Concerned over ACME Tow Dolley Straps

willald wrote:
. . One thing I remember that was important: the straps that go across the tread of the tire, from inside to outside, need to be at the '10', '12', and '2' o'clock position on the tire. Yours are a bit too far back. Kinda hard to explain, but in order to do that, you need the side straps to be a bit longer as well. With the straps I had, you could adjust and make the side straps longer, by adjusting and pulling more 'slack' from the front strap, back over to the two side straps. Not sure how else to describe it, I think you'll just have to play around with them. Thats what I had to do.

Also, 'dbates' gave you very, very good advice. Having the straps 'pull' the car forward the last inch or so, makes a huge difference in getting all the straps tight. You should try that approach, I think you'll like it better.

Ultimately, we gave up on dolly towing and went to 4 down, 'cause I could never trust those straps. However, for peace of mind while we did tow with the dolly, I beefed up the chains significantly that go from the dolly to the car. Also made sure those chains were short enough that they would not let the car off the dolly even if both straps totally failed. I made dang sure that if those straps did fail, that car was NOT going to go off the dolly, no matter what. I'd recommend looking into that as well, for more peace of mind. . .

Will, the placement of the straps is my major concern. The "new and improved" straps that come with the dolley now are not adjustable. The cross-straps are actually sewn to the side pieces so we cannot position them as we would like to. I wish they were adjustable because that would solve my problem. I wonder why they changed to this new non-adjustable strap??

Yes, I'm going to try the new way of loading the car so that the straps pull it forward. We did receive two safety chains as a backup safety feature for attaching the car to the dolley. I haven't messed with them yet but I'm hoping they are long enough. I had to purchase 2 one foot pieces of chain because the safety chains that go from the dolley to the MH were not long enough so I had to extend them and also had to make an extension for the power plug. Since we had to put a drop down hitch on the MH, none of the connections (power and safety chains) were long enough.

Thanks for the advice, appreciate it.