Date:         Thu, 11 May 2000 13:56:18 -0400
Reply-To:     "Carrington, Tom" <TCarrington@RELITECH.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Carrington, Tom" <TCarrington@RELITECH.COM>
Subject:      Re: Towing?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

This reminded me of when I bought my 1st Vanagon back in '88....

My '66 bug had been totaled in '87, so I was looking for another VW. I saw
the adv in a local paper for a '81 sunroof with a blown engine. Went out to
see it, and it was from Texas and had *no* rust. The engine put a hole in
the case during the loaded-down move from Texas to Md.

To save a few $$, I decided I would tow it myself. So I borrowed a tow dolly
from a friend of a friend and we hitched it to the back of my temporary
daily driver, a 1981 Ford Escort.

When we got back to the seller's house, they were suprised with what we
wanted to tow with...but took my cash and said they would help me get it on
the dolly. So we started pushing the van up on the dolly (I wish we had a
come-along or winch) but couldn't do it. Then we rolled the van backwards a
little, and got it rolling to let momentum take it up the little ramps to
the wheel wells. Didn't make it, so we tried again a little further
back...still didn't make it. Tried again even further back, and *just
almost* made it. So we went back to the same spot, and pushed a little bit
harder.

This time the van made it up the ramps and into the wheel wells. But instead
of stopping there, the van kept rolling, going off the front of the dolly
and *WHAM* the van was "beached" on the dolly. Oh, my! I'll never forget how
it looked, the Vanagon sailing off the end of the dolly like it was going to
crash the back of my little Escort to pieces.

So I had to uncouple the Escort and dolly, and drive back to my house to get
a floor jack and some blocks. The plan was to jack up the van high enough
and slide the dolly forward, then lower the van into the wheel wells. But
when we had it all jacked up, the front wheels were hanging just a little to
low to let the dolly slide underneath.

So then we removed both front wheels, and were able to get the dolly
underneath and lowered it onto the rotors. The with the jack between the van
and dolly, we raised one side at a time to get the wheels back on. Finally
(2 hours later) we had the van secured properly on the dolly.

Once all that was done, off we went. Man, was it hard on the Escort! After
about 100 feet of clutch-slipping, we pulled over and....took the van out of
gear! (ooops)

The rest of the trip was fine. Took forever to accelerate, and forever to
stop. It looked kinda funny, that big van behind the small Escort.


TomC
tcarrington@relitech.com
http://www.relitech.com/tomc
http://volksweb.relitech.com
85 Vanagon Crew Cab
82 Westy diesel=>gas conversion
65 Notchback

> -----Original Message-----
> From: t [mailto:vbob@PRIMENET.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 1:02 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: Towing?
>
>
> Define short...
> I towed my original 81 Westy home with a Toyota PU truck. On a tow
> dolly. Illegally I am sure and definately unwise. I know the
> Toyota has
> a heavier base weight and more HP/torque than your Golf. It was very
> marginal and I would not recommend you do that to your Golf. As far as
> towing it backwards... you need to lock the steeering wheels with the
> alignment perfectly straight... It would be very unstable.
> Gives me the willies...
>
> tim
>
>
> Alan Pickersgill wrote:
> >
> > I have a Golf with  a trailer hitch and a
> Transporter/Westfalia which I'm
> > planning to put a hitch on. I'd like to be able to tow
> either one with the
> > other for short distances. Both vehicles have standard transmission.
> >
> > Is there such a thing as a bar that would connect the two
> hitches together
> > (bar with a ball receiver at both ends) so I could tow one
> vehicle backward
> > by locking the steering of the towed vehicle.
> > My thinking is that this would save a lot of messing around
> with finding a
> > tow bar that would be adaptable to both vehicles, and the time to
> > attach/detach from the towed vehicle.
> >
> > Anyone got any experience with this kind of thing? Is this
> a viable idea?
> > Are there any driving/towing problems I'm not considering?
> >
> > Alan Pickersgill
> > Ottawa Canada
> > 85 Transporter converted to Westfalia
> > 89 Golf diesel
>