you talking about?" usually used when someone is not making sense for extended periods of time or if you feel like you've missed something. Bit more detail here http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=what are you on about?
Never had a problem with those and a spare steel bumper. Can someone clue me in on these? I can pixture a full floating truck axle. But I've never heard of tow hubs.
I used to collect VW rabbits (not hamb friendly I know) I had a tow bar made specially just for them with big U bolts that went around the bumper to my tow bar. I could have it hooked up in less than 5 mins. I towed rabbits with rabbits never had a prob. I bet I towed hundreds of them from all over the country back in the day. I even towed a 64 T bird with a VW rabbit one time, was only for a few miles and was really slow on the speed still no prob. Just recently my friend and I brought back a buick roadmaster wagon with no engine back from Florida to Ontario Canada. The trick to flat towing with no engine in the front is to strap the steering wheel straight with bungy cords with just enough flex to keep it straight but not enough to let it go wonky. It drags the wheels going around sharp corners but there is no engine so there is no weight. We even did it in the winter with snow on the roads never had a problem. Now you guys have me thinking about setting another bar up for the cars I have now....... hmmmmmmmm.
Thanks. Here's an old ad for them. A lot of us just made up something home made. You bolt them on, then bolt your tire to them.
My father-in-law gave me an old U-haul tow bar from the late 60's.. great setup..heavy duty, bumper pads, adjustable 10 ways to sunday... Just haven't found a chance to use it... keep jumping to the trailer...
Used a tow bar once to tow a lifted 4x4 Chevy pickup but it started to act funny after about 55 mph. I also spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen during a panic stop. I am guessing the whole mess would have jack knifed in the ditch. I am sure something with a lower center of gravity would have worked better though.
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