Towing your toad

[Mostovi]

For those who bring their car, truck, jeep or whatever along, what is your preference of towing and why. Do you flat tow, use a tow dolly or put it on a trailer.

Planning to retire soon and looking for information from those of you who have experience in this kind of towing.

Thanks in advance for sharing your information.

[2gypsies1]

Look at the Jeep Cherokee... different from the Grand Cherokee. It's gorgeous inside with lots of room and does very well on trails. We towed a Jeep Liberty 4-down (not produced anymore) and we could keep up with the Wrangler crowd at Moab, etc. We had it lifted slightly and bigger tires. Loved it!

[paulm]

Metal gator what year are your jeeps ? I am assuming you tow 4 down

[MetalGator]

I am new to owning a motorhome but towing a Jeep is so easy. I don't have any other vehicle to compare it too but both my wife and I have Jeep Wranglers (hers is a 4 door JKU and mine is a 2 door JK). It's nice to be able to take hers when we take our nieces with us and then we take mine when it's just the two of us. I rigged both Jeeps with Blue Ox base plates and the mopar wiring harness. I can hookup the Jeep and brake system in less than 5 minutes. Very simple.

Burch

[paulm]

we are going full time and someone driving the land rover will not work...ha.

[doc_brown]

Flat towed only using three different jeeps, easy and no “stuff” to worry about storing.

[Bill_Satellite]

paulm wrote:
dang it, I have a land rover that cannot be towed 4 down. the rover is paid for and we love it. I just cannot imagine selling it and buying some lesser car to tow. We do a lot of off-road touring in the mountains of the west and the land rover is the best I have ever owned.
Rats.

That would leave you with a trailer option only as the dolly won't handle 4WD either. While it's the worst of all options in my view, the last option is to have someone drive it while you drive the MH. Some 5th wheel owners do this when the vehicle pulling the trailer is too big to be practical.

[STBRetired]

We dolly towed for a few years. It is not as horrible as some people make out. We now tow 4 down as we bought a vehicle that would allow that. 4 down is definitely easier but as others have stated, the pool of 4 down towable vehicles seems to shrink every year. It comes down to what matters more to you, the vehicle you want to drive and the method that is required to tow it. I would have reluctantly kept the dolly if the vehicle we wanted could not be towed 4 down.

[Jayco-noslide]

I would only flat tow; however, the pool of flat towable automatics is shrinking. We did tow a Chevy Sonic and now a Ford Focus. My son has a MH, tried the dolly route and soon switched to flat towing. We both have Blue Ox tow bars and like them. Both a dolly and trailer have to be managed when not towing and I wouldn't. There are other reasons.

[paulm]

dang it, I have a land rover that cannot be towed 4 down. the rover is paid for and we love it. I just cannot imagine selling it and buying some lesser car to tow. We do a lot of off-road touring in the mountains of the west and the land rover is the best I have ever owned.
Rats.

[Bill_Satellite]

I first towed a front wheel drive vehicle on a dolly. I hated every minute of it but the wife loved the car and we were not anything close to full time. The first time we moved to 4 down we did not do proper research and towed a vehicle I believed to be towable with a manual transmission. I burned up the tranny but luckily it was covered under warranty. I then moved to a correctly setup 4 down towed and I would never go back. Trailering the vehicle is the worst setup IMHO due to the extra weight and space they take up when not being used. If you plan to only travel to high end resorts with 75' pads and never disconnect the trailer then you will likely be OK with that setup.

[zigzagrv]

Have done both and am currently towing my fwd RAV4 (does that make it a RAV2?) on a dolly. 4-down is easier and quicker, but the RAV4 is not towable 4-down.

I try to get pull-thru campsites when possible, but if not, I drop the car at the check-in office and the DW drives it in. When I get to the campsite, I stop so that the dolly is at the end of the campsite. I unhook the dolly and move it to the very back of the site with tongue facing forward so that when I back the motorhome in, the overhang covers the tongue leaving only the wheels and ramps (about 4 feet) sticking out the back. When ready to leave, simply pull forward a bit, hook up the dolly, load up the car and head out. Not too bad.

[Dog_Trainer]

I have ttowed both ways. I find the 4 down option a little better than the Acme dolly that I had. I just bought a 2011 HHR that I set up to flat tow. I flat towed a 2008 HHR for about 80,000 miles. The problem going forward is in choices of tow vehicles that can be flat towed. Many of the new cars cannot be flat towed.
I found it fairly easy to dolly my 2015 Chrysler 200 and not too much longer to get it ready to tow.\
You will find the cost to dolly tow is less investment and you will have a choice of toads. Flat towing means you will have to dedicate a vehicle to tow.
As far as costs a Dolly can be purchased used between $750.00 - &1000. for a good one with surge brakes. Add the tie down straps to the cost and you get a total investment ( in my case ) of around $900.00 on the other hand to set up and tow my HHR I had the cost of Base plate, Tow bar, Light wiring and diodes, Ready brake,and misc connection cables. Total cost to set it up right at about $2000.00 I did the work myself so add another $1000.00 to get all of it installed.
The up side of 4 down is a little easier to get ready to tow and the lack of need to store a dolly.
The down side of 4 down is that you have a dedicated toad and if anything happens to it you cannot easily switch toads without repeating the set up expense.
Again with the Dolly you can tow a number of different toads without additional expense so switching cars is easier and a larger selection going forward.
I am retired so my HHR does not get many miles and should last a long time so it is 4 down for me.
BTW. if your toad requires a fuse to be pulled it is easy to make or buy a bypasss switch.

[2chiefsRus]

Mostovi wrote:

smlranger wrote:
Seems the concensus is flat tow. When we got our first motorhome, I bought a Mastertow dolly. I used it for 6 months and decided it was generally a PITA. I sold it and rigged up to flat tow. Never looked back.

As noted you just need to find a vehicle that can be flat towed and also meets your other travel needs. We now tow a F150 4WD Super Crew.

The F150 is one of the vehicles we're looking at. Thanks to all for the good info.

get 4 wheel drive to set up flat tow on that F-150

[mowermech]

I towed my Dodge 1500 four down.
I towed all my Jeeps 4 down, including the current one I just got.
However, our PT Cruiser Turbo convertible can not be towed four down, so when we made a trip from here to Ringold, GA and back a couple years ago, I towed it on a dolly. We encountered none of the dreaded problems that some delight in telling about when using a dolly. All the campgrounds we stopped at (mostly KOA) had pull-through sites, except one. I had to unload the car, disconnect the dolly, and back in to the site. Oh, no, it took me 15 minutes! Then, in the morning, I had to pull out of the site, hook up the dolly, and load the car. ANOTHER 15 minutes gone! I tell ya, that half an hour just RUINED our schedule! (Not.)
By the way, the weather was great the whole trip. No problems with rain or cold.
IMO, it is what you make of it. If you decide that you can do this, a dolly will be no problem. If you are the type to P*** and moan about every little thing, neither method will be satisfactory.
Good luck.

[Ivylog]