Trailering A Healey

[blueskies]

Towing . . . don't get me started. Any time one hooks something big and heavy on wheels to the rear of a relatively light tow vehicle, the potential for disaster increases greatly. The worst are the large enclosed trailers, especially when one throws, snow, slush, ice, and wind into the mix. After a near death experience on ice a few years ago, the 28 foot enclosed sees little use. Open flat deck trailers usually are much more stable and safer, and I use them whenever possible.

 

[Patrick67BJ8]

Patrick, Your points are valid and technically accurate. Please don't let my comments sound snooty because I have to tell you that I come from the school of "If It Works Do It". Unfortunately in our current culture today of 'No Risk', 'Liability Conscious' Ambulance Chasers your method will keep you out of more trouble. In 2008 I bought a brand new Nissan Titan Pick-up Truck. Towed anything I wanted, especially my 19 foot Bass Boat around most of the NE States. Unfortunately I really wasn't a 'Pick-up Man'. So I traded it in for the 1st Year, 2008 Nissan Pathfinder V8. Same engine and trans as the Titan Pick-up truck but with IRS. Tow rating is 7000lbs and the Manufactures stated tongue weight capacity is 700 lbs. PreWired for 7 pin trailer jack with brakes. If that doesn't keep the Feds off my back I'll go drive it off a cliff. Previous to that, I towed my bass boat, a 19' StingRay day cruiser and a car-hauler trailer with an MG Midget on it with a 1994 Chevy, S-10 Blazer. I built the rear leaf springs up for the Blazer and it was strong and stable. No body ever bothered me about tongue weight or any weight. It worked beautifully, like I said if it works do it. There are too many Arm Chair technocrates writing specification by committee. Unfortunately eventually they will win the day. Just like in our courts and in our politics. Hopefully not be before I'm done with my toys. When they win, as they are now, we can all sit down with our I-phones an tell ourselves how exciting our day was. Bye the way, you can adjust the tongue weight by repositioning the load front to back or back to front. Ya know how you tell if your tongue weight is right, when the trailer tongue stops bouncing and trying to jerk the hitch off the back of the vehicle. I took the Midget to Boston one time. The Midget was too narrow to go on the open track trailer that I had at the time. So I bought 4 sheets of 1/2" plywood and toggle bolted the plywood to the tracks of the trailer. Drove the Midget straight up on it strapped it down and towed for 8 hours at 70 to 75 miles per hour. No problem. I left the Midget in Boston and started back with an empty trailer. Got out on the interstate and the trailer tongue was bouncing like crazy trying to tear the hitch off the back of the Blazer. Pulled over, unbolted 3 of the 4 sheets of plywood and stacked all 4 sheets up near the front of the trailer. No more bounce, smooth as pie all the way home. Like I said, If it works.... of course pay a little attention to physics. Dave.

i appreciate your comments and I have taken SOP towing experiences in the past such as yours so I decided to get the towing vehicle and trailer with cargo(Healey) matched up for best and safest towing IMHO. After being pushed down hill on the Interstate by my trailer it began to sway a little. The road was wet, semi trucks flying around me and the only recourse I had was to give the Tahoe some throttle to straighten it out. Thank god no one was in front of me! I didn't use the seat of pants method to see what my tongue weight was with my Healey loaded but instead purchased a tongue scale and with a friend we moved the Healey back and forth until I got 12% weight on the tongue. I then marked the floor with tape and placed a plastic wheel/tire unit where the wheel should go every time to get the correct tongue weight without guessing.

Another piece of gear was a better Trailer Brake Controller for my new truck instead of the marginal one I had on my Tahoe.

 

[twas_brillig]

I was in at the shop where our BJ7 is in line for the paintbooth, and they had a 100-6 up on a hoist. I had a look and a feel, and it seems to me that it would be feasible (at least on a 100-6) to run nylon straps around the differential/rear axle housing and under the brake lines so as to secure the car without threatening the brake lines. Doug

 

[vette]

Hello Doug, Thanks for the input. I did look at my rear axle area and I kinda thought the same way you have stated, but. Even though there is enough of a gap between the brake line and axle housing to slide a nylon strap through there, I am concerned about the too close proximity to the brake line. If for some reason the strap would loosen and allow the car to shift a little we might have minor consequences but if the strap somehow put enough pressure on the brake line and pulled on a fitting we might arrive at our destination with no brakes. It was just too close for me. Even though I might sound like a rise taker, I am very careful in my work. I do have an idea for the rear tie down arrangement but I will load the Healey in a few days and try it before I share it. If it doesn't work I will break down and buy the E-track and the wheel bonnets.

 

[maxwedge5281]

an experience with towing and of no real value to the thread......over 40 years ago i decided to flat tow my 1959 bn6 two seater from charlotte nc to clinton ok...bout 1200 miles if i remember correctly. traveled mostly on interstate 40 which was not completed at that time. i welded up a suitable tow bar and attached to the front bumper mount arms complete with safety chains! i periodically checked it while in route and did not notice any problems with the towing framework?? when i turned into my driveway.....the front bumper arms broke away from the car.....really good timing for my suitably.... welded up tow bar....could have been catastrophic running at speed!

 

[Patrick67BJ8]

an experience with towing and of no real value to the thread......over 40 years ago i decided to flat tow my 1959 bn6 two seater from charlotte nc to clinton ok...bout 1200 miles if i remember correctly. traveled mostly on interstate 40 which was not completed at that time. i welded up a suitable tow bar and attached to the front bumper mount arms complete with safety chains! i periodically checked it while enroute and did not notice any problems with the towing framework?? when i made the turned into my driveway.....the front bumper arms broke away from the car.....really good timing for my suitably welded up tow bar....could have been catastrophic running at speed!

I had a similar experience in 1974 when a towing bracket was fabricated to tow my Healey from Calif to Florida. I noticed a banging sound while going slow in traffic in Dallas area and stopped my car and found that the welds were breaking apart. I limped to a small shop that had a welder and was fixed and continued my journey. Lucky I was going very slow in stop & go traffic.

 

[blueskies]

This talk of tow bars reminds me of a '58 Vette that I bought many years ago. I found it while on a trip to Vancouver visiting my father in law about 1200 miles from home. It had a built up 283 with a T10 4 speed, and was really fast. But who knew about reliability. So I planned to tow it home with the new Chevy van, using a tow bar.

We knew a fellow with a welding shop at his home in nearby Delta, and my father in law and his mechanic brother and the welder volunteered to build the tow bar for me. We planned to start the drive home by late afternoon, so I showed up at the welder's home with my helpers early in the morning. At first, I didn't think much of it when someone brought out a case of beer and the welder sat down on a pail. I became worried by afternoon when the only thing accomplished was depletion of the beer and the appearance of more beer. By late afternoon, no metal had been cut or welded.

As the sun set, I drove away in the Vette, headed east for home, with my wife following in the van (she had the sheepdog and two of the three kids with her - one rode with me). The '58 Vette never missed a beat - including all the way through the Rockies of B.C. and Alberta - other than when it ran out of gas the next day, due to a faulty fuel gauge. Then, my wife who was supposed to follow me in case of trouble, thought that I had pulled over to let her pass. An hour later, she came back. By then, my five year old son and I had hitchhiked back to the nearest town and back to the Vette with a can of gas.

We all still laugh about that trip! Sorry if this is getting too far afield.

 

[vette]

Nice to know you drove a Vette. Probably one of the most exciting times in your life.

 

[blueskies]

Nice to know you drove a Vette. Probably one of the most exciting times in your life.

You must have your handle for a reason. I always loved the C1 and C2 Vettes and still drive them. The '56 to '62 Vettes do look a lot like the "big Healeys," although, side by side, the Vettes looks huge compared to the Healeys. And they do have quite different personalities.

 

[vette]

Blueskies, since this is my thread I guess I can hi-jack it just a little. Yeh, I wouldn't use a Vette moniker on a Healey web site except way back when we (or at least me) started using this new fangled "Inter Web" i being a Corvette guy decided to use Vette for everything. It was even my e-mail address. Now after all these years if I change it I will lose a lot of history from previous post. So i guess it just stays.
Now back to the subject at hand. I have spent the last few days attaching a variety of hold down points on my new trailer. I did not buy the e-tracks because I think for the expense and work of installing them they are only good to one car or some cars that would have similar wheel tracks. Probably a lot of the LBCs might work with one set of E-track but I doubt if a Vette would ride in the same place as a Healey. I won't be able to load the Healey to test my system till next week but here is what I plan. I'll attach a pic. The front of the Healey will be strapped from the lower 'A' arms to new 'D' rings at the front of the trailer. Then at back edge of the trailer I have welded on new 'D' rings as well. But in between the distance from the back axle of the Healey to the rear D rings I have installed a 2" wide squared 'U' bolt that is bolted thru the wood deck and also thru an angle iron cross brace under the trailer. This squared 'U' bolt has nuts and washers on the underside but the nuts are not tightened all the way up which allows the U bolt to raise up enough to feed the strap thru it and also to allow the strap to run freely thru it. When at times, maybe when trailering other cars, the U bolt may not be used it will drop down nearly flush with the deck. I will run straps from the rear D rings, thru the floating U bolts and then I will wrap the straps around the leaf spring just forward of the spring plate holding the spring to the axle. I can then pull the car tight by ratching the straps at the rear of the trailer. My reasoning for the intermediate U bolts which are about 12 inches behind the location of the rear tire is to provide a more veritical pull downward near the axle instead of a longer pull which would be more horizontal without the U bolts. I fear that a long horizontal pull to the back edge of the trailer might have the straps foul against the back edge of the rear shroud or against the exhaust pipes on the drivers side. I'm open for criticism, let me know if you think this will work. see the attached pic.

 

[DTDuck]

Blueskies, since this is my thread I guess I can hi-jack it just a little. Yeh, I wouldn't use a Vette moniker on a Healey web site except way back when we (or at least me) started using this new fangled "Inter Web" i being a Corvette guy decided to use Vette for everything. It was even my e-mail address. Now after all these years if I change it I will lose a lot of history from previous post. So i guess it just stays.
Now back to the subject at hand. I have spent the last few days attaching a variety of hold down points on my new trailer. I did not buy the e-tracks because I think for the expense and work of installing them they are only good to one car or some cars that would have similar wheel tracks. Probably a lot of the LBCs might work with one set of E-track but I doubt if a Vette would ride in the same place as a Healey. I won't be able to load the Healey to test my system till next week but here is what I plan. I'll attach a pic. The front of the Healey will be strapped from the lower 'A' arms to new 'D' rings at the front of the trailer. Then at back edge of the trailer I have welded on new 'D' rings as well. But in between the distance from the back axle of the Healey to the rear D rings I have installed a 2" wide squared 'U' bolt that is bolted thru the wood deck and also thru an angle iron cross brace under the trailer. This squared 'U' bolt has nuts and washers on the underside but the nuts are not tightened all the way up which allows the U bolt to raise up enough to feed the strap thru it and also to allow the strap to run freely thru it. When at times, maybe when trailering other cars, the U bolt may not be used it will drop down nearly flush with the deck. I will run straps from the rear D rings, thru the floating U bolts and then I will wrap the straps around the leaf spring just forward of the spring plate holding the spring to the axle. I can then pull the car tight by ratching the straps at the rear of the trailer. My reasoning for the intermediate U bolts which are about 12 inches behind the location of the rear tire is to provide a more veritical pull downward near the axle instead of a longer pull which would be more horizontal without the U bolts. I fear that a long horizontal pull to the back edge of the trailer might have the straps foul against the back edge of the rear shroud or against the exhaust pipes on the drivers side. I'm open for criticism, let me know if you think this will work. see the attached pic.

What you have will probably work, however I would be concerned about the rating of the straps. Keep in mind that if you have the misfortune to have a collision that the load on those straps could be up to 30G's or so which translates, on a 2,000 lb car to a 60,000 lb load on the straps. Now I am not saying that you need straps rated to 60,000 lbs as you will most likely never need quite that much, but I would get the heaviest rated straps I could find.

Now ideally the Tire cap/strap idea is absolutely the best and is what professionals and race teams will use to transport cars as all you are doing is strapping the tire & wheel to the trailer and each strap (assuming you use four) is only needed to handle 1/4th of the load and the load will be distributed much more evenly in a collision. The problem is that you need to use the same trailer all the time and permanently fit the strap points to the trailer frame in some way (bolting them to the wood bed will not be strong enough) which means that this will not help if you use the trailer for more than one car unless it is exactly the same size track & wheelbase. The advantage of tying the car down by the tires is that it is much easier on the car as it is just sitting there and bouncing on the suspension as it was meant to.

So where does that leave you? Since I spent many years towing my race cars around, I can tell you the simplest soultion is to take the strap in the front (only use one) take it from either the A-Frame or frame forward over the front of your trailer, underneath the tongue of the trailer, back up over the front of the trailer and connect to the frame or A-Frame on the other side. Note: I try to avoid using the A-Frames because it can affect your alignment in some cases. In the rear I would try to find a way to loop the strap around the trailer frame, unless you are absolutely confident that those D-Rings and/or welds are extremely strong, and loop the straps around either the Frame or rear axle (the frame is preferable) and connect both strap ends making a loop then tighten. Use two straps on the rear, one on each side. Once you have all the straps in position and take up the slack on all of them, put the car in neutral with the handbrake off ratchet the car from one end or the other until everything is tight, in other words you are pulling the car either forward or backward to tighten the straps on the other end. Once everything is tight, put the car in gear and set the handbrake and don't forget to tie up the loose strap ends.

Hopes this helps some.
Cheers,
Dan M.

 

[vette]

Awh, Ghol Darn it, I forgot to take pictures. Now the trailer and the Healey are tucked away again in their respective sleep chambers and won't be out for awhile.
Dan thanks for the suggestions on how to tie it down. I have to admit that my system worked perfectly. And my welds held. I had no concern about that. All of the 'D' rings and 'U' bolts also have additional plate welded under them so nothing is fastened to the wood. took it for a ride a few miles, did some quick turns and hard braking and it didn't move.
My points of attachment were the front 'A' Frames at the bottom of the swivel pins, held with straps not hard hooks and at the back, straps wrapped around the leaf springs just forward of the spring plate.
Just a note about possibly using wheel nets. It is obvious that the tires would have to set on the e-tracks. That is not such a big issue because it would take no more work to install e-tracks than what I installed with multiple D rings and U bolts. It was recommended to me at the trailer supply store to install 5' of e-track for each wheel then you would be able to locate the car fore and aft. But I had two issues with that. One is the issue of putting other cars on the same trailer. I believe that could be solved by installing 2 set of e-track at each wheel location. one inboard of the the other. Narrow cars on one set, and wider cars on the other set.
But the other issue about going to all the trouble of installing the e-tracks is that the fender openning on the Healey especially at the lower edge of the body line, does not allow much room for the netting and its associated hardware. Instead of spending all the money and the associated work of the installation with e-track and finding there to be an issue, i decided to do what I did and it works. I do believe it provides alot of flexibility as well. Thanks everyone for your help. Dave.