Teach me about flat towing

I don't own, nor do I want to own, a truck and/or a trailer, so I've been driving my car to the track these past 5 years. This means leaving my family at home, or driving separate with my wife and kids suffering together in the chase car. Suffice it to say, she's never taken me up on this offer.

I've done some research on flat towing, and it seems like an ideal solution, given my Sedona's 3500lb tow rating and my Integra's svelte 2300lb weight. I've never taken the plunge, though, because I never seem to see anybody flat tow their cars to the track.

Why not? What downside am I missing? What problems am I not seeing?

That used to be the standard method. Then things got more upscale and you had to have a trailer,even better a closed one.

Only draw back, if some thing breaks or you have an off that would prevent towing it home. At least you would have a way to get home and borrow a trailer.

Down side would be swapping the tires once you get there.

Up side is if you stuff it into a barrier you don't have to walk home.

I flat towed two Auto-X cars and one ice racer. Get a good bar set up, not one of those one-size-fits-all.

Dan

Some transmissions don't like to be towed like that, better check it out first.

IF the car has a manual transmission then you can flat tow it. If it has an auto trans you will need a tow dolly as I assume that your car is FWD.

I have flat towed both rear drive and FWD cars but all were manual trans equipted. I did have some problem doing this but now we're talking over 25 years, once when a race tire stacked inside the car fell and jamed the shift lever into gear at speed it locked up the trans. We had to pull the drive shaft to continue. Another time a front wheel came off the towed car on the way home that had not been tightened after swaping the towing tires back on and the last time was when a front hub broke and I didn't have a spare to swap to.

After this last problem I decided to buy a car trailer. Having a light car, 1700 lbs I was able to tow it on a trailer with a 1989 Ford Ranger PU with the 2.9L & 5 sp manual trans. I have since moved on to bigger/heavier cars and upsized my tow vehicle along with this, first to a Suburban and later and currently with a Ford E250 van.

We went with a tow dolly rather than flat-tow for a few reasons. One, the flat-tow harness thinger adds weight to the very front of the car, and as we know, weight=bad, and weight in front of/behind the wheels=even more bad. Two, you only have to change one axle's worth of tires when you arrive. Three, if something major breaks on the front axle, the car can still get home easily. Four, you don't have to put goofy magnetic lights on the trunk lid of the towed car. Five, we found a fancy dolly for pretty cheap that had surge brakes, so braking was better, and the tongue folded in half, so storage was not an issue.

I put tow-bar brackets on my aries, cut holes in the bumper cover for them. I usually leave the tow bar in the trunk unless it's on track. The times i have used it, i have LOVED IT. I have a dolley and use that for everything else but i cant really tell you how much nicer it is to just slap the bar on with two pins and put it on the hitch ball and drive away. I wired the car with a trailer light connector too to use the factory tails but i need to re-do that.

Anyway, i say go for it.

I do the ame as Vigo with my e30, works pretty well, it's a lot easier and cheaper than owning a trailer and you can always rent a trailer or dolt from u-haul if something breaks on track, I say go for it!

flat towing a bare rolling frame with no drivetrain or body is a bad idea.

nothing to do with OP, just an observation i had 150 miles from home when the chassis wouldnt track straight without weight on the front wheels. had to strap the steering straight and have it drag around turns.

otherwise, some autos also can be flat towed but i am not sure which. RV people would know. otherwise they have to put an external transmission pump in one of the cooler lines to circulate fluid to keep from burning things up.

When most RWD man trans vehicles are flat towed in neutral, only the mainshaft/sliders in the trans are spinning. That means that all the gears are stationary and not circulating oil/fluid. If the oil level is up enough to get oil to the slip yoke/bushing, no problem. If the oil level in the trans is lower than that, i'd probably look into towing hubs or remove the driveshaft.

Another thought: I bought a 2001 Ranger that was towed around by a Winnenbago. It had miles, but half were with the engine off.

I replaced most of the front end components and the power steering pump was never right.

Yanking a car around with hydraulic steering and no pump action could be problematic.

YMMV.