Dinghy Protection while towing?

[whit]

Hi all,

I'm finishing up my Roadmaster Brakemaster system on my 2009 Saturn Vue and will soon be towing for the first time. I was wondering who does or does not use protection for their Dinghy?
Pro's? Cons? What are the options?

Thanks, Mike

[billyboy]

i towed 3 saturns over the years,and never saw much of a problem. now we tow a ford focus and it is getting a lot of little dings in the front clip. the focus just has a different front end. i thought about the protect a tow, but i have a 8" drop hitch and there would be a large gap where it hooks on the bottom of the m.h.

[eheading]

We too have as very low toad, a Mini Cooper roadster. SInce I was concerned about stone chips, we actually had the nano shield Diamond Shield applied to the front end. After our first trip of 6000 miles this summer, it seems to be doing a very good job of protecting our Mini.

[road-runner]

This is one of the things that has different answers for different people. We tow a Honda Fit, very low to the ground, behind a motorhome with a short rear ovehang. After a few hundred rock chips on the front spoiler I wised up and got a protect-a-tow.

[2gypsies1]

Definitely add the stiff flaps behind the tires but don't add the full stiff flap at the rear. That's what causes rocks flying up. We've seen the damage done in Whitehorse Yukon on our Alaska trip. We just had the individual tire flaps and got no damage traveling within minutes of two motorhomers driving the same road. When we all pulled into the campground, they were already removing the across-the-rear flap. Large stones were laying at the base of their windshield from the construction area. We had none and absolute no damage on the Alaskan trip or for 8 years in that motorhome.

[whit]

Thanks everyone for the replies and info. I was mainly curious to see if people were towing without any protection if they notice dings in their toad. My motorhome right now does not have any mud flaps or the full body width mudflap. Are those something I might want to add at a minimum?

[siggyd777]

Have NOT used dinghy protection for 12 years,even took of the big dragging mud flap. So far,I have not seen any car dings that are worth to care about.Only have the mud flaps behind the rear wheels.
Just take it easy on gravel roads.
Siggy

[mowermech]

rk911 wrote:
we' ve used nothing other than the mud flaps that came on the MH. no problems or damage from towing.

Us, too. We have towed over just about any road surface that can be found in Montana. No problems.

[Dutch_12078]

We don't have a full width rear flap, just the wheel flaps, but we frequently drive on less than optimal roads, both in RV parks and public roads that go where we want to be, so we use a Protect-A-Tow. It protects our toad plus the tow bar and connected cabling. It only takes a minute to install it when hooking up.

[wildtoad]

I've only been towing my Sonic for a few months and so far no damage. But, we only drive on main roads, no gravel roads, no dirt roads, so the risk of rocks, etc is minimized. I have thought about getting a car bra which can be installed/removed easily but have yet to do so.

[rk911]

we' ve used nothing other than the mud flaps that came on the MH. no problems or damage from towing.