• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Towing BN4 on trailer

Share this page

longbridgehealey

longbridgehealey

Obi Wan
Country flag
Offline
I know this has been discussed before, but has anybody successfully towed a 100-6 with a U-haul open car trailer? Wheel width being the issue, of course.

Thanks!
 
Thanks vette and Randy. I think I'm going to try it, but I was really surprised at the cost. It's over $500 to rent one to pick up in Maryland and end up in Florida. Now I'm thinking about pricing out the car carrier folks��
 
I moved my project 1957 100-6 from Ga. to N.C. ( rented in Ga. and returned in N.C. ) on a U-Haul transporter about 4 years ago with no problems , as I remember it cost about $120 with insurance .
 
I've towed many times and found you must take caution opening and closing the doors. Some trailers have removable wheel covers. I'd check some of the larger carriers first. You might find their prices aren't bad.
 
Remember to position the car on the trailer so you have a positive net weight on the hitch. You don't need much but you don't want the car centered where the trailer "seems balanced". If it seems balanced the trailer hitch will keep trying to jump off of your hitch as the trailer will keep porpoising. And deffinately don't let the weight favor the back end of the trailer. As as an example of what happens with a seemingly balanced trailer or one with the weight to the rear, when I towed the Midget to Mass. after headed back with an empty trailer I had only gotten on the Interstate for a few miles and realized that the trailer was porpoising enough to make things unsafe. I had to pull off and take the 3 plywood sheets that I had fastened to the trailer decking and stack them at the front of the trailer to get the weight on the hitch. Fortunately I had some large "C" clamps and used them to hold the plywood in place. After that the trailer rode beautifully all the way back to Pa. Dave.
 
vette said:
Remember to position the car on the trailer so you have a positive net weight on the hitch. You don't need much but you don't want the car centered where the trailer "seems balanced". If it seems balanced the trailer hitch will keep trying to jump off of your hitch as the trailer will keep porpoising. And deffinately don't let the weight favor the back end of the trailer. As as an example of what happens with a seemingly balanced trailer or one with the weight to the rear, when I towed the Midget to Mass. after headed back with an empty trailer I had only gotten on the Interstate for a few miles and realized that the trailer was porpoising enough to make things unsafe. I had to pull off and take the 3 plywood sheets that I had fastened to the trailer decking and stack them at the front of the trailer to get the weight on the hitch. Fortunately I had some large "C" clamps and used them to hold the plywood in place. After that the trailer rode beautifully all the way back to Pa. Dave.
Click to expand...

"Porpoising;" I had never heard that term before. Up here we call it "fishtailing." No matter what you call it, that is good advice. A trailer without enough weight on the hitch can cause the tow vehicle to lose control and cause a bad wreck. It happens all the time. Open, flat bed trailers - when loaded properly - usually are very easy and safe to pull. Large enclosed trailers, on the other hand, can be a nightmare, especially when the wind comes up or the roads turn icy. My enclosed trailer sits unused most of the time, while the flatbed gets a lot of use.
 
I used an U-Haul trailer to tow mine from Columbus to St. Louis and later St. Louis to Los Angeles. No sweat.
Chris...
 

Attachments

  • Green Jam with Dad.jpg
    Green Jam with Dad.jpg
    203.5 KB · Views: 123
  • Green Jam on street.jpg
    Green Jam on street.jpg
    188.6 KB · Views: 126
Hi Blueskies, Yeh, I guess the terms can be used interchangeably, but to me fishtailing was when any kind of vehicle, trailer or powered starts to swerve from side to side. Yeh that'll deffinately do ya in. My term porpoising is when the trailer starts to get a rythem where it doesn't have enough weight on the ball and the heavier back end lifts the front end and the trailer hitch is jerked up against the ball hitch on the back of your tow vehicle. As soon as it gets alittle movement up, providing that the hitch is locked on, forward momentum of the tow vehicle jerks it back down and it bottoms again on the ball. the the weight in the back causes the hitch to try to jump off your ball again and the thing just keeps doing that continuously in a rather quick rythem. It literally can tear the hitch right off your vehicle and if it doesn't it'll keep jarring your vehicle so much you'd wish it did. With just alittle weight on the front the hitch will always want to stay down. Dave.
 
Vette, that does sound like the same thing. The first time time I experienced this was when a friend and I were hauling a ton or two of 8 foot long drywall on a 6 foot long trailer, pulled by a Volvo sedan. The drywall hung over the back of the trailer, taking all weight off the hitch. We just nicely made it up to highway speed when the trailer took on a mind of its own, violently swinging back and forth. The whipping actually picked up the back of the Volvo and it skidded back and forth on the highway. He managed to get it stopped without having a wreck. Since then, I have seen this happen numerous times to others. Bumper hitch travel trailers also can be bad for this when loaded wrong.
 
Back
Top