Towing a rear-wheel drive vehicle

[Dachristianman]

I have a car dolly, but I also have a rear-wheel drive vehicle. The two options that I can think of are to remove the driveshaft or tow it backwards. I'm leaning towards towing it backwards to save the trouble of reconnecting the driveshaft if i want to drive someplace, but I'd like to get some opinions. I'm mainly going to need the vehicle when I get to my destination, but there could be the off-chance that I would want to drive it at a stop along the way.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Tom

(a man with a theory is at a disadvantage of a man with an experience)

[gswcgi]

I have a 2000 Nissan XTerra 4 X 4, automatic and have towed it 4 down without a disconnect drive shaft for 45,000 miles without a problem! I had a 1988 Chevy Tahoe with 4 X 4 automatic with a disconnect drive shaft. It was a royal pain to deal with. Getting the splines to line up was almost impossible. Had it adjusted many, many times and still never work right. It didn't matter whether I was trying to engage or disengage the shaft. Never again.

[Daveinet]

There is a couple of problems with towing backwards. Tow dollies work best with the weight on the dolly. When the weight is on the ground, it tends to swing around, very easy to start swaying. My brother tried to tow a VW Beetle frontwards, and it swayed all over the road. Flipped it around and it towed fine. The other problem is that the braking is done by the tow dolly. If the tow dolly has no weight on it, compared to the rest of the weight of the car, the tow dolly brakes will be ineffective. In an emergency, they would likely skid sideways. If you have a really heavy motorhome, and a really light car, you might get away with it, but normally it does not work very well.

If this is a permanent toad, they make a drive shaft disconnect, that will allow you to disconnect and reconnect the driveshaft in seconds, without getting dirty.

[msmith1199]

You'll get a lot of different opinions on here. I think the car dolly makers say don't tow backwards, but there are people on here who do it and claim they never have any problems. I do know that some cars come with directional tires, meaning they are only supposed to spin one way. If you have those I don't know what the danger is of spinning them backwards at highway speeds.

[OhhWell]

I've towed RWD backwards on a dolly before but not regularly. I've seen it done by tow trucks in the past. That's all the knowledge I can offer!